As part of Techwire’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.
David Graham is the inaugural chief innovation officer at the city of Carlsbad, a position he has held since November 2018. He was previously deputy chief operating officer at the city of San Diego from February 2011-November 2018. Graham has served as co-chair of the Innovation Executive Certificate Program in the Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard University since January 2019. He is also co-chair of the San Diego Regional Smart Cities Collaborative.
Techwire: As chief innovation officer of your organization, how do you describe your role; and how have the role and responsibilities of the CIO changed in recent years?
Graham: Well, the city of Carlsbad had the very first chief innovation officer in the San Diego region several years ago, and that position started with the idea that it would provide a citywide approach to continuous improvement, performance management, the whole idea of connected communities and seeing where ... the role of technology and human capital all intersect. That role, which is approximately about three, maybe four years old now, I had the honor of being the very first person hired in that role. And what we discovered as we were working through it, we created a connected-communities and inclusive connected-communities road map called Connected Carlsbad, which laid out some big goals for the city in how it addresses these questions around technology, data-driven decisions and the like. One of the things that we recognized, and it led to the development of the Innovation and Economic Development Department, of which I head up as the chief innovation officer, is that there’s this intersection between innovative companies, technology and the services that the city needs. And so ... at the beginning of 2020, we created the city’s Innovation and Economic Development Department, combining together the economic development parts of the city along with the innovation part, and the city’s first data science and business intelligence manager. So, effectively, the chief data officer. And again, in a role where the department looks across the entire city and works with all of the departments in achieving its major goals, that is the value that we really saw in having a department that could bring in innovative companies from our technology sector, that could look at citywide data and use that to pursue decision-making. In all these sorts of ways we were able to, I think, create this helicopter view of the city. And in doing so, there were a lot of insights that came from that. And many of those insights have led to the innovative decisions and decision-making that Carlsbad has taken ever since.
How have things changed? ... It wasn’t just finding and plugging in technology where it could potentially be useful, but how is that helping the city achieve its goals around things like inclusivity, equity, and how are we doing that with a lens that focuses on our most vulnerable populations? I think the second really was about the nature of work and how we needed to find ways to provide, especially during the pandemic, not just flexible ways of working but also providing more services to our residents regardless of whether we could be in person and physical or not. And so, we learned a lot of lessons through the pandemic that have developed services that we believe long-term, will remain digital, because they were able to be so impactful and be more inclusive of folks. When I look at our initial goals and role ... innovation is oftentimes thought of as being something that is very future-looking or using the newest technology, the coolest whiz-bangs, and that’s not what innovation means to us. Innovation means discovering insights, and those can come from data, those can come from talking to the community, those can come from talking to your departments and connecting that with value in the organization. So, how are we taking these insights and making actionable change based upon them? And I think that’s where it’s been important for us to move away from the idea of innovation being synonymous with technology and cool stuff and being more synonymous with identifying the opportunities and challenges and getting things done.
Techwire: How big a role do you personally play in writing your organization’s strategic plan?
Graham: My department and team play a significant role in writing the organization’s strategic plan, which we are currently in the middle of our City Council rule-setting and strategic planning process. One of the most important roles is being able to provide information, data, data visualization, analytics or evaluate projects and pursuits that the council may have and provide that information back to them. As a part of this council’s strategic plan, we’ll be launching our City Council dashboards so that they can stay up to date on the progress of the initiatives and projects that they find to be important and that are in the strategic plan. But we’re also, when you’re thinking about all the competing priorities, we’re helping to put some real meat on the bones around ‘What does it mean if we’re going to pursue something like digital inclusion? What does it mean when we’re talking about supporting small businesses and what does that look like?’ With all of our City Council goals and priorities, one of the current ones that we’re directly related to, in addition to our support from a data and analytics perspective, is economic vitality. And I’m not seeing many cities connect innovation and economic development, and I think that’s where the City Council goal of economic vitality is one where we are playing the lead strategic role in developing what that is and what that means. That’s not your usual ‘attracting the headquarters of this company or that company’ although we have major headquarters of companies here, whether it’s Viasat or whether it’s TaylorMade and Callaway Golf Co. It’s also not attracting that next big entertainment venue, although we have Legoland here in Carlsbad and we work very hard to support all the businesses that are here, and attract those that really fit in our ecosystem. Economic vitality means a holistic approach to supporting a vibrant economy. And that is talent and talent attraction ... that is partnerships with our universities to make sure that we’re connecting people with jobs. That is making sure that we support the efforts around housing and mobility that are absolutely crucial to a vibrant economy. And it’s having very close relationships with business organizations who help really be not just the early warning system, but our key connections with our employers whether large or small so that we’re addressing the challenges that they may face, not just around the city but around the region, around the country, the capital. We believe that economic development is a team sport and as such, we just as much rely on our businesses and business organizations as they rely on us.
Techwire: What big initiatives or projects are coming up? What sorts of RFPs should we be watching for in the next six to 12 months?
Graham: In our last budget cycle, we approved a Strategic Digital Transformation Investment Program (SDTIP), which is almost $30 million over the next five years of investment in technology. The unique thing about it is, it is not just another technology plan and it sits on a shelf, or that when, let’s say the city manager and IT director may move on at some point, that goes away as a priority. What we did is, we made it a part of the city’s annual budget process. So now, the City Council approves three things. They approve their operating budget, they approve their capital improvement programs – so, that’s things like building parks and roads and the like – but they also are approving the SDTIP. And that is effectively the CIP or capital program for technology. It’s not the ‘running things,’ it’s ‘What does the next five years look like on new initiatives, new projects, new programs, major replacements?’ And that is really where, if anybody wants to see what we’re going to be focused on over the next five years, they should go. And it really lives in five areas of our inclusive city innovation program. Which are pursuing communitywide digital transformation, building capacity for data-driven government, fostering a vibrant civic engagement culture, enhancing accessibility and transparency, and promoting safety and sustainability through connectivity. So what’s that look like as it relates to potential RFPs? Well, one, we’re continuing to expand our digital information network the city has built using 90 percent third-party fiber, its own high-speed fiber network. We’re connecting up things like our traffic signal network and continue to add onto that. We now have our own run fiber network that the city is able to have control of. It also means big investments in our data scheme and systems. The city adopted a citywide management and governance policy for data. So, we’re continuing to build our data lake, tools for analytics. And that’s a really important part for us, too. We’re also moving down the road on an enterprise asset management system, which is obviously a significant undertaking. And then one of the key elements of what we’re doing in one of the projects in the SDTIP is the consolidation and the updating of our core systems. So, when you think about your core systems like HR (human resources), finance, stuff that might usually be part of an ERP (enterprise resource planning system), we’re looking at an evaluation on how to consolidate those systems and make sure that we’re getting the best impact from them. Those are some of the major areas that I think people are looking to and that I think you may see coming out in the near future.
Techwire: What term or phrase do you use to refer to what many call “digital transformation?” How far along is your organization in that process and how will you know when it's finished?
Graham: For us, digital transformation is a continuous process. It’s not saying, ‘Here is our status quo of manual processes and programs, etc., and we need to convert 85 percent of those to digital and what’s our steps in getting there,’ right? Because part of what gets lost if you take that approach is all of the other digital systems that need to be upgraded, consolidated, refreshed. And so, we don’t look at it as taking on a static project. We look at digital transformation as a continuous improvement process where we, one, look at our legacy systems and look to consolidate, upgrade and improve those; two, look at existing manual processes or analog processes that could benefit from a digital approach; and three, how can we improve our analog and manual processes that should remain such? ... There are things in the physical environment and even physical and manual processes that should remain, but digital transformation is saying, ‘What should we be transforming and applying technology and digital approaches to, to provide better service to the public and improved operations?’ That will always be an ongoing process, and as far as how far along we’re at, I’ll tell you that the SDTIP that I mentioned before, I think gets us pretty significantly along the way to about three-quarters of what we would say needed to get done in the near future.
Techwire: What is your estimated IT budget and how many employees do you have? What is the overall budget?
Graham: We have roughly 40 IT employees. We now have the GIS people; we have roughly eight people on my team, and I think we have ... not including the capital improvement program, roughly a $380 million budget.
Techwire: 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?
Graham: I mean, the first thing to do is, read through the city budget and the SDTIP, which is part of the budget. I’ve been working with local government on the public and private side for over 20 years; if you want to know what a city cares about, read the budget. As much as I love mayors and their states of the city speeches or what the city council members say or the city manager says, if you want to know what priorities really are, go to the budget. And as far as contacting me, I’m comfortable with all methods, email, LinkedIn, etc. All those are fine.
Techwire: In your tenure in this position, which project or achievement are you most proud of?
Graham: You know there’s really three, so take your pick. If I think about the future, it is leading the development of our SDTIP along with a couple of other departments. But putting the thinking behind it to say, ‘Let’s make sure this is something that is embedded in what we do as a government, and it’s constantly updated’ is a big change ... – because I’ve seen around the country, where cities will have fits and starts around technology based on priorities, personalities and politics. I think the SDTIP is pretty groundbreaking from a long-term perspective. In the near term, I will say that what we were able to do with COVID-19 response to support our businesses, to move 60 percent of the workforce remote, to launch a ... long-term remote work policy, so not just during COVID-19, but long term; and to set up the digital systems to make that happen. For example, a digital portal for your telecommute map; a vaccination survey that was done digitally; a GIS map that helped tell people what businesses were open when we had the shutdowns here. The use of technology during COVID-19 is one of my most proud achievements. And then finally, I think for the long-term operations, it’s the passage of a citywide data governance and management policy. Because that is going to be really the lifeblood of decision-making for the long term and really empowering our residents and our visitors with valuable information to enjoy Carlsbad and get stuff done. When I look at cities – and I’ve worked with cities all over the country – we talk about data policies, and there was a good open data movement that happened for a while, but as far as examples of a citywide data governance policy that everybody adheres to that’s approved by every single level of government, they are very few and far between.
Techwire: If you could change one thing about IT procurement, what would it be?
Graham: I guess I’ll speak of procurement in general because the way a lot of our procurement is set up is little better than a blind dating experience. ... I’ve worked in the area of more agile procurement as well. In fact, we launched an RFQ (request for qualifications) for innovative partners and programs a while back ... and that ended up qualifying about 30 companies that we can tap at any point in time, and we were able to get to know more about them before qualifying them. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t other companies that we can work with, but that was a really helpful experience where we put out broad ideas and broad challenges and we could really bring the market to bear as to what our challenges are. If I were to say one thing to change (from) the IT procurement standpoint, it’s to take a more challenge-based approach to procurement than just the mere purchase of goods and services. And to understand the changing nature of technology that doesn’t necessarily respond to a static RFP process. Ultimately, it’s about creating good value on both ends. If a city gets a vendor that slides in with the cheapest bid but a bunch of add-ons, that’s no good for anybody. And on the other side, if the city makes things so rigid that effectively they can’t get their value from the contract or from the service because they bid for Version 5.0 and by the time they actually acquire it, the company’s on Version 10.0 and the only way to get to 10.0 is a new RFP, that wastes everyone’s time and money. I think we need to bring a new approach to the one question. We always talk about IT procurement, but what are we trying to do here? We’re trying to match up vendors with the goods and services that a city wants and needs at a fair price. If we start a procurement with that, making sure that there’s all the checks and balances and ethical protections, I think we might have a very different procurement process for technology.
Techwire: What do you read to stay abreast of developments in the govtech/SLED sector?
Graham: Everything. Whatever is coming across. Of course, Government Technology*, Techwire, any of the tech-related publications. I will say that because of relationships with a number of universities, I can rely on them. (The) University of California, San Diego, I talk to those folks about what’s coming down in that particular space. But I do really appreciate the resources that are public sector-focused related to technology and I find those to be really valuable.
Techwire: What are your hobbies, and what do you enjoy reading?
Graham: I’m a theme park dad with my 4-year-old and 6-year-old, so basically, a park hunter. All the best theme parks, all the best places for two little kids to play. But in all honesty, in addition to that, I love cooking and I’m a competitive chef. I have some cooking competitions with my mom and such, so if I’m cooking or outdoors with the boys, I’m a happy man.
*Government Technology magazine is a publication of e.Republic, which also produces Techwire.
Editor’s note: This interview has been lightly edited for style and brevity.
Techwire One-on-One: Carlsbad Innovation Chief on Transformation Investment
