As part of Industry Insider — California’s ongoing efforts to educate readers on state agencies, their IT plans and initiatives, here’s the latest in our periodic series of interviews with departmental IT leaders.
John Roussel is deputy director and chief information officer at the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), roles he has had since June 2022. He is a veteran of state service, whose time there dates to June 2003, when he joined the Franchise Tax Board as an FTBNet business analyst lead in its Internal Web and Administrative Bureau. Roussel spent nearly a decade at FTB before joining CDPH parent organization the California Health and Human Services Agency in April 2013 as agency enterprise architect, according to LinkedIn. He joined CDPH in June 2021 as assistant deputy director and chief technology officer, roles he held prior to being named deputy director and CIO.
Before entering public-sector IT, Roussel was a multimedia teaching instructor and speaker at the University of California, Davis, in its Continuing and Professional Education program. His professional licenses and certifications include certification in IT Service Management by the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), and Enterprise Architecture Practitioner from the Pragmatic Enterprise Architecture Framework (PeaF).
Industry Insider — California: As CIO at your organization, how do you describe your role? How have your role and responsibilities changed in recent years in terms of their intersection with IT and innovation?
Roussel: I see my role as, I’m responsible for the IT leadership in finding the strategies to execute our technology vision in California’s modern public health landscape and services. That’s, I think, the bottom line. We have implemented things such as the digital COVID-19 vaccine record, which is now just the digital vaccine record for all vaccines. I think that was a win there. How has my role changed in the past few years? I think as a state CIO, when the pandemic hit as a global disruptor, it changed everything. I’ve only been here two years, so I inherited some of these things. I caught the middle end of this and then dealing with the long-term sustainability of some of these things. We really had to meet public demand and need for the health and safety of Californians by rapidly standing up technologies and working with vendors and other state agencies such as GovOps (the California Government Operations Agency) and others to really stand up the technology and the services needed to track and trace, to administer vaccines to ensure the health and safety of Californians. That was all done with modern technology. And when I say that, it was done with modern technology cobbled with some of our older technology and semi-ancient technology, we’ll just say, especially around data. And it really brought to light some gaps in our data and how we have it, what we can enable and what we can scale to. So, we looked at that, they stood those things up and it was done without a true strategy or architecture. Now, we’ve had to go back and look and architect that and create strategies around it and align it with our future in public health. I think those disruptors did a couple things. For me as a CIO, one, it enabled a program to provide approvals or know that technology can be done. It enabled the program to rapidly adapt new technologies with minimal organizational change management — where they may have been tentative before, they wanted it now. We stood it up in days, weeks, and months, not years. And that did two things. One, it was good. It helped programs see that we can do something like that and that there is a faster track. But two, it set a precedent for that, that we did all this under an executive order, which gave us minimal oversight by control agencies and governance bodies to be able to make sure that we met the needs of Californians, right? But what that did is, after we stopped the executive order, the business got used to just standing things up with us and asking for things that we could stand up right away. Now, we’ve had to go back and re-baseline those expectations for business to really understand that we want to rapidly stand things up, but we need to do it in a strategic way and through architecture and a way that meets a future need or our larger picture through the Future of Public Health itself. The one other thing I wanted to mention about how my role has changed, I’ve always been a transformational leader, you know, that’s just my style. But I had to work within my constraints. And what that meant is that really, like I said, business wasn’t ready for adaptable new transformational technology and innovative technologies, and it was harder to get that done. I think the role, and Gartner coined this pretty well, the CIO is a broker, because we’ve shifted out a lot of custom development and develop ... on what we currently have and moving to platforms and modern technologies through multi-cloud and things like that. Which I, again, am a huge advocate of, but it was a lot harder push, a build, to get that instituted within the organization, especially within the program. I think the disruptor of COVID-19 and the pandemic helped accelerate that. And we look more now towards platforms, licensed services or subscription-based services or SaaS services before we try and build in-house because of the rapid development and the agility and scalability of it.
IICA: Does your organization have a strategic plan, and may we hyperlink to it? How big a role do you personally play in writing that strategic plan?
Roussel: Currently, our department is in the process of developing that strategic plan. In lieu of that, we align to agency, the California Health and Human Services Agency’s strategic plan, Get Healthy California, and the California Department of Technology’s strategic plan. Those are really good line-of-sight and guiding principles. As the CIO, I am also building or developing an IT strategic plan to support the Future of Public Health itself. That includes changing our operating model to be more customer service-centric; redefining our financial IT model to be able to do consumption-based and charge back models for enterprise services and capabilities, which we do not have today; and developing a centralized IT intake, because we have 225-plus programs, all asking for things in different ways and different channels. This centralizes it and that allows us to look at our capacity and demand management in a different way. Developing and maturing our enterprise portfolio management so we can have a holistic view of all our projects, initiatives and efforts that tie to matrix around things like capacity and demand management and financial management and cost realization or risk and other things. Also, it talks about standing up an IT business and governance framework to be able to make informed decisions and be able to prioritize that portfolio of projects and initiatives and efforts, so we know where we’re placing our resources, our funding and our time over so many years. In addition to defining enterprise public health functions that decompose down into public health capabilities, then aligning all our applications to those public health capabilities, doing a rationalization of what we currently have today to see if they align to those verticals. Or if they do not, then we use something like Gartner’s TIME (methodology).
IICA: What big initiatives or projects are coming up? What sorts of developing opportunities and RFPs should we be watching for in the next six to 12 months?
Roussel: Like I mentioned, the Future of Public Health, the 21st century data informatics and science is what we’re working on. And it is a circular thing. We will plan for a year to a year and a half. We will build (minimum viable products) MVPs for a year to two years. Then we’ll go back to planning again. And we’ll continually do that over the next 10 years or so to build out this ecosystem and infrastructure that is supportive, taking into consideration those new technologies, lessons learned. Pivoting where needed as we learn more and as we build more. It’s really predicated on capabilities, building out common capabilities and then leveraging those capabilities and using things such as open architectures, microservices and ecosystems to be able to support that. With that there, we have a few projects that are first out of the gate, that are happening. One is the Future Disease Surveillance System (FDSS), that we hopefully will be putting out for procurement sometime in the near future. Don’t know when. And I’ll just kind of give a high level what that is: As we have seven or so infectious disease systems, some that were current technology and some that are new modern technologies that we did with COVID-19, now we need to consolidate those into a platform or an infrastructure or a capability for disease surveillance and move those forward. And that’ll be one of the first things in Future of Public Health infrastructure as we do that. I think that’s a huge enabler, and it’s going to be a big one as we go forward. As we develop disease surveillance capabilities, those can also roll up to the next level of capabilities, which are just surveillance, where we have other programs and systems that can take advantage of what we’re developing in this. And that is about the leveragability, reuse, and standardization that we’re trying to continue to promote within the Future of Public Health.
Editor’s note: Find information on the Future of Public Health here; and on the Future Disease Surveillance System here.
IICA: In your opinion, what should local government be doing more of in technology?
Roussel: Let me give an answer of what local government or government should do, and then what we’re doing. First off, I think we’ve proven during the pandemic that we can accelerate our development of sound solutions. I don’t think we should do them that fast, but I think ... they need to look at their current process of Project Approval Lifecycle (PAL) and determine how they can, one, align it better without agile. Because it doesn’t align, it’s really truly waterfall. And two, how they can reduce the time to market on that stuff, because it takes between two and three years to complete a PAL and by the time you do that, we know, technology life cycles have gone a couple times. But also making sure that we have done our due diligence with our alternative analysis, understanding our business need, and doing all the due diligence that we should of oversight and guidance. We don’t want to just go to go, go fast to fail. Now back to our department, we’re really looking into generative AI, how we can use AI and machine learning to either automate business processes for digital transformation or do them through analytics and modeling, which we have a lot of. I think those are two huge areas that we’ll be expanding through the Future of Public Health over the next three, five, 10 years. We’re not trying to tell what the direction is 10 years out. We’re trying to incrementally build that going forward. So again, future-proofing, right? We have the ability to adjust but stay within that guiding light of what we’re trying to do, those principles or those general goals or those public health functions that we’re trying to achieve or mature. I’m just trying to set all this up, push it in the right direction, and then others that are much smarter than me and much more capable than me can take care of this and see it to the finish line as they go forward.
IICA: How do you define “digital transformation?” How far along is your organization in that process, and how will you know when it’s finished?
Roussel: Digital transformation to me means a couple things. If we go back to the traditional sense of digital transformation, it’s automating business processes. Whether they’re manual, or they just need more efficiencies, or to remove waste. That’s kind of the core root of digital transformation. But I see digital transformation as even extending past that and looking at how you can use modern technologies, multi-cloud included, platforms included, to be able to accelerate business processes and business capabilities going forward. And how you can build them in a way that provides a modular architecture to be able to easily pivot or adapt agilely to new incoming needs or requirements or, like I said, disruptors such as a pandemic. So if we would have had our modern technologies and platforms stood up and had that infrastructure and ecosystem, I think ... our response would’ve been much different than it was when we did that. That’s what really the 21st century health project, the Future of Public Health is building towards, standing those architectures and infrastructures and modern technologies up in a way that they are agile, scalable, responsive, and, I hate to say, future-proof, that we can refactor as needed. Because technology doesn’t stay stagnant, as we know. I don’t want my platform being the next mainframe or database.
IICA: How do you prefer to be contacted by vendors, including via social media such as LinkedIn? How might vendors best educate themselves before meeting with you?
Roussel: First, I want to say that I support all vendors and that I really love to build vendor relations, and that has helped us get as far as we are right now. I think LinkedIn or email is fine. I try and respond to all vendors that contact me. I don’t always do that, but I try. And the ones that normally give me the value-add, show me where they can do it, I will at least respond to. But if they’re going to contact me, they really need to do their homework first and understand what my business needs are, what services or capabilities they can help me with and meet those business needs. Because a lot of them cold-call me with like, “Hey, we do this,” and we’re already doing it. I need to know what the value-add for me is, why should I try and meet, how can we help each other? So it’s better for both parties. We don’t waste our time that way. If there is something where we’re interested, we can definitely do that.
IICA: In your tenure in this position, would you say you’re proudest of the work done during COVID-19?
Roussel: Yeah, 100 percent. I’ve worked with a lot of great departments and done a lot of great things, achievements and things like that, but nothing that had the impact and the ... consequences of failure that this did. Standing up and maturing those COVID-19 systems, the (digital vaccine record) DVR or DCVR, digital COVID vaccine record at the time, huge, huge things.
IICA: What has surprised you most this year in government technology?
Roussel: A couple things have surprised me. One is the support, visibility and attention given to the Department of Public Health, still, by our legislators and our control agencies. Allowing us, understanding that what we did during the pandemic was important and that they would like us to continue that work. That is hugely beneficial and important to me. And I just see that as amazing because it’s very easy as soon as a disruptor is over, to go back to status quo and refocus on things. Especially as we’re potentially coming into a downturn (in the) economic climate. They have been very supportive in the good work we’re doing and understand the value and benefit for the health and safety of Californians. The other thing I think that has surprised me is, the level of my staff has just risen because they believe in the mission and the vision. And I believe that we are changing the culture for the better within (the Information Technology Services Division) ITSD at CDPH. I got a lot of positions in the last few (budget change proposals) BCPs and I’m filling those positions because people want to come work here because they’re hearing it’s a good place to work culturally. And also that we’re doing innovative new things and that really is an attraction. I think that in all of us fighting for these resources, I’m surprised, and happily surprised, that we are getting the applicants and the quality level of applicants that we are getting today. I think that’s huge.
IICA: What are your hobbies and what do you enjoy reading?
Roussel: I have no time to read, and I try to read and I keep falling asleep, so that’s why I have four books that I haven’t finished. I’ll tell you which ones I’m reading. The first one I started reading, which I really like, is Jamie Susskind’s Future Politics. Really cool book. And I’m about halfway through it. The next book was recommended to me by my director, whom I love, Dr. Tomás J. Aragón. It’s Humility Is the New Smart by Edward D. Hess and Katherine Ludwig. And it’s a pretty good read and it really changes your thinking going forward. The next one is another one that my director recommended to me, and it’s been around for a while, but I never read it. It’s Measure What Matters by John Doerr, you know, the OKRs, objectives and key results. And this is a very interesting read. And the last one is The Scout Mindset by Julia Galef. I haven’t started that one, so that’s on my to-do reading list, so I can’t talk about that. And then I’m an avid mountain biker. I’ve been mountain biking for 30-plus years and I used to do endurance races. And then, we do a lot of hiking. We have a house up in South Lake Tahoe and we hike all over through there. We have pedal kayaks that we take out. And then, I just started getting my wife into golf, so we’re trying to, you know, look forward to our retirement. In a couple of years. But mountain biking, Wednesday nights, we have a local ride that we do, different places every Wednesday night. We normally ride on the weekends and I haven’t done as much in the last two years because of this job. But I was putting about 1,200 miles on a mountain bike in a year, which wasn’t an e-bike, by the way, just a regular pedal mountain bike. I’m not quite doing that now.
Editor’s note: This interview has been lightly edited for style and brevity.
State Public Health CIO: ‘Technology Doesn’t Stay Stagnant, as We Know’
