Soto-Taylor, who has more than 20 years' experience in state operations, health-care administration, and policy in the public and private sectors, had previously been deputy secretary of GovOps, overseeing business transformation and strategic development. She succeeds Miriam Ingenito, a longtime leader in state technology who has joined KPMGas director of account relations.
Prior to joining state service, she was a bilingual community health educator and administrator of health-care programs in the private sector. Soto-Taylor earned a Bachelor of Science degree in community health education and a Master of Public Health degree from San Diego State University. She is a Sacramento resident.
Soto-Taylor discussed her priorities and perspectives during an interview last week with Industry Insider — California. This interview has been edited lightly for style and brevity.
Industry Insider — California: Congratulations on your new role. Can you give an overview of what your priorities are?
Soto-Taylor: First and foremost, I want to thank the governor for his leadership and the opportunity to continue to serve the people of California. I've been a public servant for over 23 years, so it’s such a great honor to be able to move into this new role as undersecretary here at the agency. And certainly, I want to thank Secretary Amy Tong for giving me this opportunity. I’ve had the pleasure of working with her in this capacity for three years or so since she became agency secretary, and she just has such strong leadership skills. As you know, she’s worked at the California Department of Technology and throughout state service, and now that she’s at GovOps, I’m really honored to serve in the capacity of undersecretary and really just learn from her … and continue to support her in the new role.
You know, my background is in health care. A lot of my policy work [was] in that space, but here, working at the agency, I have been able to bridge the policy work and the programmatic work with the technology, and so I think that that’s really what I bring to the table: being able to work alongside the technologists to make sure that we’re bridging what the program needs, truly are identifying them, and then being able to figure out what is the value of this new technology. Is it appropriate to deploy this new technology? Will it give us the value that we’re looking for? Will it improve the service delivery to Californians? So that’s the bridge that I hope to continue to build among all the departments that we oversee.
Certainly, one of my goals is to be able to break down those silos that we seem to have between the folks that are very tech-savvy and are just out there seeing all of the new bells and whistles, but making sure that they’re talking to the program and policy folks to see if it is appropriate to use this new technology in the given issue area that they’re trying to address.
IICA: Given that your background is largely in health-care-related policy and programs, how comfortable are you with technology?
Soto-Taylor: I don’t think I’d describe myself as an early adopter, but I’m also not super behind, either. I take a cautious approach to new technology. Front and center for myself, as well as for many Californians, is the confidence and the security level of this new technology — the privacy aspects of any kind of new technology, where we have so much data at the ready. We have so many programs, and each program has eligibility determinations, and you’re giving the government so much data. So I think one of the key areas that we need to start to build upon with our communities is that trust factor. As technology is moving so quickly, we will be seeing as an example perhaps AI and more integration of our data into these large learning models. So how are we going to protect our consumers, the Californians, as we deploy this new technology, making sure that we’re doing this in a very intentional way, and making sure that we’re keeping the community’s trust as well as making sure that we have safeguards in place to protect their data? That’s top of mind.
IICA: What about the effect of AI on the workforce?
Soto-Taylor: The executive order on GenAI had a lot of different components to it, one of which was the workforce. So I’ll address that first by saying that top of mind for us is starting with a baseline understanding of what is generative artificial intelligence. A lot of us are really interacting with that on a personal level. I think we’re starting to get a little bit smarter on what that is. But for our state workers, we were very much interested in an investment in our state workforce to make sure that they understood what this new technology was first, and then how it can be applied. So you’ll see that we have actually put together a lot of modules, training modules, and educational materials for our workforce so that they understand what it is, so it’s not so scary. And as we move forward, based on that basic understanding, their management teams are going to be responsible for starting to engage with them on the possibilities of using GenAI — not to replace our workforce. I want to underscore that, because, again, it is simply a tool. What we’re trying to also do is upskill our analysts with that new understanding, and they will be front and center. If a department is going to be exploring the use of GenAI, we made sure that our guidelines say you need to engage your workforce in some of that testing. You need to make sure that that workforce, that frontline worker who’s going to be using this tool, is part of the decision-making, or at least the evaluation of this new tool, testing the new tool because we believe strongly that we need to have that human in the loop before and during any kind of evaluation of a new technology tool such as GenAI. So we’re continuing on that front, certainly in 2025.
IICA: What should vendors, in particular, expect from the state guidelines on AI?
Soto-Taylor: I would just say that we are heavily investing in a model where we are using proof of concepts. So that’s something that we have out there, publicly sharing where we are with testing this new technology. We want to strengthen those partnerships through this new way of engagement. It’s not so much “Here is a request for proposal. Here are all of the details on the requirements. Here’s what we want to purchase.” Instead, we’re shifting that model to be more iterative. We’re calling it a Request for Innovative Ideas — RFI2. It employs that new model, which is: “We have a problem statement. Industry, please come and talk to us. Is this a problem? Can it be solved? What are some of the options? And as we learn more, can we continue to iterate so that we’re not putting into production something that truly doesn’t hit the mark and doesn’t add value?” So that’s the shift that I think the industry is going to see more of, and we’re testing that right now with GenAI proof of concepts.
From what we’re hearing, it’s well-received. Because we’re engaging a lot more, rather than just using an RFP. That’s the thing that’s really exciting for us, and GovOps is really taking the lead to make sure that we’re changing that mindset with our departments and engaging with the industry in a more collaborative way. Things are changing so quickly. We really do believe that we have to have a new way of engaging with industry so that we can keep up.
IICA: Is there anything else that a vendor should be especially attuned to, either for the rest of this year or next year, in light of the things that the state government is grappling with — the budget limitations, the silver tsunami of retiring tech workers, all the different challenges that have cropped up in the last couple of years? If you look into your crystal ball for the vendors, what would you tell them to watch for?
Soto-Taylor: I’d just say continue to be engaged. Continue to think of us as partners. We are very much interested in making sure that we stay on top of these changes that are coming. And we really do want to continue to build that relationship with the industry. We’re very much interested in these kinds of showcases — you know, come to us, show us some of the new technology.
But we are going to be heading into some difficult budgetary times. I think the fact that we’re building these relationships is very important. We’re committed to that. For the long game, it might be beneficial to all of us just to keep in touch and being able to build those relationships.
IICA: Talking about data and big data, California Health and Human Services has got some ambitious things going on. There seems to be a health-care-related component in a lot of those. That’s got to strike a chord with you, given your background.
Soto-Taylor: Oh, it does, yeah. There’s data everywhere. There’s health care, and there’s also transportation data and so forth. One of our offices is the Office of Data and Innovation, and we are definitely using them and leveraging their expertise to help our departments. I would say, while we have a lot of data, there are not a lot of insights into that data. One of the goals that ODI and GovOps share is it doesn’t really matter so much the specifics of it or the kind of data, or where it’s coming from. But when you look at the data and you’re trying to put it together to gain insights, are we ready to do that? It really depends on each of our departments to make sure that they’re ingesting data, and you know they’re cleaning it in a way where it can be used to inform decision-makers. So you’ll see a lot of efforts there from us and support for our Office of Data and Innovation. They have a data strategy. … It’s really all about getting our departments’ data ready before you start to think about GenAI or any other technology tool that will be very reliant on the data. So I would say that being data-ready is really top of mind for us as we move forward in any innovation space.
IICA: Does California work with and share best tech practices with other states and jurisdictions?
Soto-Taylor: Our procurement officials are regularly at national stages where they’re talking with other procurement officials from other states, learning what they’re doing. You mentioned our security side. I have good relationships with the federal government to make sure that we’re understanding what’s happening on the national scale with some of the requirements there from NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) and others who are in that space. So we are definitely open to learning. Beyond the United States, we certainly have also been having conversations with Taiwan and some of our other partners who are working in different spaces, where we are very much interested in seeing how they are using technology to engage their citizens. We’re always looking across state, as well as sometimes national, boundaries for what’s really working. We do like to pride ourselves that we like to be, you know, first in the nation in many of these spaces. So we will continue to have that persona.
IICA: As undersecretary, you’re succeeding a longtime leader in state government, Miriam Ingenito, who has joined the private sector.
Soto-Taylor: I’m excited for Miriam and her new role, and I wish her the best. She left big shoes to fill. But I have been at the agency for quite a while, and I look forward to bridging the important work that she started so that we’re not missing a beat here at the agency.
IICA: Anything you’d like to share on the personal side?
Soto-Tayor: Well, I’m a mom of two teenagers, so that keeps me quite busy. I am an alumna of the Hispanas Organized for Political Equality (HOPE) Leadership Institute. I’m very much interested in mentorship and bringing up representation from women in tech, and women in general, into leadership positions. I’d love to be able to continue to mentor and bring other women up through the ranks to achieve this level that I have.
