Bill Kehoe is the chief information officer for the county of Los Angeles, the nation’s most populous county, with more than 10 million residents. A 20-year career CIO, who was most recently CIO for King County, Wash., for more than seven years, Kehoe joined Los Angeles County in November 2017. Prior to King County, he was CIO for Washington's Department of Licensing for more than eight years. Since Kehoe joined L.A. County, the agency has worked to expand and enhance its open data platform; has examined digital asset management in the cloud; and has begun building a new IT headquarters.
Kehoe holds a bachelor’s of science in electrical and electronics engineering from Gonzaga University. He’s a regular speaker at Techwire and Center for Digital Government* events, including Techwire Industry Briefings — and next month’s “Beyond the Beltway.” His hobbies include bicycling, golf and cooking.
Techwire: As CIO of your organization, how do you describe your role; and how have the role and responsibilities of the CIO changed in recent years?
Kehoe: The role of the L.A. County Office of the CIO, I think, is fairly unique. We do not have any operational responsibility. We are able to, and are responsible for, focusing on strategy, policy; we’re responsible for enterprise IT governance, which is a large responsibility in the county. And we put in place a model that … brings together technology leaders from across the county, but also business leaders as well as security professionals; a data information management model component; and also an NIT investment component. So, it’s a pretty large responsibility to bring all these — and really important in a federated environment as large as L.A. County. We have responsibility for security, not security operations but, again, security strategy, policy, timelines, incident response and so on. Information management responsibilities; and then we provide strategic consulting to all 37 departments, helping them with everything from board letters to contracts, strategic planning, budget requests, enterprise projects, etc. And then we also support key initiatives … that the CEO and the board are enacting, like the Alternatives to Incarceration (ATI), the Justice Metrics Framework, the Homeless Initiative — we support those programs as well. A very strategic role, I would say, for my position as CIO and for our Office of the CIO.
I would say also in terms of the role of the CIO and how that’s changed … I’ve been a CIO for 19 years at the state level, at a state department, at the local government level at King County and now at L.A. County and I’ve really seen a dramatic change in the role of the CIO. From more of a technology-focused, technology operational position focus to much more of a strategic partner-business broker, if you will, with departments and agencies. It’s really important that the role now understands what the business needs, where the business is going from a strategic perspective, and then how technology can enable that business transformation and further the progress on the business goals. That’s a role that is critical, I think, for anyone that is in the CIO position and anyone that wants to get into the CIO position; it’s much more of a business-focused role, as it should be now, and much less of a technology-focused position.
Techwire: How big a role do you personally play in writing your organization’s strategic plan?
Kehoe: The strategic plan, if we’re talking about the Enterprise Technology Strategic Plan, this is the county’s strategic plan. Myself, I play a critical role in that and have a huge responsibility to not just develop that plan but to execute that plan. But for our Office of the CIO, that’s one of our main missions, if you will, is to put that plan in place. When I came in in 2017-2018, one of the first things I did was take a look at the existing plan, and see that it was lacking, both in content and it just wasn’t a dynamic, action-oriented plan at the time. We quickly put together an IT strategic planning effort and we put that together very quickly with a very agile framework. And then in a very short amount of time we were able to produce what I would call a very dynamic actionable plan that aligned with the county and department strategic goals.
We have five goals. We have goal teams that have department directors that are sponsoring the goal teams; we have business and IT representatives. We put the plan together not in a vacuum within the Office of the CIO but we gathered business and technology leaders from all 37 departments, had a discussion about common themes and ideas about how technology could help the county where we had gaps and how technology could enhance the strategic goals that departments have and the county had. We came up with five strategic goals and now we’re driving those goals forward with objectives and measures and initiatives and measuring progress. I’m very proud of this. … This is one of the things that I’m most proud of, is that we were able to put together not just a plan, not just a document, but we were able to make that actionable. And we have teams now that are working and meeting on a regular basis, providing initiatives and measuring progress in each of the goals.
Techwire: What big initiatives or projects are coming in 2021? What sorts of RFPs should we be watching for in the next six to 12 months?
Kehoe: Well, considering we’re on the strategic arm, there’s our operational side of the house — I can’t speak for our departments that have their own IT shops; I don’t have that full breadth of knowledge there. I will just say from a high level without getting too specific, obviously, there’s a lot of work that’s going on in response to COVID and the vaccines and the vaccine distribution and administration. Technology has to be a huge enabler to that. Also the data-related activities around COVID, the reporting, digital management piece and the accuracy of that, whether it’s available hospital beds or new cases on a daily basis, deaths, whatever it may be … pulling in that data from the various hospitals and clinics and other areas.
Aggregating on a daily basis and ensuring the accuracy is a huge task for our health departments. We’re embarking on a digital divide strategic plan so there may be some activities there that our strategic partners can help us with. That’s a huge undertaking that we believe is overdue. And we’re going to be reaching out to the state and other jurisdictions around California and the country, really, to see what activities and best practices are out there that we could utilize and come up with both short-term and long-term strategies around closing the digital divide, which has really been a problem as students and our residents are working from home and those households that don’t have broadband access or devices.
We also have a program that was launched, ATI, and there are many projects potentially coming out of that program, one being a bed availability application that we’re now developing requirements for, so that could be a potential RFP in the future. And then, we’re doing a lot, obviously, around improving our security posture with our security operations, which is managed by our Internal Services Department. We’re moving more towards an enterprise approach in several areas around security, so that we have a more proactive, transparent security profile and philosophy. Things like identity, security around our identity, our vulnerability management, our endpoint security, etc. Those are all areas we’re constantly looking to shore up. And then our office, our security program and our CISO works with ISD and the other departments to put common directives and policies in place around security.
There’s still a lot to do about improving our remote work experience for our employees. That’s a never-ending effort, and there are a lot of opportunities for business process automation improvements in a lot of our business processes that were manual or required paper. And we’re scrambling to ensure that we digitize as much as we can and that we have automated workflows in place, e-signature and things like that. I see that as an area of opportunity as more of our employees are working remote; and that the new normal that we define is really about probably staying remote, at least to be more of a hybrid environment. And then making sure that we have modern business processes to support employees, so they can perform their work in the most efficient manner. We have some legacy systems that are going through a modernization and that will, I’m sure, be put out to the vendor community to bid on. Meaning, really looking for cloud, SaaS systems that can meet the requirements that we have. And a big area of emphasis is improving our data analytics capabilities, platforms and tools. And then supporting our programs like the Homeless Initiative, looking for opportunities where technology can assist in that area. I think we all know that homelessness, especially during COVID, is a real problem in L.A.
Techwire: How do you define “digital transformation,” and how far along is your organization in that process? How will you know when it's finished?
Kehoe: I would say just very simply that digital transformation, to me, is solving business problems using technology as an enabler. I don’t want ‘digital transformation’ to be a buzzword that doesn’t have any action behind it. But the big action that I see is, we need to partner with a business as a technology strategic partner … and understand what their problems are and how they can use technology to solve those problems. That’s a definition that I like around digital transformation. I also think that another component of this is that we need to build a culture in the county where we have continued assessment of the services we provide, both to our employees internally and to the public, and look to transform those services using technology as an enabler so that we continually improve, streamline, automate and provide greater awareness of the services our employees and residents need. That should be a cultural thing that never ends, and building in that continued assessment, and where we need to make adjustments or changes to the services we provide the public; where the public may be having gaps in terms of their awareness or their ability to enroll or understand the eligibility to receive those critical services that they need, is really important to us. We’re here to serve our residents and if we’re not doing that, in that we have outdated services or services that really need to be transformed, then we’re not serving the public in the way that we should. I think this is a big area for us that you can call it ‘digital transformation,’ you can call it ‘service transformation,’ you can call it anything you want. But building that culture of continued assessment of ‘These are the services we’re providing, how are we doing,’ getting that feedback, making those adjustments, using technology to enable change, that’s really important. It never stops, and if we do stop then we’re in trouble.
Everything that I do now from my position needs to be actionable and needs to be understood by our business partners. And if it’s not, then we need to define and change the way we’re communicating.
Techwire: What is your estimated IT budget and how many employees do you have? What is the overall budget?
Kehoe: This is a tough one for me to answer really because … from the Office of the CIO, we’re a small organization. We only have, I think, 27 positions. Our mission is vast, but we don’t have a lot of staff. It’s estimated that the county overall has over 4,000 IT employees, and then each of the departments have their IT budgets buried within that department. So, in terms of an overall county IT budget, I think that’s something we’re trying to get our arms around. We don’t really have a good number there. We do know that the county itself has a budget of anywhere from $32 billion to $33 billion, operational budget. IT falls within that. As you know, we’re entering into a budget season that’s going to be very, very difficult. Revenues are down, the county budget overall in terms of funding new initiatives is going to be very difficult, so we’re really going to have to get innovative in our approach to technology projects. What I like to say is, don’t use budget as an excuse not to do anything. One of the phrases that I don’t like to use and I hate to hear is ‘We just need to keep the trains running,’ because I think when you’re in a budget crisis or you’re in a pandemic, you actually need to take more actions in terms of getting innovative, looking for efficiencies and doing what you can with what you have. The worst thing you can do is stand pat for years waiting things out. That’s when you lose opportunity. There’s not a lot of new budget money coming in. We know that. But there’s opportunity to do some great things, maybe, that don’t require a lot of budget but are more innovative in nature. And then work with our strategic partners, our vendor community, to have them help us in new ways, maybe, that are different than the large multimillion-dollar, multi-year IT projects that governments have had in the past. That’s exciting to me and the way to kind of transform the relationship and the culture of how we work with our IT vendors.
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?
Kehoe: You can imagine that this is a tough one for me because I can tell you that on a daily basis, I get a lot of emails from vendors. And then some phone calls as well, and there’s no way that I can respond to those, no way I can take all those calls. It’s difficult. But I am active on LinkedIn, and there are times when I will get inquiries over LinkedIn and if I can and if I’m interested, I’ll try to respond there. Twitter as well. Social media’s a good outlet, I think, for those initial introductions, which is kind of new. And I still look at the emails and if it’s something that I’m interested in, I may on occasion reach out or have my staff reach out. But what we usually do is, we reach vendors because of an initiative or a project or some education that we might need around a certain technology or advancements in technology. I find that webinars are increasingly important … . Vendor forums, when we were able to meet in person, were great. Now, it’s all virtual which — some of the e.Republic events like the L.A. Digital Government Summit are now virtual, but I still find those beneficial and that’s where you can start to establish some relationships with vendors and learn from them, so I really like that opportunity. It’s better in person, but it’s still beneficial. And then when I do meet with any of our vendors, I always like to know that they’ve done their homework, they’ve gone to our website, they’ve read our strategic plan, they understand where we are technology-wise with our footprint and they come in with solutions in how they can fit and enhance what we have — versus a rip-and-replace-type strategy, where that’s very difficult or impossible to do. Those are the most productive meetings that I have.
Techwire: In your tenure in this position, which project or achievement are you most proud of?
Kehoe: There’s several but the CIO position is just — we’re in a leadership role, so … any achievement is usually done with our teams and multiple people … around the county that want to engage and like the strategy we’re putting in place, whether that’s governance or our strategic goals.
The CIO position is really one of leadership and strategy and then partnering across the county and within our teams, to drive things forward via projects or initiatives. It’s not so much what I’m proud of as much as some of the things that I see that the county has done that I’m very proud of. The first one being the strategic plan and the fact that we have active goal teams driving that plan forward, I’m very proud of that. Partnering with our Homeless Initiative — we had an RFP that was very innovative in nature that we issued out that resulted in four short-term, heavy-hitting in terms of impact, innovation projects that we’re working on. I felt that was very successful and showed a great partnership in a critical area around homelessness. The successful implementation of our enterprise IT governance process, I’m proud of and the engagement we have from across the county from our business leaders and our IT leaders and our budget leaders in that process and our security folks as well. Improvements we’ve made in our security program, in governance operations across the department; the way that our departments are working together to improve security rather than from a siloed approach. I think that we’ve made a lot of progress in that area. Obviously, never enough but — progress. And … in our office, we’ve established an analytics center of excellence. And we have a high-performing team of researchers and data scientists that are working on very complex projects and really focusing more on outcomes and how effective services may be whether that be around the justice community, the health community — a very, very impressive group of folks that are doing tremendous things and have been really valuable during the COVID pandemic.
And then also, working across the county with departments, helping departments with their strategic IT initiatives, helping them move forward, collaborating with the CIOs in those departments and then seeing the progress they made … I’m really proud of that. And proud of them and how they’re helping their departments move forward with technology, and how they’re contributing to the enterprise effort.
Techwire: If you could change one thing about IT procurement, what would it be?
Kehoe: Well, I think my biggest thing with procurement is, we have to follow rules, there are definitely rules and regulations we have to follow with procurement, so it’s not as simple as saying, ‘Well, things are way too slow, and we need to streamline everything.’ We have rules and boundaries and regulations and goal posts we have to adhere to. That’s just the way it is. Given that, what can we do within those boundaries to make the procurement process better for not just the county, but also our partners that are responding to these procurements? One of the things that I’d like to see, and we did this with our Homeless Initiative technology and innovation challenges, I’d like us to be less prescriptive in our requirements and allow for industry partners to innovate around the challenges that we present them. That proved to be very fruitful in our Homeless Initiative tech innovation challenge because it allowed them to get their heads around an area that we didn’t describe with ‘Here’s our 100 requirements that you have to adhere to.’ It was more about ‘Here’s a challenge area for us around homelessness. What can you do and what … solutions can you bring to the table to help us meet these challenges?’ It was just great to see the response to that, and there were companies that really brought their teams together and innovated within their companies to respond to that RFP. I just think that’s how we can do things in the future, where it’s less about taking nine to 12 months to develop an RFP, three to four … months to select a vendor and get the project in place. We just don’t have time for that like we’ve done in the past. I’d like to see more innovation around procurement, really engaging our industry partners in new ways to innovate around the challenges that government has.
Techwire: What do you read to stay abreast of developments in the gov tech/SLED sector?
Kehoe: Well, I’ve got to tell you I read Government Technology* magazine, right? I’ve always enjoyed and got a lot out of that. You read about a lot of things that are very relevant to the jurisdiction you’re in. Whether you’re a large jurisdiction or small, you read about colleagues that you’ve gotten to know around the country and what they’re up to. And then there’s great articles around new and emerging technology, whether it be AI or data-related projects or blockchain. That’s a short read but it’s very impactful. I would say that the professional organizations I’m in provide a lot of opportunity to learn what other people are doing around common issues. Those are very powerful; I’ve always had that in my CIO career. And then social media as well. LinkedIn is big today, whether it be a blog or articles that people post. I try to stay on LinkedIn on a daily basis to learn from others and see what others are doing there. And there’s always the organizations that we have, whether it be Info-Tech Research Group, Gartner and the research that’s available there. You don’t have a lot of time in my position to read long articles or even an entire book on something. It would be nice, but I usually look for hard-hitting snippets, whether it be a few pages or something on the Internet or social media to get that information. Our industry partners are a great source of education. Whenever I meet with them or we have vendor forums or digital summits, just hearing how they’re going about things in their own organization and how they’re applying technology and what they’re doing in other jurisdictions that’s very important.
Techwire: What are your hobbies, and what do you enjoy reading?
Kehoe: Well, you know, the CIO role has never been a role that you just can put in your eight hours and that’s it, and then you have all this free time. So, work-life balance, at least for me, has always been a challenge in my 19 years in the role. But it’s a role I really enjoy and love, so it hasn’t been a bad thing. But I think you struggle with trying to balance that with your family time and time with your hobbies. Hobbies tend to take a backseat, but I will say that I am a sports fanatic and coming to L.A. has been tremendous for me being a sports fan. Especially with the Lakers and the Dodgers winning the championship. And before COVID hit, being able to go to games, that was a high point. I really enjoyed that. I just bought a bike, so I’m taking up biking, and I’ve had some folks in the office guiding me along the way. And then I’ve always been a golfer, so when I can, I get out and golf. I like to read things that are outside of technology — fiction; I like history; I like to read about leadership so I can always learn from the great leaders and hopefully apply some of that, so I can continue to improve my leadership. I enjoy reading about investing; it’s another one of my hobbies. And then, of course, family time with my adult kids and grandkids is always the top priority when I can do that.
Editor’s note: This interview has been lightly edited for style and brevity.
*The Center for Digital Government and Government Technology magazine are part of e.Republic, parent company of Techwire.
