• Governor’s team developing new 'Data Dividend' for Californians
• State will appoint new Commission on California’s Workforce & Future of Work
• Bullet train route focused on Merced to Bakersfield
Californians must build on landmark achievements in technology and privacy to harness the power inherent in residents’ data and create tech jobs, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday in his first State of the State address, delivered to a joint session of the California Legislature.
Technology wasn’t front and center in his remarks of roughly 45 minutes, delivered in the Assembly Chamber at the State Capitol. Newsom’s major topics ranged from population aging to affordable housing and clean water; innovation earned only one passing mention. But tech informed two of the governor’s larger areas of discussion.
Late in his speech, the governor specifically praised the Legislature for “passing the first-in-the-nation digital privacy law,” last year’s California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which former Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law in June 2018. Starting next year, the CCPA would do more to let residents know about collection of their personal information; whether it’s being sold and to whom; and give them the right to access that information — and decline its sale. But Newsom said in his first major remarks following his Jan. 7 inauguration that the state — which is proud to be home to tech companies intent on changing the world — must do more to secure and utilize residents’ data.
“But companies that make billions of dollars collecting, curating and monetizing our data have a duty to protect it. Consumers have a right to know and control how their data is being used,” Newsom said, highlighting the CCPA. “But California’s consumers should also be able to share in the wealth that is created from their data. And so I’ve asked my team to develop a proposal for a new Data Dividend for Californians, because we recognize that your data has value and it belongs to you.”
“We can do something bold in this space,” he added in a departure from his prepared remarks. The exact nature and thrust of the proposal remain unclear; Brian Ferguson, deputy director of public affairs for the governor, advised a reporter to “stay tuned.”
Acknowledging the ongoing need to staff technology jobs, Newsom said the state will appoint a new Commission on California’s Workforce & Future of Work, convening labor and business, public and private sector to originate new ideas to expand “worker opportunity without extinguishing innovation or flexibility.”
“California needs a comprehensive statewide strategy to uplift and upskill our workers, to ensure technological advances in AI, blockchain, big data are creating jobs, not destroying them, and to reform our institutions so that more workers have an ownership stake in their sweat equity,” the governor said.
Ferguson confirmed the commission would be entirely new and said: “He set a marker today and we’ll have more details to come.”
In a statement, Alice Scott-Rowe, communications deputy director at the California Department of Technology, said: “We are excited about the possibilities of the Governor’s proposals and look forward to discovering how we can support his initiatives that involve technology.”
In the five weeks since his inauguration, Newsom has devoted considerable attention to other aspects of state tech:
• Calling for the creation of a new Office of Digital Innovation in his proposed $209 billion 2019-2020 budget. It would be under the Government Operations Agency (GovOps), employ 50 people and have a startup budget of $36.2 million.
• Proposing a compulsory innovation academy for supervisors, managers and execs, also in the 2019-2020 budget. It’s unclear how this would play with CDT, which offers four academies including the Digital Services Innovation Academy begun in May.
• Directing the state to create Request for Innovative Ideas (RFI2), a “new flexible approach to procurement” that calls on innovators to design solutions to the state’s complex tech problems, rather than letting the state predefine the solution in the traditional RFP way.
• By executive order, ordering state agencies to “develop a new iterative procurement approach called an Innovation Procurement Sprint.”
Newsom broke with his two immediate predecessors during his address, former governors Brown and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and announced plans to shrink the route for state’s beleaguered bullet train significantly because “there simply isn’t a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to L.A.” California does, however, have the ability to build a high-speed rail link from Merced to Bakersfield, the governor said, indicating he’s not interested “in repeating the same old mistakes.”
“Today, I am ordering new transparency measures. We’re going to hold contractors and consultants accountable to explain how taxpayer dollars are spent — including change orders, cost overruns, even travel expenses. It’s going online for everybody to see,” Newsom said. His appointee as the next chairman of the High-Speed Rail Authority will be current Economic Development Director Lenny Mendonca, he said. The cost of the main rail line between San Francisco and Los Angeles has risen from $35 million in 2009 to $77.3 billion, the Sacramento Bee reported in December, citing CHSRA’s business plan.
In a statement, CHSRA CEO Brian Kelly acknowledged Newsom’s “priority on getting high-speed rail operating in the only region in which we have commenced construction — the Central Valley.”
“We are eager to meet this challenge and expand the project’s economic impact in the Central Valley. Importantly, he also reaffirmed our commitment to complete the environmental work statewide, to meet our ‘bookend’ investments in the Bay Area and Los Angeles and to pursue additional federal and private funding for future project expansion,” Kelly said.
The governor also diverged from Brown on the former’s plan, valued at $19 billion, to construct two “twin tunnels” beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to reconfigure north-south water delivery. Newsom threw his support behind a single tunnel, which would likely save the state billions of dollars, indicating “we can build on the important work that’s already been done.”
California’s Department of Motor Vehicles, which has come under increasing scrutiny following questions about its Motor Voter program — an initiative designed to automatically register all eligible DMV customers to vote unless they opted out, but which cast into doubt tens of thousands of Californians’ voter registration status and eligibility — rated only a passing mention during the State of the State.
As he wrapped his remarks, Newsom offered only a reference to “reimagining the DMV.”
Ferguson and Lynda Gledhill, California Government Operations Agency deputy secretary for communications, both referred Techwire to the governor’s Jan. 9 appointment of GovOps Secretary Marybel Batjer to head a DMV Reinvention Strike Team and lead “a comprehensive modernization and reinvention” of the DMV, making “recommendations for new long-term leadership and reform.”
“I’m assuming that’s kind of what he’s talking about there,” Gledhill said.
Techwire Managing Editor Dennis Noone contributed to this report.
