California’s third-annual Open DataFest event convened about 200 experts on Monday at the Sacramento Convention Center for wide-ranging discussion about how to advance open data and data-driven decisionmaking within state and local government health programs.
The two-day conference, which continues Tuesday, is co-sponsored by the California Health Human Services Agency and the Stewards of Change Institute.
Here are a few observations and noteworthy developments mentioned during a panel discussion Monday morning featuring Socrata CEO Kevin Merritt; Stuart Drown, California Government Operations Agency deputy secretary for innovation and accountability; and Michael Wilkening, undersecretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency.
1. Drown shared statistics from 2014 data inventory suggesting California needs a common format for data sets and metadata. He said a survey done internally found 88 entities had more than 750 public data sets in 91 different formats. “It showed there’s a huge need for standardization and a way to make sure we could share these data sets – very, very serious problem with silos,” Drown said. Now, two years later in 2016, he’s leading an effort to create a new statewide open data portal for California that will federate and coalesce the state’s other existing data websites. He said the state will be launching a new opendata.ca.gov website this week.
2. The Government Operations Agency is taking steps to further develop open source apps created during a code-a-thon the agency hosted last year, Drown said. Within a newly launched “sandbox” space within the Department of Technology’s innovation lab, the agency is working on an application for sustainable fleet management, and another is creating tools to help state entities with green purchasing. Drown also mentioned that State Water Board is moving into open data, as the board will be posting very large data sets on water quality this week and is hosting a “deep dive” data event on Friday.
3. Wilkening said the California Health and Human Services Agency has partnered with the California Health Care Foundation and an organization called FuseCorps to pilot an innovation office approach in the agency. “We’re going to be launching some use cases, some proof of concept projects at the Department of Social Services and [California Department of] Public Health in the next month or so,” Wilkening said. “We expect those to show that focusing on the user experience and really changing the way we approach our work is going to lead to some really interesting and better outcomes.”
4. Wilkening added that a draft data use agreement is being developed among the 12 departments under the Health and Human Services Agency. “That’s going to allow the departments, rather than entering into really lengthy discussions about interagency agreements, instead they’ll have the general form of the data agreement already done, and then we’ll focus on the use cases and who has access to the data, why they need that data and how it’s going to be translated,” Wilkening said. The data agreement could lead to more secure data sharing between departments, he added.
5. All three panelists said they don’t expect to see California add much more dedicated funding for open data programs, at least in the near term. Instead, the Government Operations Agency and Health and Human Services are redirecting existing resources to pursue their open data initiatives. Merritt said the governments his company works with tend to head toward a self-funded model where funding efficiencies that open data help identify are put toward other open data efforts.
