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California outlines future of artificial intelligence

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The State of California has taken initial steps to consider how artificial intelligence will play an inevitable role in delivering services to the people of the Golden State.

Legislation passed in 2019 called for California to work with stakeholders and develop guidelines by January 2021.

At a recent vendor forum by the California Department of Technology, Chief of Statewide Technology Policy CDT Pam Haase gave an update on the department’s initiative, which began earlier in the year but was slowed down considerably by constraints caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Image by Michael Dziedzic, Unsplash

Haase laid out three broad objectives regarding the implementation of AI to state departments, each of which has a varying level of understanding and experience with AI technology.

Those objectives include:

Demonstrating how AI can improve delivery and digital services. CDT has partnered with the CITRIS Policy Lab to study industry use of AI and produce a report that outlines basic recommendations for AI adoption within state government.

Providing guidelines for the ethical and responsible use of AI. CDT wants to establish trust from the public in their ability to implement AI in an ethical manner.
Providing a practical approach to implementing AI. This includes creating an AI vendor pool, training for both the business and technical side of procuring and implementing the new technology.

Haase also noted that she expects a concrete policy framework regarding the use of AI to become available by the spring of 2021 following input from the public via a listening session.

In an effort to cater to varying needs statewide, Haase stressed that AI will provide value to any and all departments regardless of their awareness and experience level with the technology.

“The deliverables are going to provide something of value to everyone no matter where you’re at, whether you’re brand new to AI, or whether your department is already currently using it,” Haase said.

Further, according to CDT’s Chief Technology Innovation Officer Manveer Bola, who also spoke at the forum, one of the major priorities regarding the implementation of AI technology is to tailor digital services to meet “specific user needs.”

Part of that includes using AI to promote web diversity by quickly and accurately translating websites as well as providing customer service mimicking a one-on-one chat with an employee.

Another goal Bola mentioned was to use AI to gather COVID response surveys, even reading into them further than one would expect from AI.

“We’re looking at AI to try to help us boil down those responses into much more meaningful output that we can consume easier, maybe even measuring sentiment,” Bola said.

California chief data officer announces statewide data strategy

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California has a new statewide data strategy that boldly challenges some established ideas in the civic tech community, Chief Data Officer Joy Bonaguro announced on Thursday.

“The concept of a strategy is overused and often trite. But if used wisely, it can lead to durable change and it starts with goals.  The mantra ‘the strategy is delivery’ frequently appears in the civic tech and data space. And while the delivery of a strategy is important, that alone is not enough,” she said in an article she posted on Medium.

The 21-page document outlines a strategy, goals, governance, and overall approach to California state government’s use of data to serve people of the Golden State.   As a first such strategy, it is a “necessary best guess,” that the state plans to iterate and learn as it’s implemented.

“California’s statewide data strategy is structured around the analogy that in order to successfully navigate the ‘data landscape’ we need to intentionally build the roads, craft the rules of the road, and boost the drivers. Much like in the real world, we want to avoid data roads that lead to nowhere, are poorly maintained, or confuse our drivers,” according to the introduction.

She states that goals answer the question “are we there yet” and that a well-written strategy serves as glue, alignment, and a filter. A goal that is not aligned with the strategy should either be discarded or placed low on the list of priorities.

High-level goals include:

  • Goal 1. Streamline data access – build the data roads
  • Goal 2. Improve data management and governance – craft the rules of the road
  • Goal 3. Spur data use and ability –  boost the drivers

“Good use of data is the tool we can use to navigate that complexity and ensure that our programs and services are working well for all Californians,” says Bonaguro in her article.

She gave a preview of the strategy in August via a Zoom with the CalData community. 

 

California launches cannabis licensing system

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California cannabis-licensing authorities—BCC, CDFA, and CDPH—launched a unified licensing search platform on September 16, 2020. The platform was produced through a collaboration between the authorities and the California Department of Technology, the California Health and Human Services Agency Office of Innovation, and the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development.

According to the Bureau Chief, Lori Ajax, the platform makes it easier to access cannabis license information without going through each licensing authority, and it will help consumers find retailers near them.   “This unified license data search tool will make it easier for the public to access cannabis license information without having to inquire with each licensing authority separately,” Ajax said in a press release. “This will also help consumers identify licensed cannabis retailers near them.”

The search platform features an interactive map and geolocation tools. Users can submit a survey offering feedback on its usability for the authorities to refine it. The platform is updated every 24 hours.

Governor Gavin Newsom plans to improve access to cannabis licensing by consolidating the authorities into a single Department of Cannabis Control, with the search platform being a part of the overall plan.

California Universities to Test COVID-19 Exposure Notification App

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The California Department of Public Health (CPDH) and the California Department of Technology (CDT) are partnering with UC San Diego and UC San Francisco to pilot an app that could inform individuals when they may have been exposed to COVID-19.

Photo by Brian McGowan on Unsplash

The mobile app, called Exposure Notification Express, has been designed by Apple and Google to use bluetooth technology to confidentially alert individuals when they are in close proximity to someone who has tested positive for the virus, provided that the individual has shared their test results with the app.

Faculty, staff, and the student body at both UC San Diego and UC San Francisco will test the app in a month-long trial period beginning at the end of September.

While the app does not collect data or share user information, individuals would need to opt-in to use the app if and when it becomes available to the public, according to CDT Director Amy Tong.

The Exposure Notification Express app will serve as a necessary supplement to California’s COVID-19 testing system, which failed to register roughly 750,000 positive tests back in August.

California Partners with Chan Zuckerburg Initiative to find COVID-19 Cures

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California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) and the Chan Zuckerburg Initiative (CZI) are collaborating to advance scientific efforts in developing treatments and cures for the COVID-19 virus. CIRM will combine its data and infrastructure with CZI’s expertise in technology to find ways to treat the disease, the state announced this week.

“This will allow us to leverage our respective investments in genomic science in the fight against COVID-19.” said Maria T. Millan, President and CEO of CIRM in a press statement.

The collaborating entities share scientific data about COVID-19 for their researchers to build off each other’s work, accelerating toward understanding and finding treatments for the virus.

Additionally, the CIRM Board approved $5 million in emergency funding in March 2020 that currently supports 17 projects aimed at studying the impact of the virus at the single-cell level. CZI supports five projects studying the progression of COVID-19 in patients.

The data generated by the collaboration will be available to the scientific community via open-access datasets and portals.

California to Roll Out New COVID-19 Reporting System in October

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California will roll out a new COVID-19 reporting system in October after it awarded a renewable six-month, $15.3-million contract to healthcare technology OptumInsight, Inc., the state announced this week.  The announcement follows a recent failure of the state’s infectious disease registry CalREDIE to accurately report testing data, which reportedly resulted in the Department of Public Health director’s resignation last month.

“This system will reduce labor-intensive collection processes and minimize delays in reporting data so that public health experts across the state have swift access to the tools and data they need to prevent COVID-19 transmission and respond to new cases and outbreaks,” said State Chief Information Officer Amy Tong in a statement.

California will soon have plenty of test results to report, store, and analyze. Last week, Gov. Newsom announced a $1.4-billion contract with Massachusetts-based diagnostics company PerkinElmer to increase California’s COVID-19 testing from 100,000 to 250,000 per day.

CalREDIE suffered a significant glitch in July that caused COVID-19 cases to be underreported, which in turn led Gov. Gavin Newsom to prematurely announce “early good signs” in an Aug. 3 press conference.

DGS Measures Benefits of Teleworking

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When the COVID-19 outbreak in March forced most state workers to telework indefinitely, the Department of General Services (DGS) took the opportunity to begin a case study tracking the impacts of working from home.  Executives in the department’s IT and human resources divisions collaborated to develop a telework dashboard to visualize activities across the department.

Using a telework dashboard designed in May to track data and habits from its roughly 1,400 workers teleworking either full or part-time, DGS sought to discover the impacts of working from home that may inform the decision to telework even beyond the state-mandated shutdown.

According to DGS, its workers have saved a cumulative 16.4 years of commute time, 200,000 gallons of gasoline (worth approximately $620,000 at the pump), and 1,761 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

In addition to the positive environmental impact, 80 percent of DGS workers polled in a recent survey indicated that they would like to continue teleworking on a permanent basis.

See DGS’ dashboard here: https://telework.govops.ca.gov/tracking-telework/dgs-case-study/

Stewards of Change Institute teams with Stanford University on Equity Initiative

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The not-for-profit think tank Stewards of Change Institute (SOCI) and the Stanford University Center for Population Health Sciences have joined forces on a year-long effort combining academic research, data collection and collaboration with people across multiple sectors to identify systems-level changes that can fundamentally improve population health.

Leaders of the National Action Agenda to Advance Upstream Social Determinants and Health Equity say the effort aims to advance health equity and social justice, as well as value-based, person-centered care.

Daniel Stein, president of SOCI, said the collaboration also will facilitate a more effective response to health crises such as COVID-19, which has laid bare long-existing – but not always obvious – economic, social, racial and health inequities.

“The pandemic magnifies the importance of this effort,” he said. “It brings a lens to the populations that have always been at risk, underserved and under-resourced. It highlights the pain of those populations, but also those several strata up now finding themselves in need of government services. On another level, it highlights the extremely fragile nature of our non-system systems to address these disparities.”

Stein acknowledged that the problems occupy a “gigantic space,” and that to be effective addressing disparities the effort demands sharing data across systems that traditionally have operated vertically. This approach is critical to getting a full picture of the influences affecting someone’s life, he said. He cited as an example a homeless man diagnosed with diabetes who is given medicine that needs refrigeration.

“He has no place to keep his meds, so it’s worthless,” he said. “You need to think across the stream.”

The National Action Agenda includes the development of seven workgroups organized around individual social determinants of health, including: food (hunger and access); neighborhood and physical environment; economic mobility; education; community and social context (race, integration); health care; and legal services. Each group will bring together academic researchers, community organizations, government entities and provider groups, among others. Additional activities include a webinar series led by former California Department of Public Health Director Karen Smith, a national symposium at Stanford University and a proof-of-concept implementation project.

David Rehkopf, co-director of the Stanford Center for Population Health Sciences, said the collaboration sits perfectly with the center’s direction and mission.

“Our mission is to improve population health, and by publishing research papers we don’t do anything. We need to partner with others and bring people together. The innovative thing here is convening, to think through things to address problems. It’s a process of engagement and continuing to evaluate, to see what is working and not working with evidence from a variety of people.”

Rehkopf said individual policies and legislation can trickle down and affect massive improvements in health outcomes. He cited the impact of the federal and state Earned Income Tax Credit on reducing poverty, which he has for years studied and championed.

Both Rehkopf and Stein hope the collaboration among people from multiple sectors and with different backgrounds and voices will result in a handful of actionable recommendations that ultimately could be implemented to improve equity.

“Amid all the challenges going on right now there is an awareness and interest from a broader range of people to really work on issues of equity,” Rehkopf said. “Now is the time to do it and see what we can accomplish when we have this opportunity.”

Code for America Advisor to Help with California’s Tech Vision

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Very Little Gravitas LLC, a firm owned by consultant Dan Hon, was awarded a $246,840 contract with the California Department of Technology (CDT) to provide Vision 2023 IT Strategic Plan consulting services. This contract is in effect from August 10, 2020, through August 9, 2021, according to state procurement records.

Image: LinkedIn

In a tweet on August 14, Hon said “V. excited for me and my team to work on crafting the tech strategy for the world’s 5th biggest economy.”  He also said that former 18F Chief of Staff Cyd Harrell would be joining him in the consulting engagement.

Hon helped develop the California Child Welfare Digital Service in 2015 while working for Code for America. A year later he started Very Little Gravitas with a focus on helping California’s State government transform digital delivery to better meet user needs.   He continued to work as a consultant at Child Welfare Digital Services from 2017 to May 2020.

In 2016 and 2017 he was a digital transformation consultant for the California Health and Human Services Agency, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Hon currently serves as Code for America Summit co-chair and as a non-paid advisor to the organization, says his profile. The nonprofit, whose website says “We’re on a mission to make government work in the digital age,” was founded by Jennifer Pahlka in 2010.  The organization organizes thousands of volunteers in nearly 80 chapters across the U.S. to work on projects, such as GetCalFresh and ClearMyRecord to support government agencies.

Christman appointed to oversee California’s public health data operation

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Veteran data expert and former department CIO Scott Christman has been appointed to oversee California’s public health data operation, the program that tracks birth, death and marriage certifications, among other things.  The announcement came after last week’s high-profile COVID-19 data reporting glitch that reportedly cost the Public Health Director her job.

Christman, who is returning to government after a stint in the private sector, previously served as a project manager in the office that he now directs.  He also previously served in key roles such as acting agency information officer for the California Health and Human Services Agency and CIO at the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development.

As deputy director for the Center for Health Statistics and Informatics at the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), he is the first non-medical doctor to hold the position.   His predecessors include Jim Green, Linette Scott, and Este Geraghty, all MDs.   In the department organizational chart, he is a peer to department CIO Gary Nodine.  They both report to the chief deputy director.

Christman has been central in the state’s effort to develop open data policies and helped with the CDPH open data playbook, released in 2013, which evolved into the Statewide Open Data Playbook issued in 2015 by the Government Operations Agency.

Besides the recent reporting errors, for obvious reasons related to COVID-19, public health data has been a priority for the Newsom Administration.   The governor recently announced CalCAT, a forecasting and assessment tool that is also intended to reach citizen scientists, achieving unprecedented levels of government transparency, a theme in his book Citizenville.

Also last week on behalf of CDPH, the California Department of Technology launched a “challenge” with the vendor community to rapidly develop a solution to create a “robust and automated solution to securely and accurately collect, store, analyze and publish COVID-19 electronic lab reporting and case data for our constituents.” according to the state’s COVID-19 website.

Christman starts the new position on September 1.