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Update: State's Alpha Site, Geo-Data Portal Proceeding Apace

Gov. Newsom’s state Office of Digital Innovation seeks to improve the experience of interacting with government. Its two main projects are an update of the state’s primary website and a portal that organizes data in new ways.

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When Gov. Gavin Newsom announced creation of the state Office of Digital Innovation, with more than $26 million in recommended funding, the goal was to improve the often “cumbersome and frustrating” experience of interacting with government, according to a proposal for the office.

Newsom announced the office last January, and it launched in July — described on its website as “a start-up inside state government focused on improving services for the people of California.”

The proposal that defined it called for hiring 50 people. So far, the department has hired just a few employees and is still searching for a director — someone who has both a Silicon Valley background and experience working in government, said Michael Wilkening, who oversees the department as the governor’s special adviser on digital and innovation projects.

The office has undertaken two main projects, Wilkening said.

One is alpha.ca.gov, an experiment in making California state government’s primary website more user-friendly. The stripped-down version of ca.gov loads faster, requires less data and is simpler, he said.

The other project is a portal that organizes state data according to geographic area and subject matter, rather than by department. For example, Wilkening said, a user looking for salmon migration data kept by the state can go to the portal and find a broad data set instead of guessing which state departments might have the information and trying to find it on their websites.

In the future, the office will be available to partner with state departments on their digital projects, working to help identify root problems and tailor solutions to them, Wilkening said. The office also will work under an “intervention model,” where top-level government officials may dispatch the office to address problems when needed, he said.

Wilkening said the department had been holding off on full-scale hiring for the department until it could find a director, but recently has shifted course. The department now is working with a consultant from the U.S. Digital Service to staff up for specific projects while the search for a director continues, Wilkening said.

This story was excerpted from the Sacramento Bee. The original story can be found here