‘We Make the Rules’: ODI Director Makes Appeal to Innovators

Office of Data and Innovation (ODI) Director Jeffery Marino had a clear message for public-sector attendees at the California Government Innovation Summit* last week: If the rules aren’t working, change them.

Marino wasn’t talking about the kind of rules that require us to pay taxes or smog our cars, but rather, the ones that stand firmly in the way of innovating the status quo in service of residents.

“Collectively, we make the rules, we can’t forget that. We make the rules, and if they’re getting in the way of serving Californians as best as we possibly can, then we can change it,” he told the crowd of policymakers, technologists and vendors. “Together, through collaboration and innovation, we can build a better government for California.”

In January, Marino was officially appointed to lead ODI by Gov. Gavin Newsom. ODI was initially established as the Office of Digital Innovation within the Government Operations Agency (GovOps) in 2019. In 2022, it was renamed the Office of Data and Innovation (CalData and Get Center merged), and in 2023 became an official standalone department. This July was ODI’s first anniversary.

“We are here to help close the gap between the needs of Californians and the services their government delivers,” he said of the agency. “We’re setting statewide standards for data use and service delivery, partnering with departments with hands-on projects to build better services, and then training statewide to put teams on a path of continuous improvement, collaboration and innovation.”

Marino got his start in state service as part of the COVID-19 response in May 2020, using his data analysis experience to help to answer some of the burning questions that the crisis created for the public and state leaders. That experience, he said, opened the collective floodgates around using existing resources in new and creative ways.

“This was a big data challenge. We had to get really creative, and we’re used to collecting and reporting on this other data,” he said.

Part of that creativity was using previously untapped data sets, like car-count data from the California Department of Transportation or insights gathered from public surveys on the popular Employment Development Department website.

“We were using real-time data to meet Californians where they were and improve the services we were delivering in a matter of days, not weeks, months, or years,” he said.

Marino also called on technologists to realign their priorities in favor of better, measurable outcomes, not just getting the job done cheaper and faster. This work, he said, takes new tools and an iterative approach to be successful.

*The California Government Innovation Summit is hosted by Government Technology, Industry Insider — California's sister publication.