The GovReport

On the future of government

Digital

Can blockchain technology help prevent unemployment fraud?

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Can blockchain technology help fight fraud at the Employment Development Department?  If pending legislation is approved this year, a study by the Office of Digital Innovation (ODI) will aim to answer that question.  Assembly Bill 2781 by Assemblymember Jordan Cunningham (R-San Luis Obispo) last week unanimously passed the Senate Governmental Organization Committee advancing closer to final approval.  The measure calls for the ODI to study how blockchain technology might help prevent fraud.

With a surge in claims related to the pandemic over the past two years, the EDD has paid out as much as $31 million in fraudulent claims. Because blockchain records are considered “unalterable by design” the technology is uniquely promising for industries that handle sensitive or personal data regularly, such as with unemployment claims, according to an analysis of the bill.

According to the analysis, the bill:

  • Requires the Office of Digital Innovation (ODI) to study the feasibility and appropriateness of the utilization of blockchain technology by EDD for the purposes of identity verification and fraud prevention, subject to the availability of funding, as specified.
  • Requires the study to include evaluation of potential inequities in the processing of claims and administration of benefits that could result from the use of blockchain technology by EDD for identity verification and fraud prevention.
  • Requires ODI, on or before January 1, 2024, to report to the Legislature on the findings of this study, including risks, benefits, and considerations for the potential use of blockchain technology by EDD for the purposes of identity verification and fraud prevention.
  •  Defines “blockchain” to mean a mathematically secured, chronological, and decentralized ledger or database.
  • Includes a sunset date of January 1, 2026.

Ten AI Government Tech Startups to Watch in 2022

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First, it was apps, then it was about the cloud, next came data analytics, and now government tech startups are venturing into their next – and arguably biggest – undertaking: the world of artificial intelligence.

The impending world of AI presents an opportunity for entrepreneurs to offer governments a new level of service scalability, efficiency, and security. In fact, based on adoption, AI is likely to be a necessity to manage government’s ever-evolving service needs. As an industry, the firm Precedence Research currently values the AI market (private and public) at nearly $120 billion, and this figure is forecasted to more than double by 2025, at almost $314 billion, and hit $1.6 trillion by 2030. As a whole, global investment data from Pitchbook reports that AI startups collected more than $115 billion in 2021, increasing investment 87.2 percent year over year.

With AI’s influence on how we manage, produce, and consume services, entrepreneurs in the gov IT space are already fashioning their own AI solutions for a range of niches and jurisdiction types. Some are tinkering with traffic management, others are attempting to boost civic engagement, another focus is on planning, while still others are providing tools that handle a combination of tasks. Across all industries, a Gartner report shows top use cases that include knowledge management, digital workplace support, crowdsourced data intelligence, virtual assistants, and support for autonomous vehicles.

As governments consider testing and incorporating AI into their services, the GovReport decided to look at which AI startups and young companies are making an impact. Some of these startups have a direct connection to government, while a few others are presenting potential opportunities.

Here are the ten notables carving their way into government IT.

  1. CITYDATA.ai

Company Summary: The company provides local data insights to government workers in the office and in the field. This work is done through a range of products that include dashboards for daily assessments of geographical areas, chatbots that engage and alert field crews, and geospatial data that shows a municipality’s mobility patterns.

Leadership: CEO Apurva “Apu” Kumar

Headquarters: San Francisco

Founded: 2020

Website: beta.citydata.ai

The Details: CITYDATA is a startup that describes itself as an AI mobility data intelligence and chatbot company. Its CEO Apu Kumar took the helm of the company after serving as the chief of research and development for the civic tech company LotaData.

Since its launch in 2020, CITYDATA has developed a number of AI products. The services are centered around four primary data-as-a-service products. Its city data dashboard, “CITYDASH” uses machine learning algorithms to generate geospatial insights and other data points for more than 1,500 cities worldwide. The company also has a citizen engagement chatbot, “CITYCHAT; a mobile workforce management tool called “CITYWORKS,” and a cities vehicle fleet tracking service dubbed “CITYFLOW.”

The startup has quickly amassed a slate of public and private sector customers that are inside and outside the US — these include the City and County of San Francisco, where it’s headquartered, as well as the smart city nation of Singapore. In 2021, CITYDATA also participated in the United States National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) Accelerator to develop its solutions while supporting NGA’s work to generate intel for the US military, US allies, and the nation’s homeland security organizations. For its government customers, CITYDATA expects their services will be leveraged for smart city programs, economic development, urban planning, mobility and transportation, tourism, disaster impact analysis, sustainability, and resilience.

  1. CrowdAI

Company Summary: A visual data intelligence service that generates notifications, warnings, and insights about satellite, camera images, and other visual data.

Leadership: Devaki Raj (CEO) Nicolas Borensztein, Pablo Garcia

Headquarters: San Francisco

Founded: 2016

Website: https://www.crowdai.com/

The Details:

CrowdAI made headlines in 2020 when it started helping California’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire) to identify active wildfires. The startup’s algorithms used machine learning to analyze drone and satellite imagery from past fires to detect new fires. What that effort means for CalFire now is that they can fly drones as high as 20,000 feet to get geo-tagged images and notifications of a fire with a resolution of only 90 feet away.

Beyond fire detection, CrowdAI offers tools for multiple disaster response scenarios. Whether it’s a fire, flood, or hurricane, the startup’s AI technology can be used by first responders to assess damage, find disaster victims, map accessible roads for rescue operations, and to understand where to mobilize resources. Based on this capacity, the US Department of Defense has contracted CrowdAI to process worldwide military intelligence.

The startup’s aim is to enhance its platform, which is designed to make geodata insights easily actionable, codeless for users, and easily understandable. ­In the private sector, CrowdAI also supports a range of industries that, among others, include facilities & maintenance, oil & gas, insurance, retail, and industrial applications.

  1. Abnormal Security

Company Summary: A platform that quickly integrates with email services to detect dangerous emails and prevent phishing and ransomware attacks.

Leadership: Evan Reiser (CEO), Sanjay Jeyakumar

Headquarters: San Francisco

Founded: 2018

Website: https://abnormalsecurity.com/

The Details: Hello

Anyone familiar with government and cybersecurity knows that phishing and ransomware have been a vexing problem in recent years. Seemingly innocent emails have tricked city staff into downloading malicious ransomware and duped departments into sending funds to scammers posing as government contractors. And looking at research, this threat is only getting worse, with the 2022 ThreatLabz Phishing Report reporting that phishing attempts have risen 110 percent in the government sector between 2020 and 2021. 

Abnormal Security’s co-founders, CEO Evan Reiser and Chief Technology Officer Sanjay Jeyakumar, created the startup because of this challenging problem. Instead of merely detecting ransomware files or suspicious email addresses, Abnormal Security uses AI to differentiate safe and suspicious behavior within an organization’s email communications. By analyzing behavior, the startup can spot threats that aren’t already identified within a limited library of malicious software. The company’s AI solution does this by quickly profiling management, staff, and vendors to set baselines for normal email activity and abnormal activity. Abnormal’s software can be up and running in a matter of hours and integrates with common email services like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspaces.

Further, the company advertises its AI software can also create risk assessments for outside vendors. “By recognizing when a vendor may have a high risk of fraud, Abnormal knows when an email should be more heavily scrutinized for malicious activity,” the company notes. IT Departments also get a control panel that tallies threats, lists blocked senders and displays other helpful cybersecurity statistics.

  1. DataRobot

Company Summary: A user-friendly machine learning platform that allows non-coders to design predictive models for any number of processes and applications.

Headquarters: Boston

Founders: Tom de Godoy, Jeremy Achin, CEO Dan Wright

Founded: 2012

Website: https://www.datarobot.com/

The Details: DataRobot is a company that wants to put AI and machine learning into everyone’s hands through a user-friendly platform. The service lets users take their data and create machine learning predictive models to generate insights, flag problems, spot service gaps, or see growth opportunities. For state and local government, DataRobot suggests that this might mean enabling a department to reduce fraud by analyzing state benefits transactions, helping a department’s human resources review candidates, or enabling state leadership to forecast where COVID-19 supplies and vaccines may be needed most.

As one example of government procurement, DataRobot helped the US Military reclaim more than $2.2 billion in excess funds for use in other projects and needs. DataRobot did this by enabling contracting officers to predict the contracts likely to underspend funding so staff could deobligate and reallocate the money to other high-priority projects. In addition to the financial gains, the work aided the military in eliminating thousands of staff hours and improving efficiency by three to five times.

Other government uses for DataRobot, the company notes, can be found in cybersecurity, education, law enforcement, defense analysis, and in the field of healthcare, where agencies are seeking a greater understanding of patient care. In public health, DataRobot gained experience in this field, working with the federal government during the pandemic to identify gaps in COVID-19 information and track usage and inventory of ICU supplies like ventilators and patient bed availability.

  1. CitiBot

Company Summary: CitiBot offers a smart chatbot for a city website that can answer questions, submit service requests and provide update notifications to citizens.

Leadership: Founder and CEO, Bratton Riley

Headquarters: Charleston, South Carolina

Founded: 2016

Website: https://www.citibot.io/

The Details: Cities are always growing, and with this growth comes a greater demand for customer service. The startup CitiBot is a solution to automate responses to constituents and acts as a tool to manage service requests. Through CitiBot’s AI-enabled text messaging, web chat, and interactive text alerts, the company’s chatbot can give users details on common requests — such as trash collection times — and process specific requests for services like road potholes, graffiti clean-up, and animal services. In addition to its chat and customer relationship management tools, CitiBot also offers a live data and analytics dashboard to track usage.

CitiBot says its chat bot has also proven itself as an effective tool to increase citizen engagement with government. In Arlington, Texas, after CitiBot was launched in 2020 it increased engagement by more than 500 percent in less than a year. This work accounted for more than 24,500 resident sessions and an average of nearly 1,100 resident communications per month. 

“If you open the virtual door to city hall and make it accessible to chat, people will continue to use it,” said Jay Warren, Arlington’s director of communication and legislative affairs. “Because of Citibot, Arlington is able to efficiently engage and work with our residents and ultimately have a better city because they’re telling us what issues they see in their neighborhood, and we can go out and fix them.”

  1. Hayden AI

Company Summary: An AI-driven traffic violation system for cities and citizens to record and report incidents to law enforcement in real-time.

Leadership: CEO Chris Carson, Bo Shen, Vaibhav Ghadiok, Michael May, Charles Territo

Headquarters: Oakland, Calif.

Founded: 2019

Website: https://www.hayden.ai/

The Details: Traffic accidents are a significant issue no matter where you are or what city you might live in. In 2021 alone, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that road deaths surged to a record 42,915 fatalities, a figure representing a 10 percent spike from the previous year and the largest percentage increase since 1975.

To combat traffic deaths and protect residents, the startup Hayden AI has developed a solution to identify traffic violators and assist enforcement officers. Offering both AI software and specialized cameras, Hayden AI can transform almost any set of city vehicles into an automated traffic violation reporting system. Starting with school busses and transit buses, Hayden AI mounts an automated camera system to the buses, and when the camera’s AI algorithms detect a violation, the system records the violator’s license plate number, image, location, and creates an “evidence package” for law enforcement to review. Hayden AI’s school bus solution targets violators passing school busses when passing is prohibited, while the company’s transit solution records bus lane violations. Hayden AI claims its reporting has an average accuracy of 97 percent.

In the future, the company plans to roll out its automated system to police vehicles, streetcars, and street sweepers. Yet, for citizens eager to launch the software in their community, the startup is testing a free app, dubbed SafeSense, that can be installed on a smartphone to automatically detect common vehicle violations and report them to the police. The resident will just need to mount their phones to their front windshield – similar to an Uber or Lyft driver – and the app will automatically start recording data.

  1. Qucit

Company Summary: Qucit uses machine learning to interpret human behavior and make bike-sharing systems and urban planning more efficient for cities.

Leadership: Founder and CEO Raphaël Cherrier

Headquarters:  Bègles, France

Founded: 2014

Website: www.qucit.com

The Details: The catalyst for Qucit dates back to 2013, when its founder and CEO Raphaël Cherrier found himself frustrated by the local bike-sharing service in Bordeaux, France. Cherrier was dismayed when discovering empty bike stations when he wanted to rent a bike or full stations, preventing him from returning a bike to a stall. Working as a researcher and teacher at the University of Bordeaux, he began a study of bike-sharing operations, and from this exhaustive study came Qucit, an AI-enabled system designed to take the guesswork out of bike-sharing maintenance and management.

Qucit helps urban planners and bike sharing managers predict rental demand, bike maintenance needs and notifies field crews when bike stations require “rebalancing” — adjusting the number of bikes to fit usage. Further, the startup routes service teams between bike stations and pinpoints the locations of abandoned bikes.

In Toronto, Canada, these tools aided Bike Share Toronto in 2020 to increase bike stations from 200 to 625 and increase the number of bikes from 2,000 to 6,850. The work has led to a 68 percent fewer empty stations and a 66 percent increase in bike availability, according to Qucit’s data. Outside bike share operations, Qucit has grown to provide its services to shared motorized vehicles and offers support for urban surveys.

  1. Gretel

Leadership: CEO Ali Golshan, Alex Watson, John Myers, Laszlo Bock

Headquarters: San Diego, Calif.

Founded: 2020

Website: https://gretel.ai/

The Details: It could be said that governments largest resource is data. After all, whether an agency is hyper-local or blankets itself federally across state borders, data is always at its core. It’s a commodity that increases with every transaction, be it birth certificates, business licenses, taxes, or parking tickets; data keeps growing. Yet one of the biggest barriers to processing, sharing, and developing insights from government data is privacy. Certain data like medical records can’t be shared due to privacy regulations. And this limitation can restrict departments from sharing information even within the same state or city. It also prohibits certain opportunities to develop effective policies and practices through data analysis.

Seeing this obstacle, co-founders Ali Golshan, Alex Watson, John Myers, and Laszlo Bock decided to create Gretel, an AI startup that offers organizations, be they private or public, an easy way to anonymize sensitive data. The San Diego, Calif., startup does this anonymization by using AI to create “synthetic data.” Organizations can run their data sets through Gretel’s AI software — whether on-prem for added security or in Gretel’s cloud — to produce a second synthetic data set without identifying information but with all the important details from the original.

“What if you could have instant access to an unlimited supply of high-fidelity data that are statistically accurate, privacy-protected, and safe to share? That’s the promise of synthetic data,” said Alex Watson, Gretel’s co-founder and chief product officer on the company’s site. “Synthetic data opens up the possibilities of enabling access to artificial and privacy-preserving versions of personal data in minutes, with 95 percent of the accuracy of the real-world data it was trained on, and without having to wait weeks for manual anonymization and approvals.”

The startup has achieved initial successes with clients in finance and genomics, but with its eye toward growth and government’s need for accessible data, Gretel seems an ideal fit for government, and especially agencies such as law enforcement, social services, or health care that routinely work with sensitive information.
 

  1. NATIX

Company Summary: NATIX uses AI to map crowd densities using video data so urban planners and local law enforcement can ensure safety in a city’s high trafficked areas.

Leadership: CEO Alireza Ghods, Omid Mogharian, Lorenz Muck

Headquarters: Hamburg, Germany

Founded: 2020

Website: www.natix.io

The Details: Cities are synonymous with crowds. Rush-hour commutes send workers charging toward parking lots, weekends pack malls with shoppers, and there are also events, protests, and natural disasters that can quickly raise a pop-up crowd just about anywhere. For city planners and law enforcement, managing these crowds has often been reactionary and informed by rough estimates and educated guesses.

NATIX, a startup based in Hamburg, Germany, hopes to improve public safety work with AI imaging software that empowers officials with real-time, anonymized estimates of crowd numbers and clustering. NATIX’s AI algorithms allow cities to take any video camera and turn it into a sensor to map and manage overcrowding. The platform eliminates the chore of manual counts while simultaneously giving officials heat maps, a dashboard for crowd analytics, and a reporting feature to create shareable crowd assessments.

The NATIX’s crowd management solutions have been deployed in the Hague, Netherlands, and have helped the city’s law enforcement manage its most populated areas. With NATIX’s solution, The Hague won the 2021 Smart City Award in Barcelona, Spain, for its effective use of advanced technologies. Since its launch in 2020, NATIX has gone on to develop additional monitoring services. Its front door camera can detect facemask usage for those attempting to enter a home or facility. The startup also has a construction zone monitoring tool and a parking spot monitoring tool.

  1. Cardinality AI

Company Summary: Cardinality.ai delivers AI, SaaS, and cloud-based services for the government, specializing in smart foster care management and foster care placement.

Leadership: CEO Thiag Loganathan, Chief Innovation Officer Ganesh RVR, Kevin Jones, Jr., Peter Allen, Anna Harper, Vijay Krishna (co-founder), CTO

Headquarters: Gaithersburg, Maryland

Founded: 2017

Website: www.cardinality.ai

The Details: AI in foster care might seem like an unlikely application for advanced technology, yet for the team at Cardinality, this combination presents a breakthrough opportunity to help one of the nation’s most vulnerable populations: children.

This startup is all about social impact and equipping social services with the most effective technology to streamline the foster care administrative process and improve outcomes. Cardinality does this in a few ways. At its most basic, Cardinality helps child welfare officials modernize their applications and documentation with digital forms and workflow management. Then using AI, Cardinality takes its support to the next level by enabling social services with intelligent recommendations. These algorithmically generated recommendations help social workers identify at-risk youth early and match them to suitable foster care families based on the previous reporting.

“AI can be used in finding the right child-foster care provider fit. Using AI, agencies can select the ideal foster care arrangement based on the attributes of the child and the provider,” wrote Cardinality CEO Thiag Loganathan and CIO Kevin Jones in a blog post. “Further, AI can augment human effort in the recruitment process for adoption by cutting down on time taken to place a child in a loving, permanent home.”

Education Data System Announces Data Sharing Agreements

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California’s developing education data system has signed legal agreements with 15 agencies and education organizations to pave the way for new data sets on student progress throughout the state’s education system, the Cradle-to-Career System announced.  

“Thanks to the unprecedented collaboration and leadership of more than a dozen California agencies, departments, and organizations, we are now poised to build out a landmark data system,” said Governor Gavin Newsom. “Bringing this information together will enable a greater understanding of barriers students face and empower Californians to build more equitable futures.”

The legal agreements will allow the new system to create tools that give users access to data while having the authority to enforce security standards. 

The state will spend the next five years developing such tools, according to the announcement.   

Working in concert with Cradle-to-Career include: 

  • Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities 
  • Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education 
  • California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office on behalf of the California Community Colleges Board of Governors 
  • California Department of Education 
  • California Health and Human Services Agency
  • California State University Board of Trustees
  • California School Information Services
  • California Student Aid Commission
  • California Labor and Workforce Development Agency

The Office of Cradle-to-Career Data is currently working to procure the technology platform that will securely house the data set.  Earlier this month, the state released a solicitation for proposals to use an “iterative, cloud-first approach,” to develop the system with a goal of selecting a vendor by late summer 2022.

Newsom Signs Blockchain Executive Order

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Crypto assets and blockchain technology make up $3 trillion on the global market. Around 16 percent of adults have invested in or traded cryptocurrency. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom is bringing some regulation to a burgeoning, wide-open market. On May 4, Gov. Newsom signed an executive deal that will begin to create a regulatory approach that will foster an industry and workforce that utilizes blockchain technology in California. 

“California is a global hub of innovation, and we’re setting up the state for success with this emerging technology – spurring responsible innovation, protecting consumers, and leveraging this technology for the public good,” said Governor Newsom. “Too often government lags behind technological advancements, so we’re getting ahead of the curve on this, laying the foundation to allow for consumers and business to thrive.”

The state has identified seven major priorities in the executive order. Within those directives, there is an emphasis on “California values” like equity, inclusivity, and environmental protection. 

The state also has the desire to “exercise statutory authority,” that will protect consumers (balancing risks and benefits). 

Perhaps the most intriguing priority is to “explore opportunities to deploy blockchain technologies to address public-serving and emerging needs, working with the private sector, academia, and community to present pilots for innovative policies, programs, and solutions that demonstrate and showcase the potential of adopting blockchain technologies to respond to specific challenges identified by state agencies.”

The opportunity to capitalize on the untapped potential of an emerging sector is spelled out explicitly, but most of the order is concerned with regulation. 

According to the executive order itself, the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation will assume a host of responsibilities, including publishing consumer protection principles, collect and review consumer complaints, and work in tandem with law enforcement agencies to address criminal activity. 

Gov. Newsom’s executive order follows two months after President Biden’s March 9 executive order on “Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets.”  

 

CDT Kicks off Round Two of the Technology Modernization Fund

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The California Department of Technology announced round two for proposals to be funded by the Technology Modernization Fund (TMF).

The $25 million TMF was created in the 2021-02 budget that will “allow CDT to provide quick funding to state departments to invest in technology modernization efforts or to stabilize IT systems at risk of failure.”    It will fund small efforts that can quickly provide high-value services and fund urgent needs identified by the state’s Stabilization Service.

In the first round of the TMF, five of 21 project applications were chosen to pitch their ideas to a committee of state executives. Four of the five pitches were chosen to move forward:

  • The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is integrating state HR systems with commercial job boards and recruitment platforms. If the project is successful, it will be extended to other state departments. (Budget: $3.5 million/two years.) 
  • The California Environmental Protection Agency is developing a geospatial dataset to protect Californians from hazardous waste. (Budget: $1.5 million.)
  • The Department of Food and Agriculture is moving their system that tracks companies who can test and repair weight and measurement equipment online. (Budget: under $1 million.)
  • The Department of Consumer Affairs Speech-Language Pathology & Audiology & Hearing Aid Dispensers Board is moving application, processing, and payment for 13 license types from paper to online. (Budget: $400,000.)

Work on these four projects began back in Jan. 2022. 

State entities will have until April 8 to submit proposals for the innovative grants. 

According to the CDT website, “Projects must have clear, concrete goals, a viable and quick path to delivery, and strong support from the requesting entity’s executive leadership.  Proposals submitted will be evaluated based on their probability of success, replicability, and support of statewide goals.”

Two Bills Would Mandate Modular Approach to Large-Scale IT Projects

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Information technology projects in California government are a billion-dollar business — and two bills working their way through the Legislature seek to change the way some such projects are handled.

While large-scale contracts and projects managed by the California Department of Technology (CDT) historically have been carried out in both “waterfall” and modular fashions, AB 1806 and AB  2558 aim to mandate the modular approach.

AB 1806, introduced by Assemblymembers Rudy Salas (D-Bakersfield) and Devon Mathis (R-Visalia), would require CDT, when feasible, to use modular contracting for large-scale IT acquisitions, and defines modular contracting as “a contractual approach that provides for incremental delivery, implementation, and testing of an information technology acquisition by dividing it into discrete increments.”

AB 2558, introduced by Mathis, would require CDT to establish and implement an oversight modular modernization framework by January 1, 2025.

California already has experience with modular contracting and modernization; in 2015, for instance, federal technology and design consultancy agency 18F began working with the state to modernize its child welfare system using the modular approach — which had some pain points, but ultimately was a success.

“The way we started it is we developed short-term contracts, so every contract we put out was like six months in duration and with like 700 optional extensions,” said Ben Hafer, who served as the chief of operations for California’s Child Welfare Digital Service project at the time of its implementation, in an online forum following the project’s implementation.

The long-term contract was still in place “to ensure that you’re getting value for the teams you have on-site, but there’s always that hook,” he continued. “Every six months, if you’re not delivering, if we’re not happy with your performance, if you’re not giving this value for the money that we’re giving you … then the next person up is on deck.”

Now, AB 1806 and AB 2558 seek to make modular contracts and modernization the norm for such large-scale acquisitions and projects — which AB 1806 states “is estimated to result in an eventual total expenditure exceeding” $2.5 million.

In addition, AB 1806 would require, “to the maximum extent practicable, a contract for an increment of an information technology acquisition using modular contracting to be awarded within 180 days after the solicitation is issued, and would require an increment of an information technology acquisition to be delivered within 18 months after the solicitation resulting in award of the contract was issued.”

In addition, an amendment to AB 1806 made on March 17 would require CDT to develop a process for overseeing large-scale IT acquisitions using the modular contracting approach.

AB 2558 stipulates that, if passed, CDT would be responsible for establishing and maintaining a framework for IT projects using a modular modernization approach — through multiple stand-alone components that result in incremental improvements over time — rather than replacing the entire system all at once.

Neither Salas nor Mathis returned request for comment in time for publication, at which time both AB 1806 and AB 2558 had been referred to the Committee on Privacy and Consumer Protection.

Cradle-to-Career Data System Inches Forward

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At the first Cradle-to-Career (C2C) Governing Board meeting for 2022, held last month, the board walked away with one primary action item and two follow-up items to keep the C2C system moving forward.

“Now with much of the planning behind us,” said C2C Board Chair Amy Fong during the meeting, “acting and really leaning into that can help us pivot and make that data system a reality in service to all Californians.”

As previously reported, C2C will connect data across various education segments to not only benefit students, but also inform educators and legislators in their policy- and decision-making. The Governing Board holds four quarterly meetings annually to provide oversight and leadership to the C2C office.

The primary action item, said C2C Board Liaison Sydney Armendariz, is finalizing the advisory board member selection process; the secondary items are to identify:

  • ways to integrate independent colleges and the California Colleges Guidance Initiative (CCGI) into one single college application; and
  • how to ensure that classes listed in local school districts’ Student Information Systems accurately transfer into the four-year universities’ Course Management Portal.

Advisory Board Member Selection

C2C has two advisory boards, each with a unique purpose.

The Data and Tools Advisory Board ensures that the data and tools provide actionable information for the C2C system, said C2C Executive Director Mary Ann Bates, adding that their work will include looking at data points, public facing tools and priority topics for research.

The Community Engagement Advisory Board, she said, ensures strong feedback loops with data users to support evidence-based decision-making, increased analytical capacity and equitable access to actionable information.

“Their work will include, for example, recommending professional development and technical assistance models, as well as communication strategies to ensure that a broad range of Californians know about and are using the tools of the data system.”

Each advisory board will have 16 members, and Bates noted the importance of cultivating a diversity of perspectives on each board. “We want to be inclusive of a diversity of voices and lived experiences,” she said, “and to recruit members who have expertise in equity.”

How exactly to select members for each of these boards is the primary action item going forward — but applications for these positions are currently being accepted; they’re due March 21.

“These will be a really important mechanism for continuing the work with communities that was started during the planning process,” Bates said. “A key priority early on will be to seat the two advisory boards and ensuring that we have wide representation on those two boards that can really inform all of the work that we’re doing here from an early stage as we get started.”

The hope, Bates said, is to have a slate of advisory board members ready for a vote before the next meeting.

Single, Common College Application

Currently, there is one website — CaliforniaColleges.edu — where potential students use one application for all California community colleges (CCCs), a separate application to apply to all of the 23 California State University (CSU) campuses, and another separate application to apply to all of the 10 University of California (UC) campuses.

Beyond that, there also is one single application for more than 800 private, out-of-state and international colleges/universities — but this application cannot be used for CCCs, CSUs or UCs.

So what investments, asked Thomas Vu — member of the Governing Board and vice president for policy for the Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities — would it take to make one common college application (common app) for every college and university a reality?

“I think the answer is, one, getting common app integrated,” said CCGI Founder and President Tessa Carmen De Roy, “and, two, like everything else, doing the communications and engagement work to get your members to understand what the potential additional value add to them is.”

More specifically, she added, how could they be enticed to get involved with the common application — to start using what, for them, would entail a significant system change.

“I think it would be worth convening and talking with them to figure out what are their pain points,” Carmen de Roy added, “because that’s really what we aim to do is to help to reduce pain points both for students, first and foremost, but also for the institutions supporting them… It would be really about figuring out what does your membership need to make it worth their while to participate.”

While a financial investment by the state for such a rollout is possible, the current projections given to the state don’t include a full-scale common application rollout.

“We still need to figure out exactly how it needs to happen before we can scope it and figure out exactly what it would cost,” Carmen de Roy said. But for that to even happen, she said, those education institutions not yet integrated with CCGI must be willing to integrate — the ways to do which are currently a focal point for the Governing Board.

Reconciling SIS Course Listings with CMP Course Listings

Also of concern is properly entering A through G coursework into college applications, said Carmen de Roy, adding that this is a confusing area for many people.

Stated simply, for California high school students to meet baseline eligibility for admission to a four-year UC or CSU campus, they must complete a 15-course sequence of classes with a C- or better — these are the A through G requirements.

 Each letter represents a subject area:

A. History/Social Science.
B. English.
C. Mathematics.
D. Science.
E. Language Other Than English.
F. Visual and Performing Arts.
G. College Preparatory Elective.

In school districts, the Student Information System (SIS) houses this information and generates student transcripts — but the problem, Carmen de Roy said, is that the SIS labels courses in a way that doesn’t accurately transfer into the Course Management Portal (CMP), which “is the source of truth database for admissions to four-year colleges in the state.”

This is what’s known as an “a-g mismatch,” examples of which include the SIS course title as Algebra 2A/2B but the CMP course title is Algebra I (see image at left).

“So what we have is students trying to figure out looking at their transcript and seeing Algebra 2A/2B, trying to figure out how to enter that into their college applications,” she said. “And as you might imagine, they make a lot of mistakes.”

Another issue that arises due to this mismatch or discrepancy is, in many K-12 districts statewide, there’s a misunderstanding as far as which students will actually be admissible to a four-year college.

So ultimately, Carmen de Roy said, the students are taking college preparatory coursework and getting the necessary grade, but the course isn’t being recognized at the point of applying to college.

“Basically, kids aren’t getting credit for the courses that they have completed,” she added. “This obviously is an enormous problem.”

A team is working on this issue all day every day, and CCGI has built some tools on CaliforniaColleges.edu — called the CSU and UC Eligibility Tools — to bring transparency to this issue and help students. But how to ensure that classes listed in a local district’s SIS accurately transfers into the four-year universities’ CMP without a lot of legwork on the part of educators is top of mind.

Two Bills Aim to Tackle No-Bid Contracts in California Government

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Since the pandemic’s onset, California state government has awarded technology-related and other no-bid contracts worth more than $3 billion to at least 30 technology and health care companies, according to a Kaiser Health News analysis. Overall, the state entered into more than 8,000 no-bid contracts in 2020 alone — 80 of which total more than $25 million and amount to more than $11.9 billion combined in spending, according to a press release.

A $5 million no-bid contract was awarded in May 2020 to improve the California Employment Development Department’s online portal for processing unemployment claims that was amended three times, reaching a total of $28.4 million. That same month, a $13.67 million no-bid contract was awarded for the California Department of Public Health’s (CDPH) COVID-19 Contact Tracing Initiative; it was amended twice to reach a total of just under $83 million. And another no-bid contract for the CDPH’s California Vaccine Management Solution (CalVax) grew from $6.9 million in December 2020 to $173.2 million after five amendments.

But two bills introduced on Feb. 8, 2022, would make the continuation of no-bid contracts in the state worth $25 million or more much more difficult to renew automatically — COVID-19-related or otherwise.

Bills Promoting No-Bid Contract Oversight

The first bill, SCA-7, would require that, on or after January 1, 2023, state agency no-bid contracts of $25 million or more that are up for renewal or extension be approved by the Joint Legislative Budget Committee. As of the date of publication, the bill detailed that:

  • At least a certain number of days (to be determined) before the contract’s end date, the state agency will submit the proposed extension or renewal’s terms and conditions to the Joint Legislative Budget Committee.
  • After receiving this information, the committee will hold a hearing to review the contract’s extension or renewal at least 60 days before the contract’s end date.
  • A state agency won’t approve a contract’s renewal or extension until a certain number of days (to be determined) after the review hearing.

This bill has been read and introduced, but it won’t be acted upon until on or after March 11.

The second bill, SB 947, supports SCA-7 by expanding California Whistleblower Protection Act provisions to certain private entities awarded no-bid contracts and their employees.

Under the bill, “Private entity awarded a no-bid contract” means “a person, business entity, combination of persons and business entities, or a combination of business entities” that have entered into a contract with the state or a state agency and that contract:

  • Didn’t require competitive bidding or proposals;
  • Is for an amount equal to or greater than $25 million.

Should this bill become law, “a person who intentionally engages in acts of reprisal, retaliation, threats, coercion or similar acts” against a state employee who makes a protected disclosure is subject to civil liability and criminal penalties. A protected disclosure is a good faith communication that reveals or demonstrates an improper governmental activity or a condition that may significantly threaten the health or safety of employees or the public.

Under the guise of the pandemic, the governor has secretly negotiated millions of dollars in no-bid state contracts and auto-renewed them with little to no legislative oversight or transparency,” said Senate Republican Leader Scott Wilk (R-Santa Clarita), author of both bills. “Right now, there are no laws on the books requiring public oversight hearings on renewals of no-bid state contracts of $25 million or more for any state agency. My bills would add that much needed component to the law.”

Impact on California Technology Contracts

Though Wilk’s legislation was prompted by Governor Gavin Newsom using his emergency powers to award such contracts, it would, if passed, affect all no-bid contracts of $25 million or more entered into by state agencies — something California has participated in for many years. In 2017, for instance, then-state Auditor Elaine Howle’s office estimated that California spent $44 billion on non-competitive government contracts over five years, and noted the lack of agency oversight.

SCA-7 would shift oversight to an outside committee, thus holding agencies more accountable. The true impact on technology contracts in California is currently unknown, nor is the California Department of Technology’s take on the bills, as the agency said it does not comment on pending legislation.

But given that transparency in government has been a widespread trend over the years, perhaps bringing no-bid contracts into the fold is a logical next step.

“Government at every level works best when there are checks and balances in place to ensure programs funded with taxpayer dollars provide the best bang for our buck,” Wilk wrote in a piece for the Orange County Register. “Those checks and balances also include ensuring employees – whether they are public or private sector employees – involved in these programs are able to raise concerns when something does not look right without fear of retaliation… Transparent government is good government.”

How Can California Prepare Itself for the Inevitability of AI?

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When the Little Hoover Commission authored its 2018 report Artificial Intelligence: A Roadmap for California, they captured a state that was ill-prepared to face the inevitable changes that AI will bring to the economy and work landscape in the near future.

California is home to Silicon Valley and the fifth largest economy in the world. They should be leading the pack when it comes to quickly (and ethically) developing AI, but at the time of the Commission’s report, the state was well behind.

The report highlighted labor representatives that were concerned about job displacement, wage inequality, and a stunted middle class exacerbated by AI. It foreshadowed the inevitability that workers’ lives would change. California needed to prepare for a future where workers would be redeployed en masse. If not, they would be unemployed en masse.

“Some workers will have to be retrained to work alongside AI directed machines, while others will have to be redeployed within the company or elsewhere in the economy; businesses have a vital role to play in aiding these transitions,” the McKinsey Global Institute was quoted as saying in the report. “This will require changes in skills, mindsets and culture as we transition into a world where ‘coworkers’ include machines as well as other people.”

In the three years since the Commission published their report, California has made strides towards realizing a statewide strategy that can prepare its citizens for a major shift as AI assumes a more prominent role in the workspace.

In the fall of 2020, the California Department of Technology (CDT) launched the Artificial Intelligence Community of Practice, a quarterly virtual forum “open to anyone interested in engaging and collaborating on how to responsibly adopt AI technologies.”

Additionally, GovOps, CDT and CalData hosted an AI Risk Assessment Workshop that can help the state mitigate risks emerging from AI applications.

The state needs to move from discussion to action. In a Jan. 25 press release, the Little Hoover Commission provided four recommendations for the state to shape an AI policymaking agenda that can promote accountability and transparency in the development and utilization of AI.

Those recommendations include:

  • Appoint an AI special advisor within the Governor’s cabinet that will create a strategic plan ensuring “the safe and transparent deployment of AI in the state.”
  • Form an AI Commission composed of AI experts from various sectors to provide leadership.
  • Require state agencies to create strategic plans that create an ethical AI framework that promotes “economic, social, and environmental good.”
  • Improve data collection from the Employment Development Department that can identify jobs that are “at risk” of being made obsolete due to AI.

“Lawmakers must seize this moment by prioritizing policies that will safely and effectively harness the power of this innovative technology,” the Commission warns.

AI implementation is on the horizon and approaching quickly. The state must be prepared as the landscape shifts and harness this technology responsibly and ethically.

CDT’s Statewide IT Annual Report 2021 Highlights IT Trends, Vaccine Support and More

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On Jan. 31, 2022, the California Department of Technology (CDT) released its Statewide IT Annual Report for 2021, announcing the report’s release and focal points via Twitter:

The report shared statistics related to security, the Project Approval Lifecycle (PAL), workforce training and innovation, and then highlighted several projects the CDT completed or made progress on throughout 2021 — both COVID-related and otherwise.

Trends in California Government IT

The report’s statistics on the CDT include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • 400+ million blocked malicious probes daily;
  • 25 scheduled and completed information security audits, 14 of which were full audits and 11 of which were check-ins;
  • 24 technology transactions in PAL, 11 of which were approved, 11 were delegated and two were withdrawn;
  • 20 participants each in the CDT’s new Emerging IT Leadership training and Cybersecurity Boot Camps;
  • 2,611 datasets made available to the public via ca.gov; and
  • 159 state-contributed open source code sets.

In addition, the CDT only experienced one electronic incident that resulted in unauthorized disclosure of Personally Identifiable Information (information that can be used to distinguish or trace an individual’s identity, such as name, Social Security number, date and place of birth, to name a few) that was “contained in lost or stolen unencrypted electronic devices and storage media.”

COVID-19 Vaccine Support

As was the case for most state and local entities nationwide, the response to COVID-19 dominated much of California’s efforts throughout 2021, wrote former state CIO Amy Tong and Deputy CIO Russ Nichols in the report’s introduction.

Before California created the My Turn vaccine finder tool, the state was ranked last in vaccine distribution in the United States, the report says.

“Sixty-one different vaccine distribution systems that served niche communities left a void of statewide data to inform the optimal distribution of vaccinations statewide,” according to the report. “California needed a system that would handle the entire vaccine management process – from inventory to inoculation to reporting – to equitably vaccinate as many Californians as possible before the state reopened on June 15.”

Using Agile methodology, the state collaborated with San Diego and Los Angeles counties to create My Turn, which helped “to quickly reach at-risk and underserved populations, provide a holistic view of available appointments, and reduce inventory backlog.”

Another project sought to reach underserved communities (the senior population (aged 65+), minority population, disabled population, households with limited English-speaking ability and Californians with incomes below the poverty line) and increase vaccination rates throughout California.

Called the Vaccine Uptake Tool — which was a collaborative effort among the California Office of Emergency Services, CDT, the California Office of Digital Innovation, Esri and Google — this piece of technology essentially used data to increase vaccination in the state by combining “all areas of coverage into a score that would allow the team to identify localized concentrations of underserved communities,” the report states. “It exemplifies the power of technology in building not just more efficient and effective government, but a compassionate and fair government.”

Finally, California’s Digital COVID-19 Vaccine Record (DCVR) portal launched in June 2021, so every vaccinated Californian has “an opt-in, secure, and shareable digital copy of their COVID-19 vaccination records to use as they see fit.”

CDT also released the DCVR’s front-end and middle tier code to the public domain on GitHub, which means any state interested in deploying its own digital vaccine record system ca use the free code “to connect their own immunization registry back end and launch a similar portal to California’s.”

Tong and Nichols noted that throughout 2021, CDT leadership and staff “never let up as we moved to ensure vaccines were distributed equitably and quickly, and … created digital access to the vaccine record to help the state on its move toward reopening.”

Broadband, Data Privacy and More

Pandemic support wasn’t the only focal point in 2021; CDT also worked on and completed several initiatives, including, but not limited to:

“Since the pandemic, CDT’s continued collaboration with other departments, public and private entities and educators proved critical to getting projects done quickly” Tong and Nichols wrote. “What we do isn’t just about delivering technology — it’s about delivering fast and secure public services and making common technology easy to use for government workers and our residents.”

 

 

California DMV Digital eXperience Platform Aims for ‘World Class Self-Service Channels’ for Customers

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In 2021, the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) launched solicitations for its Digital eXperience Platform (DXP) project — and at the start of 2022, DXP Phase 1 is in the build stage and an RFP for DXP Phase 2 is accepting applications.

Stated simply, the DXP project is an IT modernization and business transformation initiative that will replace DMV core technologies and re-engineer business processes and channels using the cloud and automation, says DMV Chief Digital Transformation Officer Ajay Gupta.

The DXP Project has three phases. Phase 1 is focused on occupational licensing, Phase 2 on vehicle registration and Phase 3 on driver licensing.

Once the entire project is complete, the DMV “expects to provide world class self-service channels, faster in person and mail-in service fulfillment to our customers, and a digital platform in our back office with improved employee experience,” Gupta said, adding that the department also expects to reduce operating costs through reduction in IT infrastructure, and less paper and fewer manual processes with the use of new technologies and processes.

DXP Phase 1: Occupational Licensing

The DMV’s Occupational Licensing branch licenses and monitors motor vehicle-related businesses and individuals in the state, which is no small feat given the more than 31 million vehicles and 24 million licensed drivers on California roads. The Occupational Licensing branch regulates vehicle manufacturing and sales, driver training, vehicle registration, to name a few.

Salesforce was selected as the software-as-a-service (SaaS) and Deloitte as the systems integrator to configure the platform for DMV needs. Together, Salesforce and Deloitte will modernize the DMV’s Occupational Licensing systems, processes and services, which Gupta said serve car manufacturers, distributors, dealers, sales personnel and traffic schools. According to the DMV’s City Innovate solicitation, the project includes the following:

  • Internal and external interfaces, reporting, data access capabilities, as needed;
  • A centralized database;
  • Secure storage at a centralized location with a backup at a separate site;
  • Secure storage and transmission of data and secure, robust audit and tracking capabilities at the individual user level;
  • Compatibility with state, federal and DMV architecture standards; and
  • Ability to integrate with Amazon Web Services, DocuSign, and customer text and chat services.

The two vendors also must provision for ongoing system support throughout the life of the contract, which Gupta said lasts close to two years — the first year for implementation releases and a second year for Phase 1 maintenance and operations.

Gupta said he expects the Phase 1 solution to go live in late summer 2022.

DXP Phase 2: Vehicle Registration

The DMV is now looking for a system integrator to modernize Vehicle Registration business processes, systems and service delivery; the department released the RFP on Dec. 1, 2021, and vendors have until June 1, 2022, to respond.

According to the RFP, the successful bidder for Phase 2 will build upon and expand the Occupational Licensing modernization to deliver a single Occupational Licensing and Vehicle Registration solution — and replace the legacy Control Cashiering functions and services.

“The solutions technology platform will leverage industry best practices to deliver intuitive and customer centric services. It will leverage key architectural attributes such as flexibility, usability, scalability, supportability, workflow configurability, and security in order to support changing business and customer needs,” the RFP states. “It will provide an overarching business process model designed to deliver a seamless customer journey.”

Due to COVID-related extension requests from the vendors, the vendor selection likely will occur by the end of June 2022, Gupta said, and the Phase 2 build will begin right after vendor selection.

DXP Phase 3: Driver Licensing

On the horizon is Phase 3, which will focus on modernizing the Driver Licensing business processes, systems and service delivery.

Gupta said vendors can anticipate an RFP release date of late spring or early summer of 2022 for Phase 3, the procurement process for which is likely to be completed by end of 2022 with build work beginning in 2023.

Once the entire DXP project is complete, Gupta said the DMV expects not only to attract IT talent with use of the latest state of the art technology platforms, but also to compete with the best of the retail sector as far as customer experience and service fulfillment.

“DMV expects an integrated, omni-channel approach to fulfilling our customer journeys,” he said, adding that these channels will be augmented with new automated self-service options, reduced processing times and lower transaction costs to the DMV. “DMV hopes that the new DXP further enables the state in serving our customers amidst the changing customer service landscape driven by technology innovations and pandemics.”

Digital Education Equity Program Reintroduced in California Legislature

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California public school districts officially have another shot at equal access to professional development for teachers and technical assistance that will help schools effectively use their technology — and schools could cost-effectively plan for and implement current and emerging educational technology.

“Educational technology is essential for teaching and learning in the Digital Age,” Sen. Josh Becker, D-Peninsula, told The GovReport. “And California educators must have equitable access to the professional development and technical assistance that make effective use of this technology possible.”

State funding for such support ended when California adopted the Local Control Funding Formula about eight years ago, according to a press release. So on January 25, 2022, Becker introduced SB 876 to create the statewide the Digital Education Equity Program (DEEP), which the state Department of Education and County Offices of Education are slated to plan and implement.

In fact, SB 876 reintroduces measures Becker proposed in a 2021 bill, SB 767, that was passed by the Senate but didn’t advance in the Assembly.

“I am raising this issue again in SB 876 because educational technology is essential for our school districts in the Digital Age, and California educators must have equitable access to the professional development and technical assistance that make effective use of this technology possible,” he said. “This need is not going away.”

While substantively there is no difference between the 2021 bill and this year’s SB 876, Becker noted that an important change exists as far as implementation — while SB 767 proposed funding of regional consortia among the 58 County Offices of Education (COEs), SB 876 would instead make grants available to each of the 58 COEs. A stipulation also exists that one COE could form a consortium with one or more COEs in applying for a grant.

“One example of that,” he added, “would be a highly rural County Office of Education partnering with a less rural COE.”

A key component of the 2021 bill — the State Digital Equity Plan — remains a key component of SB 876, which, as introduced, would be funded in the annual Budget Act of 2022. “If that is successful,” Becker said, “the funding would be part of the State Education Budget”

And this funding will help the Department of Education develop and implement the State Digital Equity Plan, which will focus on “how best to meet locally defined educational needs that can be effectively addressed with the use of technology,” the bill states, and will reflect “the overall needs and priorities related to the planning, implementation, and evaluation of the access and use of technology to support teaching and learning in California schools.”

Once that plan is approved, Becker said the Department of Education (CDE) will establish the Office of Educational Technology and Digital Equity to support DEEP’s planning and implementation.

“They will be tasked to provide planning, policies, guidelines, and support to implement DEEP,” he said. “Moreover, the bill tasks and funds COEs to collaborate with CDE to equitably deliver DEEP services to California school districts.”

Reflecting how far his bill progressed last year, Becker said he’s positive going forward.

“I am optimistic about my chances for it to reach the Assembly once again,” he said, “and this year, advance.”

CDT: Four Technology Modernization Fund Projects Move Forward

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In just two months, California’s Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) has launched and officially selected four projects from its inaugural application period.

On January 12, 2022, the California Department of Technology (CDT) — which approved the TMF in summer 2021 to fund small efforts that can quickly provide high-value services and fund urgent needs identified by the state’s Stabilization Service — announced that projects from the California Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the California departments of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), Food and Agriculture (CDFA), and Consumer Affairs (DCA) will move forward.

With an estimated budget of $1.5 million, the California EPA will develop a geospatial dataset that will help the state “more quickly respond to emergencies by identifying locations and jurisdictions of hazardous materials incidents.” Platform development is expected in roughly 6 months; full data population should occur within one year.

In an effort to both expand awareness of open CDCR positions and smooth out the application and hiring process for applicants and state staff, the department will develop a method to “integrate state HR systems with commercial job boards and industry standard recruitment platforms.” The project’s estimated budget is $3.5 million over two years, and it’s expected that the solution will serve as a proof of concept that can extend to other state departments.

The project with perhaps the quickest production time is from the CDFA, which will update the system that tracks companies who can test and repair weight and measurement equipment — such as grocery scales, electric meters and gas pumps (there are nearly 1.85 million such devices registered in California) — and move it online. The project, which has an estimated budget of less than $1 million and is expected in production in a few months, will help companies find a certified agent who can quickly get faulty equipment back online, saving time and lost revenue for the business.

With a projected budget of roughly $400,000, the speech and hearing board within the DCA will move a currently paper-based process — for application, processing and payment for 13 license types — online. Implementation of the first license type is expected within six months, and the remaining 12 will follow over an additional year or so.

These four projects were chosen from a pool of 21 state-submitted project applications, five of which were selected to pitch their projects to a committee of executives from other state agencies and departments. Following the pitch day, these four projects were deemed most suitable for TMF funding.

As Carolyn Nordstrom, deputy director of the CDT’s Project Management Office (PMO), said in December, this is a recurring process.

“We’ll continue while we have money available to invest with the goal of demonstrating to the Department of Finance and the Legislature and others that this is a really successful and viable alternative way to fund certain kinds of technology investments and modernization,” she said during the CDT Vendor Forum on Dec. 8.

The next TMF program application period will open by Spring 2022.

 

From possibility to performance: California’s CDO explains how to design data science projects that can make a difference

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With citizen demands rising, America’s urbanization and growth continues to upend the traditional flow of government, a fact leaving officials disoriented but determined to uncover modern tools to expand and diversify services.

Data science is an essential ingredient in this pursuit. Its benefits read like a miracle drug: It’s an accelerant for decision making, it automates time-consuming tasks, and has potential to articulate and improve even the most nebulous of processes. Yet while data science is universally embraced in theory, California Chief Data Officer Joy Bonaguro said most organizations struggle to effectively identify and design projects.

She calls this challenge the “Truffle Pig Problem.”

Speaking via video chat at the California Department of Technology’s A.I. Community of Practice event last month, Bonaguro said truffle pigs are famous for their keen snouts that sniff out truffles, the mushroom delicacy that can be buried as deep as three feet into the ground. When the menu calls for data science, she said the Truffle Pig Problem occurs when an organization can’t sniff out useful projects.

“Sniffing out a good data science project is the single greatest barrier to data science adoption,” Bonaguro said.

If government agencies feel overwhelmed, Bonaguro said it’s a common problem and there is ample of evidence of poor data usage across sectors. Highlighting the 2022 NewVantage Partners Survey, which measures private sector adoption of big data and A.I., Bonaguro said the survey showed two thirds of its respondents investing in data science yet only a small number, 26.5 percent, reporting they actually use data to make business decisions. Further, she said nearly 92 percent of respondents said the challenge lies in people, processes, and culture and not technology.

“They characterize it as a technology push rather than a [technology] pull from humans who want to make more data-based decisions,” Bonaguro said.

To harness data in cities and states and avoid a Truffle Pig Problem, Bonaguro looked back at her experience as San Francisco’s chief data officer to provide a few pieces of tactical advice for governments.

1. Set realistic expectations

When she proposed her first data science projects in San Francisco Bonaguro said that internally, they weren’t always met with standing ovations. Some viewed the projects as resource hogs, others saw them as redundant efforts, others dismissed them as plays to be trendy. There was also a small set of data enthusiasts that saw them as the solution for everything.

What helped get projects moving, she said, was setting realistic expectations and defining the data science project. Bonaguro said she made sure departments understood the projects were not designed to be an overhaul of department operations, but would likely be tied to small changes. Projects would not seek to find new data, but look at data already available. And for success, projects required the support of a department.

“In order to counterbalance this range of reactions what we needed to do was define what we meant by data science and how it fit into the construct of other practices that were already in play,” Bonaguro said.

2. Make it about service change and business goals

To have a real impact that delivers lasting results, Bonaguro said it’s crucial data projects aren’t exercises in academic research. They need to influence real services, workflows, and operational tasks.

Yet to hit this target, she said a data team or specialist should be prepared to meet regularly with the departments they hope to help to learn how and why processes exist, and also to verify what the data actually means. In San Francisco, Bonaguro would frequently present findings and data models to departments to gain feedback and to understand how her data models could be improved.

“You can’t just have a model and then it just sits there,” Bonaguro said. “You need to embed it into the business process.”

3. Don’t go to them, let them come to you

Equally important for real service change, Bonaguro said it’s important that data science be seen as an opportunity for departments instead of a burden. In fact, for data science to work, she said departments in San Francisco needed to understand data science was a privilege not an obligation. This mindset was for the department’s benefit as much as it was for the city’s data program.

She explained that successful data projects need committed clients – in this case department leadership and staff – to champion the changes in workflows and processes that would follow. If a department started out feeling like the data project was a hassle forced on them, or that they were doing the data science team a favor, there was a high likelihood the end result, no matter how beneficial, wouldn’t last. To change this dynamic, Bonaguro and her team created an application process for data science projects that required interested departments to apply for help.

“This is really about leveraging concepts like scarcity and selectivity. All of that led to what we ended up calling the Anatomy of a Committed Client,” Bonaguro said. “Because again, we’re aiming for service change…and you need a committed client to actually realize the insights of your data science project.”

Data Science in Action

As example, Bonaguro called up a success story when she assisted San Francisco’s Assessor-Recorder to eliminate a backlog of property assessments. Over time, the city’s growth and development had overwhelmed assessors with a glut of requests. Bonaguro said full property value assessments were time intensive and the assessors—who had to assess property value to estimate property taxes after every sale — just couldn’t keep up. Worse still, property tax revenues represented a third of San Francisco’s general fund.

“This was a huge financial issue for the city,” Bonaguro said, stressing that the backlog had tied up millions of the city’s tax dollars.

At the request of the Assessor-Recorder, Bonaguro and her team went to work, first by meeting with key staff to understand the assessment process in depth, and then analyzing the city’s property assessment data to generate a model to flag properties that likely needed a full assessment from those that just needed a short review.

What resulted from the effort was an algorithm that could evaluate a property based on its type and characteristics and generate its estimated value.

“We actually put this model into production,” Bonaguro said. “So, it was a living, breathing algorithm. And what it did is generate a predicted price and the service change was to say, ‘Hey, does that sale price fall within a reasonable range.’”

If it fell within a reasonable range the property would only require a quick review. If the property did not the city did a full assessment of the property to determine its exact value and the resulting property taxes a new owner would pay. In the end, Bonaguro said this focused analysis completely eliminated San Francisco’s backlog while breaking down funding constraints.

 “The end result was that the very first run of the model…reduced the backlog by 10 percent, which allowed the city to immediately access $239 million in roll value (the combined value of properties) which translated to 2.8 million in property tax revenue.”

 While the data project was a big win for the city, Bonaguro stressed the factors that enabled success were not big ambitions, but rather small, specific and collaborative efforts. Bonaguro’s team did not overhaul the city’s assessment process, nor did it hunt for new and illusive data, nor did her team require super computers or advanced A.I. Instead, she said her team looked at the fundamental components of the problem and then worked with the data tools they had and within the systems and processes already in place.

 “It’s often about small changes. We’re not necessarily making a major overhaul or disruption…,” she said. “It’s about service science. It’s about service change.”

 

CDT Seeks Vendor Feedback on DMV State-to-State Verification Service Program

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The California Department Motor Vehicles (DMV) is in the beginning stages of a tech upgrade, the start of which is a pre-solicitation posted by the California Department of Technology (CDT).

More specifically, the DMV seeks to implement a State-to-State (S2S) Verification Service program so it can ensure that a driver’s license or identification (DL/ID) card applicant possesses only one REAL ID compliant or federal non-compliant DL/ID card nationwide, according to the pre-solicitation posted on Dec. 6 on behalf of the DMV.

Using this S2S program, the DMV also could share state-issued DL/ID information with other participating states and send DL/ID card termination requests to them as well — all processes performed electronically through the S2S program.

Although the CDT posted the pre-solicitation on the DMV’s behalf, the contract itself will be DMV-owned, and contractor-built and -maintained.

Ultimately, this solicitation seeks to provide a better solution “for electronic communications between existing DMV systems and the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA) State to State System,” said Tiffany Angulo, assistant deputy director of statewide technology procurement at the CDT, during the CDT Vendor Forum on Dec. 8.

Participation in the AAMVA S2S System — which allows participating states “to electronically check with all other participating states to determine if the applicant currently holds a driver license or identification card in another state,” according to its website — is voluntary. As of October of 2021, 34 state DMVs have implemented their own S2S Verification Service program; the most recent DMV to complete its system was New Hampshire on June 14, 2021.

At the California DMV, the project’s administrative and technical requirements, per the pre-solicitation, include “creating a process that allows California DMV technicians to perform an instant query to AAMVA S2S database” so the California DMV can quickly determine whether the applicant holds an out-of-state DL/ID card and, if so, send the other state “a request to terminate the out-of-state DL/ID card by project completion.”

Another requirement is the ability to electronically transfer applicable California license or ID cardholders’ data to the AAMVA S2S database so that, by project completion, participating states may access the data.

In addition, the contractor’s implementation approach must not only have minimal impact to existing DMV operations and customers, but also integrate with DMV legacy systems and align with future DMV efforts, including upcoming AAMVA enhancements and the DMV’s Digital eXperience Platform — a Platform as a Service solution that will optimize workflow-based processes for the department’s legacy occupational licensing applications.

This new S2S system also must build a foundation for future S2S phases, such as driver’s history functionality.

The pre-solicitation closes at 9 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 17, at which point confidential meetings with potential bidders will be held. The official solicitation release is expected on Jan. 4, 2022, with an anticipated closing date of January 19, 2022.

Improvements to CDT’s Project Approval Lifecycle Coming in 2022

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Better planning results in better project outcomes.

That’s the impetus behind the California Department of Technology’s (CDT’s) Project Approval Lifecycle (PAL), a framework that’s been in place for a number of years “to improve the quality, value and likelihood of success for IT projects undertaken by the state of California,” according to the CDT’s Statewide Information Management Manual. And in recent years, officials noticed that the framework process needs to be more adaptive, agile and nimble.

“Certainly the pandemic has identified that,” said Deputy State Chief Project Officer Andrew Wertin during the CDT Vendor Forum on Dec. 8, “and in practice, we actually have found some mechanisms to make it more nimble in terms of the process.”

In fact, Wertin said that over the last year or so, a team has actively engaged with the community and partnered with departments to assess pain points and determine how PAL can incorporate more consistently with the CDT’s new procurement modernization efforts.

So, in the first quarter of 2022, the plan is to:

  • Simplify and streamline the forms;
  • Align with projects using an adaptive/agile development methodology and challenge-based procurement approach; and
  • Promote more efficient “concept to launch.”

The PAL framework consists of four stages, and Wertin explained that in Stage 3, Solution Development, there are two areas in which an agent would be of assistance — dealing with the solicitation and the procurement. But the plan, he said, is to consolidate Stage 3 with Stage 2 (Alternatives Analysis).

“Now with the challenge-based procurement — perhaps as early as the Alternatives Analysis, where information is solicited from you all — [we would be] providing better solutions without having the state set a bunch of hard and fast requirements and making a fairly rigid, older style RFP process,” he said. “So, it’s really a consolidation of these two areas and making them work a little bit better.”

PAL’s overall goal, said Deputy State CIO and CDT Chief Deputy Director Russ Nichols, is to make sure the department is getting to successful outcomes and to invest heavily in challenge-based procurement.

“[We’re] really modernizing the way we do it, so it’s not sequential and not built just for multi-year, huge efforts,” he said, “but how do we break those down and make sure we’re on the right path sooner.”

First Technology Modernization Fund Projects Expected to Launch in January 2022

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California’s Technology Modernization Fund (TMF), approved by the California Department of Technology this past summer to fund small efforts that can quickly provide high-value services and fund urgent needs identified by the state’s Stabilization Service, is already off and running — it aims to launch its first round of selected projects in January 2022 and start round two in the first quarter of next year.

As previously reported, the budget allocates funding for the California Department of Technology (CDT) to grant $25 million to the TMF, which Carolyn Nordstrom, deputy director of the CDT’s Project Management Office (PMO), said is “to allow us to demonstrate a new way of funding technology projects.”

Oftentimes, Nordstrom said during the CDT Vendor Forum on Dec. 8, the state budget process doesn’t align well with the project needs, which results in delays as far as procurement and actually kicking off projects. So, the TMF, she continued, will fund small efforts that can provide high value services quickly.

“We are looking for ideas that are not huge and complex, but that are pretty well defined and can really get off the ground quickly,” Nordstrom said. “It might be a proof of concept. It might be something that can get a project off the ground and bridge the need for larger planning of bigger project efforts.”

In fact, state departments already submitted ideas they thought appropriate for TMF size and scope and the PMO has reviewed and selected a few that will, at the end of this week, pitch their ideas Shark Tank-style to a selection committee consisting of business executives from different state agencies and departments.

“We’re trying to really make sure that the business is driving these ideas — that they’re not just coming out of the technology world, but they’re really problems that the business needs to have solved,” Nordstrom said. “And that we’re building that partnership between business and technology to get these things done.”

The goal for this round of projects, she added, is to focus on things that can be delivered quickly; the hope is that the PMO will select one or more of these projects that it will launch in January and be in use by the end of fiscal year 2022. Shortly after the round one projects are launched, funding of round two projects will begin.

“This will be a recurring process,” Nordstrom said. “We’ll continue while we have money available to invest with the goal of demonstrating to the Department of Finance and the Legislature and others that this is a really successful and viable alternative way to fund certain kinds of technology investments and modernization.”

While utilizing the TMF isn’t necessarily a fit for all projects — especially large high-risk and highly complex projects — Deputy State CIO and CDT Chief Deputy Director Russ Nichols said it’s something the department is extremely invested in.

“This is kind of a transformative approach to some of those smaller, high-value projects,” he said, noting that the digital vaccine record developed during the pandemic is a solid example of what the TMF can accomplish, as it was a project developed and rolled out very quickly. “We are learning a little bit as we go, but our goal is to make this very successful.”

As for the Stabilization Service component, CDT Chief Service Assessment Officer Ron Robinette said this is a new program — implemented this year — to make sure all applications systems, websites, portals and services in the state are running their best.

“We want to find issues before they are big problems,” he said. “If we go in early and identify some key issues that are happening with the application, we want to fix those first — fix the urgent needs while we’re there — utilizing the funding that’s available with that Technology Modernization Fund.”

Then, he added, if there are problems “bigger than a backpack,” his team will partner with the CDT through the budget process to help obtain the funding necessary for a more transformative effort that will ensure their critical services are running their best.

Right now, Robinette’s team is in the process of prioritizing the most mission critical systems throughout the state and in January, plans move into the diagnostic and discovery process to determine what, if anything is happening with them and devising a plan to fix them.

This approach, Nichols noted, is another fundamental change. “Historically, the way we build systems in a state — and the way a lot of organizations have done it — is that large investment up front,” he said. “And when something is promoted into production, we tend to just operate it until we see sparks fly.”

But the CDT intends for this new effort to be more proactive and focused on preventative maintenance so that mission critical systems especially will be functioning properly even when they’re under load.

“It’s a change in philosophy,” he added, “really going to look at our important systems and make sure that we are building them to continue those mission critical services in the state — and really expand that into the way we look at systems in the future.”

Governor Announces 18 Middle-Mile Broadband Infrastructure Projects

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Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday announced the first round of 18 broadband infrastructure projects that are part of this year’s historic $6 billion plan to bridge the digital divide.  The middle-mile initiative includes a range of projects across the state to increase internet access for unserved and underserved communities.

“A reliable broadband connection makes the difference between having access to full-service health care, education and employment or sometimes going without,” said State CIO Amy Tong in a press release. “Through a historic partnership between our Governor, the Legislature, state agencies and a third-party administrator, we are taking immediate action to improve connectivity for Californians in the northern, central and southern parts of the state.”

The 18 projects range across the following counties and regions: Alpine County; Amador County; Calaveras County; Central Coast; Coachella Valley; Colusa Area; Inyo County; Kern County; Kern/San Luis Obispo Area; Lake County Area; Los Angeles and South Los Angeles; Oakland; Orange County; Plumas Area; Riverside/San Diego Area; San Bernardino County; Siskiyou Area; and West Fresno.   A list and map of the projects are posted online.

State agencies implementing the middle-mile initiative include the California Department of Technology, California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and Caltrans.

Nonprofit GoldenStateNet was selected as the Third-Party Administrator to manage the development and operation of the statewide open-access middle-mile broadband network.

The Middle-Mile Advisory Committee, chaired by State CIO Amy Tong with state officials from the executive and legislative branches, oversees the initiative.

“Equity remains our highest purpose in expanding the open-access middle-mile network. These initial sites are only the beginning, and I look forward to the tangible improvements this work will deliver to residents of our state,” said Caltrans Director Toks Omishakin, in a press release.

Last summer, the governor approved SB 156, initiating the creation of a statewide open-access middle mile network.

 

Q&A: California’s CIO and CISO reveal next steps for the state’s new cybersecurity strategy

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Since Gov. Gavin Newsom announced California’s first state-wide cybersecurity strategy last month, IT officials have been promoting the plan as something that will do more than increase security, streamline operations, or even cut costs. Officials said the strategy, known as Cal-Secure, lays the foundation for the future of California’s cybersecurity defense.

“We don’t want it to become a document that is shelfware, but it’s something that agencies can relate to and take action and find value,” said California’s Chief Information Officer Amy Tong. “We want Cal-Secure to provide agencies a prioritization on how to achieve what they need to achieve in terms of maturing their cybersecurity posture.”

Tong, who spoke to GovReport with Vitaliy Panych, California’s Chief Information Security Officer, said Cal-Secure is the culmination of many hours spent across multiple agencies to create a set of best practices and frameworks to plug critical gaps in the state’s cybersecurity programs, while simultaneously, assisting the state to defend itself against ongoing cyberattacks. The plan directs everything from hiring, training, information sharing, to the technical applications of cybersecurity technologies.

Image: LinkedIn

And while a gamut of public and private organizations contributed to Cal-Secure’s design, the plan itself will be overseen by California’s Department of Technology, California Homeland Security Strategy (HSS), California Highway Patrol and the state’s Military Department. Tong stressed this collective oversight insured Cal-Secure’s longevity and effectiveness.

“What this really presents is an ecosystem of a holistic cybersecurity defense in protecting California’s public assets. That really is the essence of Cal-Secure.” Tong said. “It’s a 360-degree plan that is policy driven, action oriented and focused on the long term.”

Yet the plan will also be somewhat disruptive for the state’s current cybersecurity contractors and vendors. Tong said that where possible, Cal-Secure would aim to consolidate cybersecurity services and explore shared cybersecurity solutions between agencies. This could save the state millions of dollars—as Louisiana discovered in its successful cybersecurity consolidation effort—and help staff to manage systems more efficiently. But for vendors, it might also mean funding is channeled into the hands of fewer companies—something that may have some companies elated and others anxious.

Tong said the practice of consolidation and shared services should be expected as it’s a common state tactic to improve efficiency and improve services. This she said applied to all IT, not just cybersecurity.

“Any time when there are commonly used services that can be standardized, coordinated statewide—and then through that standardization and coordination the state can leverage its purchasing power—we are always striving for that,” Tong said.

To provide additional details, Panych sat down with GovReport to elaborate on the finer points of Cal-Secure, something he said that began with the development of the state’s Vision 2020 and is now part of California’s Vision 2023 strategic plan. Below is his interview, lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

GovReport: In your own words, how would you describe Cal-Secure, its development, and the collaboration that was required to produce the cybersecurity strategy?

California Chief Information Security Officer Vitaliy Panych: So, Cal-Secure is our state of California roadmap, our foundational document, which outlines where we are, where we’re going and how we need to get there. There are nine key priorities surrounded by three underlying pillars: people, process, and technology. It also outlines 15 key initiatives that we as a state focus on our underlying departments. This was a highly collaborative process where every state organization was brought in: every major system of every major department that we oversee. In fact, we have 40-plus public and private sector organizations represented and providing this input on how we must shape and secure the state of California. That includes state agencies, private sector organizations, even counties and cities participated. We’ve facilitated over 20 formalized workshops with over 450-plus hours of working sessions conducted amongst those organizations. I was heavily involved in the development of this roadmap and the plan even before I joined CDT…We also brought in all aspects of the cybersecurity leadership within the state. including our partners within the CalOES, council partners, California Highway Patrol, the Military Department, and during the pandemic we ensured that this roadmap and plan is informed by the Homeland security strategy, which outlines all aspects of security for the state of California and not just in cyber…And so this is highly collaborative, highly adaptable and agile.

GovReport: Where are you now in delivering on this plan?

Panych: So, I will also say that we were able to conduct some really good trial runs during the height of the pandemic in exercising this plan, so we’re well ahead in the execution of this plan. And having it published externally for the public just gives us a greater sounding board and executive sponsorship to further execute this plan. And like I said, we keep evolving it because cybersecurity, in general, is a highly evolutionary space. The cybersecurity threat landscape shifts on a really fast cadence. We’re always learning how fast we need to react during issues. That’s why I want to emphasize that this plan is highly agile, adaptable by design and by intent so we can keep up with this ever-evolutionary threat landscape that the whole world is dealing within the cybersecurity.

GovReport: Looking at current IT staff and the state’s cybersecurity workforce, how will this impact staffing, training, and hiring.

Panych: As you know, there is a skill shortage in the cybersecurity realm and we’re trying to address it. And we are addressing it by instituting various [training] initiatives and programs outlined in Cal-Secure that focus on internal staff, but also on the public…For example, in academia, we’re working with the community colleges, we’re working with the universities and high schools to really promote cybersecurity and ideally promote cybersecurity early, starting in high school. CyberstartAmerica.org is one of our examples in how we’re engaging high school students there in order to build a career pipeline so that they can start those folks off early, inspire them early, educate them early, and then ideally help them land jobs in the cybersecurity career field, whether it’s private or public sector. We’re also engaging in various initiatives for our internal staff, like running an information, security leadership academy, running an IT leadership academy, there’s multiple [workforce development] tracks of technology leadership that that CDT is responsible for and delivering. This isn’t just focused on state government, but we also have participants in academia, and within our local sector partners, our counties and cities. So those are just some of the items where we’re engaged and the list goes on… You can’t invest in just technology without investing in the workforce and the people or the new processes and policies in your oversight framework. These pillars, essentially, are force multipliers.

GovReport: Is there an opportunity to consolidate services or create shared services through this strategy?

Panych: [Consolidation] is another underlying tenant that’s reinforced by vision 2023, for example. You know, making technology easy to use, to access and share and reuse across government. With that in mind, we’re also looking at repeatable and reusable capabilities and services within the state. So, like Amy mentioned, leveraging the state’s purchasing power is always a goal. There are certain technical capabilities that could be sourced from one level of an organization centrally instead of in a silo within an agency or department. And we are looking for those capabilities. One of the latest and greatest capabilities that we have built up recently—as you may have heard the governor mention—over the last several years the state of California invested over $260 million in cybersecurity efforts, of that 11.3 million, was one time funding and 38.8 million was ongoing funding. And that’s really to bolster some of our centralized capabilities such as security, operations monitoring, detection and response, as well as our centralized audit program. You know you can’t improve what you cannot measure. So auditing is extremely important to identify gaps. Another centralized capability that we recently built within Cal-Secure and CalOES is a dedicated incident response team, which has been crucial and beneficial, tackling and responding to some of the major incidents that our government organizations experience, including cities, counties, and local jurisdictions. So, we have built up a dedicated threat intelligence and incident response team as a centralized capability. And there is a myriad of other potential centralized capabilities that we can potentially partner on, however, there are other capabilities that counsel outlines that state entities must be responsible for at a local level, because you can’t outsource every aspect of your IT every time, 100 percent of the time. So, Cal-Secure aims to prioritize those capabilities and articulates and outlines where is the most effective way to implement and maintain a certain cybersecurity-like function and capability. And so that’s, that’s always a topic where we want to be more effective, more efficient so that we can protect more things and do more things within our existing sandbox.

GovReport: Gov. Gavin Newsom spoke of hard deadlines to compel agencies to act, can you describe what type of deadlines are part of Cal-Secure?
Panych: So, the key end goal with that is really to emphasize some of the security basics, some of the “Security 101” things that everybody must focus on, you know, decommissioning of legacy software, legacy operating systems, facilitating better [software update and] patch management…just some of the basic fundamental things that everybody must focus on. And then not in every case, but when an agency is unable to achieve some of those set fundamentals, then we’ll help to support the agency to learn how it can mitigate some of those deficiencies. So, this is more of a collaborative approach to facilitate information sharing and remediating some of these basic issues. This is why [agency] reporting was highly emphasized in the governor’s address [announcing Cal-Secure] so we can foster information sharing in government…We want those entities that report to collaborate and then have information sharing mechanisms with our partners so that we can advise.

GovReport: What will make Cal-Secure a success in its growth by the end of 2022?
Panych: Executing on the initiatives that we have outlined, promoting it, briefing it, raising awareness to all stakeholders, to all of our entities, briefing all of our partners, including private and local partners…You know, this approach means we rely and depend on each other and on other organizations. We exchange services, we provide data to one another. So, if Cal-Secure is going to be a success, it’s prudent and incumbent upon all of us to implement similar strategies in a cohesive and prioritized fashion, evangelizing it, prioritizing it, talking to all of our partners and looking for those opportunities to be more efficient.

Newsom Announces Cradle-to-Career Data System Governing Board Appointments

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Gov. Gavin Newsom announced seven new appointments on Friday, including four new appointments to the Cradle-to-Career Data System Governing Board.

Lande Ajose, Catalina Cifuentes, Gavin Payne, and Robert Tagorda were all appointed to a Cradle-to-Career Data System Governing Board. The board is made up of representatives of data providers and stakeholders that can track, interpret, and utilize the data collected by the system.

Each of the four appointees have held positions within the education system and are accepting no compensation to join the Governing Board.

According to the Cradle-to-Career Data System’s website, the governing board “would set the strategic direction and ensure that the system is supporting the state’s goals.”

“Two advisory boards would support the governing board, one to ensure that the system includes actionable data and the other to ensure that the intended audiences are aware of the data system and know how to use the information it provides,” per the data system’s website.

GovOps launched the Cradle-to-Career Data System earlier in 2021, creating a comprehensive program in which policymakers and other interested parties such as educators and parents can keep tabs on student progression and employment outcomes within the state.

In early 2021, the Legislative Analyst’s Office noted that the data system should seek to answer questions regarding the efficacy of various education programs and how they correlate to student success from early education to employment.

The Cradle-to-Career Data System has named some of its goals, including streamlining access to college applications, improving financial aid access, identifying structural factors that shape long-term education outcomes, and streamlining access to data.

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