During remarks Tuesday at the virtual “State of Gov Tech 2021,” San Jose Chief Information Officer Rob Lloyd discussed how preparation helped the city handle the swift reality of remote work – and how revisiting its IT strategic plan will help it map what happens next. The event continues Wednesday. Among the takeaways:
- The pandemic made two things clear to officials of the city of more than 1 million: It demonstrated how important it was for them to take care of their community – and how important it was to take care of their people. San Jose had been working to carry out its existing strategic plan since 2017, and those investments meant it was largely ready to make its workforce mobile and to use the data on “being equity-focused” to respond. The issue in the pandemic’s recovery stage, Lloyd said, will be what happens next and how state and local governments and the private sector will continue to collaborate.
“... As we get to the recovery piece, not just the response to the disaster ... we’re going to have some transformational questions ahead of us, and that’s going to demand of us that we change a lot of things,” Lloyd said, noting city officials have said they “can’t leave anyone behind” in terms of access to services, connectivity and inclusion. - During the pandemic, the city was able to break down silos not just within its structure but with vendors, nonprofits, community-based organizations and other partners. Its Emergency Operations Center played a key role by enabling officials to convene and focus on the problems at hand. “We made it a team sport. I think the most powerful thing that we can probably take from this past year and a half is the lessons we learned on how to work together,” Lloyd said, emphasizing that larger issues like housing, homelessness, blight, and digital inclusion and equity are bigger than a single local government. The CIO praised vendor partners including Google, Verily, Splunk, Oracle and Facebook for their assistance on issues including testing, vaccinations and broadband availability.
- Creating or updating an IT strategic plan can be instructive and relationship-building, Lloyd said, indicating the city has recently gone through committee on a new IT strategic plan, it hopes to bring to the City Council later this year. The previous plan, he said, “was brilliant at the basics” and highlighted gaps and structure needed, “so we have the organizational muscles to be strong in a disaster and also to hit some of these operational goals that departments have communicated to us.” He highlighted the city’s work with Zoom, Urban Logic and Exygy on issues including remote workforce, housing and homelessness, adding: “That brilliant-at-basics transitions now to a transformative strategic plan.” And the plan has five “pillars,” the CIO said, centered on “By 2023, San Jose’s Technologies Must ... .” These are enabling equity, including data and technology solutions; securing the city against cybersecurity and natural disasters; optimizing resources to maximize efficiency and innovation; “power digital,” the result of enabling both a digital workforce and a digital public and changing the voice of the community with greater representation; and the ability to partner and acquire new technology quickly.
“Because if you’re good at those things, you can do change that isn’t possible with the old siloed government,” Lloyd said. - The availability of federal funding via the American Rescue Plan and the Emergency Connectivity Fund it established is not only one-time money – it’s an historic, once-a-career opportunity for cities to “invest and re-create services,” Lloyd said. And those munis that fail to bring IT to the table and work with the private sector on everything from digital services to “omnichannel approaches” to business assistance and food necessity programs run the risk of losing the chance to emerge from the pandemic with a better structural balance and setting their city back “by years to decades.”
“Because you don’t have these magic moments all that often in time where the crisis clarifies,” Lloyd said. “What we do is who we are. The investments you make and the technology projects you invest in are who you’re trying to be.” In San Jose’s case, he said, staffers worked with the City Council to create a City Roadmap for the next 12 to 16 months, identifying initiatives it would pursue.
