Members of the Little Hoover Commission, an independent state watchdog, heard at length recently from state Chief Innovation Officer Scott Gregory on a variety of topics central to how the state approaches and administers technology. Among the takeaways:
• Recommendations from the commission’s 2015 report on A Customer-Centric Upgrade for California Government were not fully implemented. That’s because tech officials and staff “tend to be pulled in a lot of different directions, unfortunately,” and away from broader, platform-level issues, Gregory told Commissioner David Baier.
• The state has had considerable success in one area of the report covered: open data. Since launching in 2016, the California Open Data Portal has accumulated roughly 17,000 open data sets from around the state, on topics ranging from public safety to the environment. Since then, the state has held several data challenges and seen a number of apps developed from that data.
“My sense is that the more we expose this data, the more conversation happens, the more transparency occurs,” Gregory told the commission during its May 23 business meeting.
• Where problems exist around open data, the issue tends to be people, not technology. Hyper-ownership of data and information can lead to it becoming part of an organization’s identity, Gregory said, creating a “bit of a stumbling block,” particularly when officials consider federating multiple open-data platforms into one.
• The state IT workforce continues to have a skills gap. Asked how the commission can write recommendations that can be implemented, Gregory suggested being mindful of the inherent limitations imposed with some state agencies still on mainframe; and college grads not learning about it or early programming languages like COBOL. Simultaneously, it's important to have “an eye towards the future” and technologies like artificial intelligence and blockchain.
• Despite agile methodology's general popularity, state agencies don’t all complete projects via that framework. State IT culture remains greatly based on waterfall methodology despite movement to change that, he said. The California Department of Technology (CDT) is, however, working more in agile and also in DevOps, Gregory said.
• If repositioned, CDT might do more. CDT was a standalone agency in the mid-2000s under former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the state CIO was a cabinet member. That changed under Gov. Jerry Brown's administration, Gregory reminded commissioners, when CDT was moved under the purview of the Government Operations Agency. When Commissioner Janna Sidley asked Gregory whether having CDT stand alone would “help” and “raise your profile,” he replied: “Absolutely.”
“If we do not have a seat at the table, at the big kids’ table — we have purview over IT policy for the state, we have [Assembly Bill] 2408, consolidation, we have all of those mandates — but the stick is not as big, I would say,” Gregory said.
• Gregory’s office at CDT, the existing state Office of Digital Innovation (ODI), will undergo a name change. With Gov. Gavin Newsom calling for a new ODI in his proposed budget as a driver of innovation, the former ODI has been renamed the Office of Enterprise Technology. A new ODI isn’t certain until the state budget is approved, however — and an Assembly subcommittee last month recommended giving Newsom $10 million of the $20 million and 10 of the 50 people he sought to run it.
