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Alpha Product Owner Now Part of Coronavirus Digital Response Team

Angelica B. Quirarte, assistant secretary for digital engagement for the California Government Operations Agency, told The Washington Post she’s part of what the newspaper called “a specialized digital team” tasked with launching “a coronavirus rapid response website.” She previously led the Alpha.ca.gov project to reinvent the state's website; it wrapped March 4.

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At least one member of the 11-person team that spent the last three months reinventing Ca.gov, the state website, may have found her next assignment — as part of California’s response to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).

Angelica B. Quirarte, assistant secretary for digital engagement for the California Government Operations Agency (GovOps), confirmed to The Washington Post she’s part of what the newspaper called “a specialized digital team” tasked with launching “a coronavirus rapid response website.”

“Our task is to try to make sense of all the complex information that’s been presented to the public and turn it into an easier-to-consume format,” Quirarte told The Post on Friday, adding the website is expected to launch this week. Quirarte, the product owner and leader of the Alpha.ca.gov project, which wrapped March 4, also said she’d spoken to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative about “how their team could help develop content” for the website, according to The Post, and identify search trends. The company, owned by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, is focused on finding new ways to leverage technology and community-based solutions to speed up progress in science and technology.

Michael Wilkening, special adviser on Innovation and Digital Services in the Office of the Governor and one of Alpha’s three executive sponsors, told The Post the issue centers on “… really, how do we engage people with their government? And how do we rethink our way of doing business.” That’s not unlike the mission of Alpha, which began Dec. 2 and completely redesigned at least 17 state processes — from applying for unemployment to checking local water quality to requesting a copy of a birth certificate.

It’s not yet clear who else may have joined the new team. Along with Quirarte, Alpha included California Department of Technology staffer Artem Khomishen, its interaction designer; and Luke Fretwell, its project designer and CEO of Oakland-based ProudCity.

At the open house marking the end of Alpha’s initial sprint, Wilkening told the audience that the Alpha team would likely “really reflect on what we’ve done and what we’ve learned from it, how to scale it, what’s next, how to move this into a beta, what does a beta team look like, what does beta itself look like.”

Chaeny Emanavin, director of the California Health and Human Services Agency’s Office of Innovation, praised the Alpha team’s working style as “highly aligned, loosely coupled” in a conversation with Techwire that day. It's a stance that may have enabled Quirarte and others to quickly pivot to a focus on the coronavirus.