Agency Creates Data Leader Role to Oversee Governance, Legacy Issues

One of the highest-profile agencies in state government is recruiting to fill a new position: Chief Data Officer.

The beleaguered Department of Motor Vehicles — swamped by demand for federally mandated Real ID and buffeted by complaints of long lines at DMV offices and errors in the Motor Voter program — has embarked on a transformation initiated by Gov. Gavin Newsom shortly after he took office in January. That transformation has included an assessment by a DMV Strike Force, led by former Government Operations Agency Secretary Marybel Batjer (now president of the California Public Utilities Commission), that recommended sweeping changes. One of those changes was the appointment by Newsom of veteran IT executive Steve Gordon as the new DMV director to succeed longtime chief Jean Shiomoto, who retired in December.

Among the challenges the agency faces is using legacy technology, some of which is 30 years old. The creation of this new position addresses that issue directly.

The new CDO “determines DMV’s use of new, existing and legacy information assets and when and how to retire such assets by creating policies and controls for the appropriate protection of enterprise data assets through a defined life cycle, from acquisition or creation to end-of-life destruction and disposal procedures through the governance program and its stakeholders,” says the job posting.

The CDO job description also points to a new focus on using data to drive the department’s mission. The new CDO will be charged with “envisioning data-enabled strategies and enabling all forms of business outcomes through analytics; data and analytics governance and enterprise information policy; accountability for analytics governance, business outcome enablement, and oversight and implementation of key data and analytic initiatives based on enterprise-wide data collected in the normal course of state business to improve transparency, efficiency, and accountability of DMV operations.”

Specifically, the new CDO will be responsible for creating and running a data governance program; assuring adherence to the department’s data and analytics strategy; enabling and encouraging programs and other state agencies to share data on common issues; compiling and using data to improve program performance; and broadening open data offerings to “empower citizens and to enable better government and services.”   

The DMV has already implemented some of the task force’s key recommendations. It now accepts credit and debit cards for online transactions; it’s held a half-day agency-wide training session to introduce a renewed emphasis among employees toward customer service; and it’s opened some self-serve kiosks, with more to come as a way to ease in-person traffic at DMV offices.