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Agency Touts Progress in Data Innovation, Governance

“This is not a normal government activity. This is a big deal.”

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Top leaders in the California Health and Human Services Agency (CHHS) gathered with colleagues in person and electronically Wednesday for the gigantic agency’s fourth annual Data Expo — one that again finds it at the forefront of government IT in some key ways.

Speakers included Michael Wilkening, who was CHHS secretary until Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed him to be special adviser on Innovation and Digital Services in the Office of the Governor. Wilkening’s successor as CHHS secretary is Dr. Mark Ghaly. And overseeing IT for CHHS, Agency Information Officer Adam Dondro offered some perspective on the gathering, which was streamed live on YouTube.

“This is not a normal government activity,” Dondro told attendees. “This is a big deal.”

In an agency that contains 12 departments, 30,000-plus employees and an annual budget of $160 million, everything is by definition a big deal. Wilkening, in his remarks, talked about how transformative the last four years have been, under his watch first as undersecretary and then secretary and now as a special adviser to Newsom.

“Just over four years ago, we launched the open data portal,” he said, noting that the portal has grown from hosting just a couple of data sets to more than 320 data sets today.

When the data portal was first rolled out, Wilkening recalled, “I was incredibly engaged” — but he didn’t support the initiative until he came to understand its purpose and its value to Californians.

“The technology part of this really isn’t the difficult part,” Wilkening told his audience. “Sure, some of these systems are incredibly complex and they’re difficult to do. But it’s the policies and politics that are always the most difficult part of these transformations. But if we focus on the clients, it all becomes clear. …”

Wilkening noted that CHHS has driven much of the progress in California’s IT governance and practice: “From open data and governance, we’ve done procurement reform with Child Welfare Digital Services. … We changed from waterfall to an agile, modular approach,” of which CWDS was in the vanguard.

The current CHHS secretary, Ghaly, drew a medical analogy to the growth of data and how his agency applies and appreciates it: “It’s like a bad infectious disease. It’s a little bit of an outbreak on data, and that’s super-exciting.”  

The career physician said that in thinking about data, it’s a question of “How do we not just share it, but how do we think about it across our departments? And not just how do we think about it, for thinking about its sake, or writing a paper … but how does it actually inform what we’re going to do different next year, and what are we going to do different for that coming budget request, or how do we want to change the configuration of our intake form to allow it to really translate into something meaningful, whether it’s Medicaid or CalFresh. …

“Data has power and is really a tool for change, and learning is so powerful.”

Ghaly laid out the strategic priorities for CHHS:

  • Building a healthy California for all. “We can do things with our data to really set trends for the rest of the market.”
  • Integration of health care and human services: “We’re forcing down the (departmental) silos — hopefully not with a lot of force, but with a lot of encouragement … to come together and really think differently about our work.” To that end, he challenged CHHS staff to think differently about their work: “’What can I do within my own division or my own department differently?’ I challenge you to take that next question on, which is, ‘What do I do across this agency, and frankly, across the state?’”
  • Building programs “that really lift up our most vulnerable.” Ghaly cited challenges such as homelessness, mental illness and incarceration: “Every day, we’re getting tons of data,” he said, “and we have a responsibility to use it to create real-lfe plans and supports for people … in some of the hardest and toughest situations once can imagine.”
And Ghaly told CHHS staffers to be proud, citing “the amazing successes we’ve already had, some incredible work that’s been done because of your energy and on the backs of you and other leaders across the agency.”  

But merely gathering and organizing data points is meaningless if that’s where it ends, he said.

“Data has to turn into action: If you walk away from a data set and you haven’t thought about how its analysis is going to change what we do, and whether it should change what we do, I think we’re really missing the final punchline.”

Ghaly also addressed a key challenge for those who work with individuals’ most sensitive data: “What are the typical barriers? How do we navigate certain regulations and rules around sharing data?”

Finally, he asserted that the transformation of how CHHS is using in just a year has been, for him, head-spinning.

“Man, I wish I had this information a year ago,” Ghaly said, “when I spent tons of time and tons of money trying to figure out how to link justice and health data, when the answer was in this little office up in Sacramento. There’s so much that can change the way the state does business, and it starts here.”

Dennis Noone is Executive Editor of Industry Insider. He is a career journalist, having worked at small-town newspapers and major metropolitan dailies including USA Today in Washington, D.C.