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Vision, Buy-In Among Keys to Data Work, Officials Say

Data may be everywhere, but that doesn't make it any easier for governments to utilize, state officials said, offering ideas and suggestions on how to do more with information.

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Acknowledging that governments at all levels still grapple with internal and external obstacles to realizing data’s potential, two state IT officials recently offered ideas on how to improve that process.

Simply having information about one’s residents or services available isn’t enough for an agency, leaders from the California Health and Human Services Agency (CHHS) and the Judicial Council of California (JCC) said at the California Public Sector CIO Academy 2020. Departments and agencies must make meaningful connections with residents and establish a top-down vision for how they’ll best use that information — with data integration being key, said JCC Chief Information Officer Heather Pettit and David Sanabria, CHHS data architect. Among the takeaways from “Juggling Services and Personal Privacy”:

• Integrated data is about seeing the whole person, a principle CHHS Secretary Mark Ghaly has “laid out for us,” Sanabria told the audience – “what programs are they involved in, how does it affect their life, how do we measure the effectiveness of these programs? What’s the impact of pulling a string over here and seeing an outcome over here?” And trust is crucial to creating integrated data because the data that informs governments comes from the people they’re trying to serve.

“That’s the interesting thing about data, right, because when you ask people to participate in shared data, what they share is really going to be dependent on how much they trust you. So, trust is a big component of integrated data,” Sanabria said on Wednesday.

• Setting policy and getting executive sponsorship are key as well, Sanabria said, emphasizing the leadership of Ghaly and Ghaly's CHHS predecessor Michael Wilkening, now special adviser on Innovation and Digital Services in the Office of the Governor. The former, he said, can codify sensible rules that keep data like personally identifiable information secure — while ensuring departments aren’t given feet of clay by risk-averse attorneys.

And while trust may be key, data use is also a change management problem, the architect said, calling leadership “critical to being able to do this.” The higher the level of sponsorship within an agency, “the broader the change that you can make,” he added.

• A good governance model is key, Pettit said, to helping officials and staff create what they need to be successful in acquiring and analyzing public data.

“When you do this, the one thing that I truthfully know about this whole journey, you have to have a really good governance model and people who understand it. And everybody has to understand the risks and detailed analysis,” she said.

• As with other aspects of government IT, however, it’s also important to have a problem in mind before you set out to solve it, the CIO said. Not understanding goals or objectives can muddle the work, obscure the way forward — and diminish results.

“I think that data-sharing is important. However, what’s more important is normalizing what you’re trying to share and understanding the problem you’re trying to solve,” she said. “Because there may be other elements that have nothing to do with the data that shape the end decision. Like humans.”

Theo Douglas is Assistant Managing Editor of Industry Insider — California.