Digital

O’Reilly said if the Biden Administration and local progressive policymakers fail to apply this one IT industry principle, it could mean the end for some social equity initiatives.

It’s not good enough to just have good ideas—execution matters.

That was the tenet shared by Tim O’Reilly, the tech thought leader and founder of O’Reilly Media, as he spoke to an audience of technologists and government innovators on April 29. O’Reilly took part in a Q&A-styled discussion hosted by the civic tech group Code for America, where he serves as a board member. His focus targeted social equity reform.

O’Reilly said that when it comes to social policies and programs, the litmus test for effective government is the capacity for implementation. Even in our skeptical and partisan world, O’Reilly said efficient implementation has an uncanny and indisputable power to build faith in new ideas and change beliefs.

“I will say that change happens when people believe that things can be different. And changing the way people feel and think and believe about an issue is, in fact, almost the fundamental human act,” O’Reilly said.

In tech, excellence in implementation is an ideology that has enabled the industry to take once obscure products and business models and transform them into billion-dollar companies. The tech industry’s flourish of public support, O’Reilly said, is fueled by its ability to prove its ideas via intuitive design, accessibility, quick response, and the quality and consistent user experiences we now expect.

For social equity, he called on all levels of government to adopt delivery-driven policy-making, a Code for America term for creating policies and programs that are engineered for citizen-consumers. Simply put, this means governments map out the logistical “how” of service delivery before jumping to create new programs, policies, or regulations. Data and testing are critical elements in this framework.

When asked what this means for the Biden Administration, especially after its first 100 days, O’Reilly was straightforward. Finding ideas for social good won’t be the problem, he said; the president’s biggest challenge will be taking the forward-thinking concepts and embodying them within tangible, hand-to-mouth programs.

“The thing that’s so important about this moment is we now have this meeting of policy ideas that are progressive, but the real worry is that if they’re not implemented well, everybody will say, ‘oh, that didn’t work,'” O’Reilly said.

President Biden’s current list of high priorities includes a $2.3 trillion infrastructure jobs plan, funding dedicated to improvements like rebuilding roads, maintaining bridges, and increasing broadband. He has a $1.8 trillion family plan, a bill that would expand preschool and college opportunities, provide family and medical leave, and distribute childcare subsidies.

These two bills accompany initiatives in climate change, immigration, bankruptcy reform, racial equity, and housing.

O’Reilly said delivery is an equally crucial determinant for success at the state, county, and city levels, adding the work demands an interplay of insightful policy and artful technology applications. He advised governments to support IT departments as a safeguard for managing services and making informed decisions. O’Reilly also discouraged the idea that governments only need to be brokers of digital services supplied by the private sector.

“I would say the first thing that we really need to get across is that technological capability should not be outsourced,” O’Reilly said. “We’ve been in the grip of a theory of government that says, ‘this tech stuff is just something you should buy from the outside,’—and while I think it’s really true that the government shouldn’t necessarily be building up this huge capacity and competing with the private sector—government should have the capability to understand and engage.”

The Obama Administration’s first attempts to roll out the Affordable Care Act via Healthcare.gov, the nation’s healthcare insurance exchange, exemplifies the concept. The controversial insurance exchange failed in its initial attempts due to a lack of digital expertise in the federal government. Its eventual launch and successful deployment came only after the White House brought in Silicon Valley talent and institutionalized modern IT management through in-house digital services groups like 18F and the U.S. Digital Service.

“Now at the federal level you have the U.S. Digital Service, you have 18F, you have the Defense Digital Service, where these groups are bringing the capability to come in, meet with a project manager, and say this contract just doesn’t make sense, but here’s how we can go about solving this problem.”

O’Reilly spotlighted the groups as examples local government can emulate. Cities and counties might not have the budget to replicate the groups, but O’Reilly said local jurisdictions could empower their IT staff or IT departments with added authority, resources, and internal support from leadership. Ultimately, he said that this backing translates into a better, data-driven government that produces results.

“We have all these arguments in our country that a [government] program should be this way or that way, and we haven’t interrogated enough if we did what we intended to do,” O’Reilly said.

Code for America, which has assisted dozens of cities and local agencies with digital transformation projects since 2009, will hold its annual summit from June 12-13. Check back here for news coverage of its summit focused on digital solutions for social equity.

The architects of the first phase of the California Cradle-to-Career Data System have submitted the second of three reports outlining plans to connect data across various segments of education to benefit students and to inform educators and legislators in their policy and decision-making.

While California’s education system includes early education, K-12, community colleges and universities, data collected on students are not currently linked. The 2019 California Cradle-to-Career Data System Act set out requirements for the development of the statewide data infrastructure to address disparities and improve student outcomes by leveraging educational, workforce, financial aid and social service data.

Part of the 2019-2020 budget package, the system is supported with $10 million in one-time funds for workgroup planning and initial system development, which is being facilitated by WestEd, a nonprofit in San Francisco.

In December of last year, the workgroup assembled by WestEd recommended three projects: an integrated data system linking records from various state agencies, expansion of CaliforniaColleges.edu to school districts throughout the state, and an upgrade to eTranscript California to include specific skills students acquired through nontraditional learning.

Kathy Booth, WestEd’s project director for educational data and policy, said the pandemic’s devastating effects on the educational system and on students make development and implementation of an integrated system even more critical as educators try to track student outcomes and their need for social supports. She said the planning team, consisting of public and private entities, has put hundreds of hours of work into the project.

“We had more than 200 people in this process working through the minutia,” she said. “All the data is there; it just needs to be linked and made public. All of our partners have been in total agreement. The model is all ready to go. We just need the legislature to say yes.”

With existing data systems currently, students may encounter confusing college application and financial application processes, as well as delays in admissions or unexpected rejections because of inaccurate or inconsistent data. In addition, education leaders and lawmakers cannot easily access student outcome information or other data that could guide policy and close equity gaps.

The plan envisions a system with one-stop shopping for students to select and apply to California public colleges and apply for financial aid, streamlined admissions processing and placement. Students also will be able to opt in to see if they are eligible for state food and medical care services, as well as share documentation on skills or certifications they have acquired, along with their course records.

Educators will be able to track the status of their students’ college and financial aid applications so they can support them during the process. Lawmakers, researchers and advocates will have access to information on the long-term outcomes of students so they can figure out how to spend state funds to address inequities through education, workforce training and social services.

In its March 26 report, the Legislative Analyst’s Office agreed with the administration that an integrated data system is needed and made several recommendations it says are necessary to ensure its success. They include a requirement to use the state Department of Technology’s Project Approval Lifecycle (PAL) process to plan, verify and validate the system. PAL was developed to reduce the likelihood of massive tech failures, which have plagued many of the state’s data systems over the past several years.

Booth said that the Department of Technology has been very involved in the planning efforts and will recommend the appropriate procurement process once the system is under way. She also emphasized that the planning team has recommended a proof-of-concept pilot project – a teacher retention dashboard to help state policymakers better understand and address teacher shortages, which have been exacerbated by the pandemic. In addition to the pilot, a five-year implementation process is estimated to cost between $15 million and $20 million annually.

WestEd’s final report is expected June 30.

A new data system to monitor homelessness aims to inform funding and policies for California social services.

California unveiled a potentially groundbreaking website to analyze its homelessness crisis. The site is part of a new system to measure the impacts of homelessness, identify contributing factors, and chronicle homeless support initiatives.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the Homeless Data Integration System (HDIS) on April 7, describing the site’s launch as part of the state’s ongoing campaign to curb housing insecurity. Newsom said the system will support policymakers and the public by providing a comprehensive analysis and an overview of initiatives underway to combat the problem.

“You can’t fix what you can’t measure and having a statewide data system will help us determine what’s working and what isn’t, the important insight we can use to create accountability and strengthen our response going forward,” Newsom said in a release.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), reported California had a 6.8 percent increase in homelessness from 2019 and 2020 and a 16.2 percent increase between 2007 and 2020. The spike in homelessness is the greatest increase for any state in the US. California also has the most homeless residents at an estimated 161,000, according to the HDIS site.

The Homeless Coordinating and Financing Council (HCFC) developed the system that integrates data from California’s “Continuums of Care,” a group of 44 planning organizations that facilitate services for homelessness. The HCFC worked with the IT vendor Plante Moran to build the data system over the course of 15 weeks and at a cost of $1.2 million.

State officials believe the single repository for data will enable agencies to answer previously unanswerable questions about what homeless services are used, who is accessing those services, and what interventions are most effective. This information will be coupled with data recording homelessness patterns, city homeless service demands, and inequities in homeless care.

“HDIS provides a foundational piece of the state’s data infrastructure,” said Joy
Bonaguro, the chief data officer at the California Government Operations Agency. “Before the HDIS, we had at best, an infrequent and piecemeal snapshot of the homeless challenges in California. With the HDIS we will have an ongoing and holistic picture of how we can assess and improve services for those experiencing homelessness.”

Among its statistics, HDIS reported more than 240,000 homeless had been served by local assistance providers in 2020, that 91,626 people moved into permanent housing, and 117,109 people “remained actively engaged” with services or shelter help — but had yet to find housing.

“From this data, we see some bright spots – [like] providing permanent housing to almost 100,000 homeless Californians every year and more than doubling our efforts to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place,” Newsom said. “But we know there is more work to do.”

This work likely includes homelessness prevention and improving care so social services can retain program participants. The site recorded that more than 40,000 people in 2020 had disengaged with California services and returned to homelessness.

Despite work ahead, optimism is high. The launch received support from Senator Scott Wiener, chair of the Senate Housing Committee; Assemblymember David Chiu, chair of the Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee; Castro Ramírez, the secretary of Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency (BCSH); as well as Jemine Bryon, deputy assistant secretary for Special Needs at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“This is a major step forward in our efforts to ensure every Californian has a roof over
their head,” Chiu said. “This is a tool that will help us hold state and local governments accountable for addressing our homelessness crisis.”

This week, legislation that would create the Automated Decision Systems Accountability Act of 2021 passed out of the Assembly Committee on Privacy and Consumer Protection, moving a step closer to regulating artificial intelligence in state IT projects. 

Assembly Bill 13 by Assemblymember David Chiu (D-San Francisco) requires decision-making on the acquisition of information technology to be supplemented with a computational process that includes data analysis, statistical models, and artificial intelligence that minimizes the risk of algorithmic bias, or the “risk of adverse and discriminatory impacts resulting from the design and application of automated decision systems.”

Existing law requires a “value-effective acquisition” of information technology goods—the careful consideration of operational cost, product quality, and other factors when awarding contracts for applications that carry a high level of risk.

According to the bill, high-risk applications are defined as any application that poses risks to personal information or legal rights of individuals, particularly those identified in the Unruh Civil Rights Act. 

AB13 hinges on the idea that legal obligation of seeking a value-effective acquisition cannot be fulfilled without leveraging automated support that eliminates or reduces the risk of discrimination and bias. 

The proposal says the California Department of Technology must “establish and make public guidelines for identifying automated decision systems that are subject to the bill’s requirements” on or before Jan. 1, 2023.  

The bill also requires that, within ten days of awarding a contract, state agencies must submit a high-risk automated decision system accountability report to CDT, which would provide “a description of any potential disparate impacts . . . and a detailed mitigation plan for identifying and minimizing the potential for any disparate impacts throughout the contracted use of the system.”

Assemblymember Ed Chau, who first proposed AB13 in Dec, 2020, fielded questions during the Thursday hearing. 

Some of AB13’s opposition expressed concerns regarding the breadth of the bill, and whether the definition of a “high-risk application” could be applied to nearly any work the state does on a daily basis.

Chau assured opponents that the bill had already been narrowed substantially and that AB13 “will likely be amended to explicitly exclude [calculators and spreadsheets] from the bill.”

Furthermore, Chau assured the opposition that AB13 would not require private companies that develop algorithms and artificial intelligence to reveal any trade secrets or proprietary information.