It was quite evident this year at the State Capitol that technology is touching everyday society more than ever before. California lawmakers began to confront how drones, online revenge porn, the sharing economy, the Internet of Things and other emerging tech issues should be regulated. Hundreds of bills in some way related to technology rose and fell in Sacramento during the course of the year, the front end of the state’s two-year legislative session.
Looking back, one could argue it was a bill that didn’t make it — one on IT vendor performance — that showed that the state hasn’t escaped the shadow of big-ticket project troubles and its tendency to lag on innovation. The veto of AB 522, from first-time Assemblymember Autumn Burke, also indicates that the governor’s administration isn’t always in lockstep with a Legislature searching for more innovation in state government and more accountability when a big tech project fails.
It also resurfaced an age-old governance question: What can be achieved through policy versus what should be forced through statute?
Earlier this year it appeared that AB 522, requiring the state to build an assessment system to score the performance of vendors working on California’s most expensive IT projects, might get the governor’s signature without much fanfare or objection. As the year progressed, though, lobbyists for the technology industry pressed for substantial changes to the legislation; Burke agreed to the modifications, which centered on limiting the assessment to only large-scale projects reportable to the California Department of Technology. After all, Burke said it was her main objective all along to focus on high-dollar, riskier projects that are typically more prone to failure. But the change seemingly didn’t go far enough.
In September the tech coalition wrote to the governor that AB 522 “lacks clarity” and does not include needed details about how the assessment report would be used: “Should there be a less than positive grade assessed against a contractor, will that negative rating (or bad grade) remain on the contractor’s performance record for one year, five years — or 10 to 20 years?”
Lobbyists asked the governor for a veto, and a month later he obliged.
Brown said he didn’t sign AB 522 because it is duplicative of the Department of Technology’s effort already underway to build a vendor assessment system of its own. As of press time in November, few details had surfaced in recent months about the progress toward this goal, and some individuals close to the situation said they fear it’s stalled despite public assertions by the department that a system test will be coming in 2016. All the while, the state continues to deal with costly delays to off-the-rails projects, the latest being the California Medicaid Management Information System modernization, a $450 million lift a decade in the making.
When it comes to tech, Brown’s veto of AB 522 was not an outlier. For instance, he vetoed legislation that would’ve allowed the DMV to test a digital driver’s license that could be stored on a smartphone, as well as a trio of bills on drones that would have made new crimes for specific flying offenses. On the other hand, the governor did put his signature on a raft of bills on privacy protections for connected TVs, more cybersecurity audits for state agencies and data inventorying requirements for local governments.
“It’s difficult to know what the governor’s going to do on those issues because historically he’s not been as open to these technological advancements and obviously he’s very cost sensitive,” said Robb Korinke, an open data advocate who leads technology-focused government efforts for the nonprofit California Forward organization.
Korinke speculates that on issues like vendor performance, procurement and civil service reform, Brown didn’t sign AB 522 and related bills because perhaps he wants to give the California Government Operations Agency — and by extension, the Department of Technology beneath it — the latitude to solve issues internally before they are enshrined in statute.
Indeed, departments under GovOps might be doing just that: This year a bill from State Sen. Richard Pan that would’ve created a chief data officer for the state of California didn’t make it out of Appropriations. Nonetheless, a growing number of state departments are taking the initiative to launch their own open data portals — a bottom-up approach instead of a top-down mandate.
To Korinke’s surprise, Brown did sign two open data bills centered on local government: one from Assemblymember Brian Maienschein, AB 169, that defines open data and another, SB 272, from State Sen. Bob Hertzberg requiring local agencies to create a catalog of their data inventories and put it online.
“I think [SB 272] is an even bigger deal than what the innovation community is giving it credit for. You have something like 3,000 local agencies that are going to produce these catalogs and really provide a substantial road map where information is in the state,” Korinke said.
State officials also say a separate bill from Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin requiring the state to complete no fewer than 35 security assessments per year also could have a lasting impact. Irwin said the bill, AB 670, is “critical” and supports findings in a 2015 state audit that a majority of state agencies and departments aren’t fully complying with existing cybersecurity rules.
Andrea Deveau, executive director of California for the TechNet advocacy group, pointed to the creation of the Assembly Committee on Privacy and Consumer Protection and then a California technology caucus as bookend developments in 2015 that could portend more emphasis on the development of tech-related legislation in 2016.
The industry has supported the notion of a tech caucus for some time, Deveau said, and is hopeful the caucus will have informed discussions about relevant tech issues. Having a caucus to go to with champions who understand the issue or will ask the right questions is long overdue and will probably serve as a model for other states, Deveau added.
“It’s very clear that our policymakers in California understand that innovation and technology is a part of our future, so that’s a really good thing,” said Deveau. “All in all, I think the 2015 session was one that shined a good light on the innovation and technology sector, and in large part helped support what we are doing.”
This story appears in the Winter 2015 issue of Techwire magazine.
