Two state judicial and health agencies are working on pilots that could significantly update information and data access at their respective departments.
The California Health and Human Services Agency (CHHS) is looking at streamlining data access and potentially unifying siloed resident information. The Judicial Council of California (JCC), the constitutional policymaking entity for the state judiciary, is more than seven months into a two-year initiative to improve the flow of data to assess inmate risk. Among the takeaways:
• With its Research Data Hub Pilot, CHHS hopes to do more in data sharing and record reconciliation, Data Architect David Sanabria told Techwire at the California Public Sector CIO Academy 2020. One goal, he said, is to “understand the problem space” around unifying resident information — including how it would impact those the agency serves.
“There’s no product. What we’re doing right now with the pilot is, we’re studying the provisioning aspect of it. So, how would we manage the data sets themselves in a confidential sense,” he said, noting that the department is very cognizant of the need to keep personally identifiable information safe and secure.
• The Hub, Sanabria said, will not be a data warehouse, but more of a place for departments that own data to put it “in escrow,” and “provision access” to researchers who request it. This, he said, could let vital data “be studied in a secure way,” while giving officials “much better flow management for the process overall.” Movement is deliberate, he added, “because the technology is not the problem.
“The problem is the social license: Can we; should we? Meaning counties, the public, other departments. Engaging across the state. And gaining that trust and then confirming it by actually using the data responsibly over time.”
• JCC got underway July 1 on the Pretrial Pilot Projects, funded by $75 million in General Fund monies over two years, for the “implementation, operation, and evaluation of programs or efforts in at least 10 courts related to pretrial decision-making,” according to the 2019-2020 Fiscal Year budget. (The same funding amount is listed as a “pending allocation” in Newsom’s new proposed FY 2020-2021 budget.) It’s preparation, JCC Chief Information Officer Heather Pettit said, was for the potential implementation of Senate Bill 10, signed by former Gov. Jerry Brown in August 2018 but successfully stayed by a referendum that will send the matter to voters in November.
• SB 10 would do away with the cash bail system in lieu of risk assessments that could lead to the release of low-risk inmates pending completion of their cases. The goal of the Pretrial Pilot Projects is improving “pretrial outcomes,” according to the budget. And one issue under scrutiny, Pettit told Techwire at the Academy, is determining how to give judges the timely information they’ll need to make those decisions on low-risk or high-risk inmates.
“What’s so wonderful about this is that judges previously ... wouldn’t get the information until the arraignment,” Pettit said. The pilot will give them “real, meaningful information to make determinations about these people” ahead of their day in court. Courts taking part in the pilot are expected to go live with an enhanced program within the next year. The CIO said they’ve been given a year to do so because “it’s a huge change in business operations.”
