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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.”

 

Video: Implementing artificial intelligence in your government program? Here’s where you should start.

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When it comes to implementing and utilizing artificial intelligence in government programs, what should be top of mind for officials? According to Jennifer Watkins, managing principal at strategy firm Anewd.ai, program executives should “begin with the end in mind.” The GovReport Host Christina Gagnier talks with Watkins about various challenges and how to achieve success in the public sector.  Watch the 10-minute interview below:

 

Biomass plant near Bakersfield would bury or seal carbon in concrete

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John Cox, The Bakersfield Californian (MCT)

Kern’s carbon management rush has a new entrant with a Southern California company’s proposal to gasify local ag waste for production of hydrogen and carbon dioxide that can be injected underground or, in a novel twist, stored in concrete.

The startup, Mote, announced Wednesday engineering work has begun on a $100 million facility proposed outside Bakersfield that would capture 150,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year — roughly equivalent to taking 33,000 cars off the road — and 7 million kilograms of hydrogen for transportation starting as soon as 2024.

Combining existing technologies with local access to biomass waste and ideal geological formations, the proposal is the latest carbon burial project seeking federal tax credits and different state financial incentives for fighting climate change.

“Carbon removal and clean hydrogen are booming markets right now,” Managing Partner Andy Bonsall at London-based climate action investor Counteract, a Mote shareholder, said in Wednesday’s news release. “Mote is extraordinarily positioned to scale quickly for huge impact.”

Other active proposals by much larger companies aim to accomplish similar goals in Kern but on a larger scale and higher cost, sucking air out of the atmosphere directly or removing it from the emissions stream of a power plant in western Kern. At least one other project unveiled recently would gasify biomass and bury CO2 with no mention of concrete sequestration.

Mote has not applied for the environmental, injection, air and water permits it would require before beginning operation. But the company said it has a prospective partner developing the CO2 storage site, whose location it declined to disclose.

The county’s top planner and energy-permitting specialist, Lorelei Oviatt, said she has seen more of this sort of thing lately as companies announce agreements and investments without taking initial steps toward the conditional use permits and environmental reviews they would need.

“All the companies are doing this,” she said. “It’s fine. But no, I’ve never talked with these particular people.”

The county has received a single application for carbon capture and sequestration, from California Resources Corp. The Santa Clarita-based oil producer has disclosed plans for solar- and natural-gas-fueled plants that would either take carbon directly out of the air or remove it from the exhaust of a power plant it operates in Elk Hills.

Oviatt has also heard CO2 injection proposals from Bakersfield-based Aera Energy LLC, San Ramon-based Chevron Corp. and Bakersfield-based Jaco Oil Co. Others hoping to inject carbon underground in unincorporated Kern “need to come talk to me,” she said.

Mote finished top in its class at the Rice University Clean Energy Accelerator. This fall, it announced receiving investor seed money.

The company said it will combine commercial technologies with new efficiency that can be replicated at a scale that lowers the cost of fighting climate change.

Trimmings and wood from Central Valley orchards and vineyards have posed problems in California for years. Almond growers and vineyards in particular generate large amounts of wood that if left to decompose produces the potent greenhouse gas methane.

Many power plants that used to burn biomass to generate electricity and steam closed several years ago in the face of competition from solar and wind farms.

Open burning has since increased but its imminent prohibition is expected to result in more whole-orchard recycling in which biomass is shredded and incorporated back into the soil where it originated. Some environmental groups prefer that option to the emissions that come with gathering and transporting biomass — plus, it’s another form of carbon sequestration.

Besides federal tax credits, Mote expects to receive recurring revenue from California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard. It also hopes to win grant money from the California Energy Commission’s financial support for production of renewable hydrogen.

Mote is in talks with Canadian-based CarbonCure Technologies on potentially storing carbon dioxide in concrete at construction sites.

The company said by email all the energy it would need for carbon storage would come from biomass, but that if it needs to liquify hydrogen it may need to bring in external electricity.

Mote said it expects to put out minimal emissions. Its largest source would be related to wood handling.

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(c)2021 The Bakersfield Californian (Bakersfield, Calif.)

Visit The Bakersfield Californian (Bakersfield, Calif.) at www.bakersfield.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Biden’s climate bill might be dead. But he just approved two huge solar farms

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Sammy Roth, Los Angeles Times (MCT)

The Interior Department gave the green light Tuesday to two huge solar farms in the California desert — a reminder that the Biden administration still has tools to combat climate change even if it can’t pass the president’s “Build Back Better” bill.

The two solar plants could eventually cover 2,700 acres in Riverside County, an hour’s drive east of Palm Springs and just south of Joshua Tree National Park. Federal officials say they would generate enough electricity to power some 132,000 California homes.

That energy would help keep the lights on after dark, with the developer also building a bank of lithium-ion batteries.

A third solar farm in the same area, which the Biden administration said it expects to approve soon, would bring total clean power generation at the new facilities to nearly 1,000 megawatts of solar and 900 megawatts of four-hour battery storage.

Approving renewable energy facilities on public lands is no substitute for national climate legislation, in terms of how much planet-warming pollution might be avoided. But these projects can still displace fossil fuels — and they don’t need the approval of Senate Republicans or coal-state Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, who have blocked Build Back Better.

“We absolutely have to move forward as much as we can with clean energy,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in an interview.

At the same time, the new solar farms offer a reminder that the transition to renewable power — while badly needed to limit the worsening wildfires and deadlier heat waves of the climate crisis — comes with its own environmental challenges.

Across the American West, conservation groups and tribes have grown increasingly concerned about the potential for solar, wind and geothermal power plants to destroy sensitive wildlife habitat and disrupt sacred landscapes. Federal officials are grappling with those concerns as they try to meet a congressional target of permitting 25,000 megawatts of renewable energy on public lands by 2025, while also protecting 30% of the nation’s lands and ocean waters by 2030 as part of Biden’s “30 by 30″ initiative.

Nowhere is the tension between conservation and clean energy more apparent than in California’s Riverside County, which is already home to half a dozen large solar farms operating or under construction, with many more planned. Vast expanses of sunny, undeveloped land between the Coachella Valley and the Arizona state line have attracted developers for more than a decade.

Riverside County ultimately became a poster child for the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, which state and federal officials said was needed to resolve the conflict between development and conservation. Finalized during the last months of the Obama administration, the plan designated a few hundred thousand acres of federal land in California for clean energy projects. It protected millions more, in hopes of preserving wildlands for desert tortoises, bighorn sheep, golden eagles and other species.

The newly approved Arica and Victory Pass solar farms are the first projects to be greenlit under the desert plan. Haaland told The Times she sees the plan as a model for other Western states as more solar and wind facilities are proposed for public lands.

“It really does take a hard look at conservation,” she said. “They do whatever they can to ensure that these species are protected.”

But from the solar industry’s perspective, just because two projects were approved doesn’t mean the desert plan is working.

For every facility getting the federal go-ahead, “there are projects that aren’t even getting proposed because it’s so difficult to navigate,” said Shannon Eddy, executive director of the Large-scale Solar Assn., a Sacramento-based trade group. She said the “conservation management actions” in the desert plan, which require companies to take steps to reduce the environmental impacts of their projects, are so restrictive that sometimes companies can’t build even in designated development zones.

For instance, in Imperial County in California’s far southeastern corner — another windy, sunbaked mecca for renewable energy developers — Eddy said only 11,000 acres out of 53,000 designated for clean power are realistically usable for solar.

“It’s difficult to find areas where you can actually put projects,” she said.

As if to illustrate that point, the Center for Biological Diversity has raised concerns about Arica and Victory Pass. Even though both solar farms would be built in areas designed for clean energy, they would still disrupt sand dunes that provide a home to Mojave fringe-toed lizards, as well as a crucial wildlife connectivity corridor, the center said.

But in a victory for the state and federal officials, the conservation group isn’t opposing Arica or Victory Pass.

“They did conform to what the [desert plan] laid out,” said Ileene Anderson, a scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity.

The two solar farms are being developed by San Francisco-based Clearway Energy Group, which plans to start construction on the first phase of each facility next year. The company has contracts in place to sell electricity to four government-run energy providers — including Clean Power Alliance in Los Angeles and Ventura counties — as well as PepsiCo.

The projects could eventually include 465 megawatts of solar power and 400 megawatts of battery storage, and will “provide clean, reliable, affordable power when California needs it most,” Clearway executive Julia Zuckerman said in an email.

Conservationists might still object to the third solar farm touted by the Biden administration, known as Oberon.

In a September letter, a coalition including the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club criticized the Bureau of Land Management for proposing an exemption to the desert plan that would allow the project’s developer to destroy a few dozen acres of microphyll woodlands, where ironwood and palo verde trees grow along ephemeral streams that flow during monsoons, nourishing mammals and migrating birds. Anderson called those areas “the veins of the desert.”

A spokesperson for Oberon’s developer, Oregon-based Intersect Power, said the company “has been working diligently” with conservation groups for months to address their concerns, and hopes to reach a final agreement with them Tuesday on a path forward.

“This project represents one of the largest habitat mitigation efforts of any energy development project in California’s history, and is a great example of clean energy and conservation going hand-in-hand,” spokesperson McKinley Doty said in an email.

For some conservation groups focused on protecting wildlife habitat and undisturbed landscapes, large solar and wind farms are almost always problematic. They’d much prefer to see solar panels covering rooftops, warehouses and parking lots — and they’re furious with a recent proposal from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s appointees that would slash incentives for those projects.

But most major environmental groups working on clean energy and public lands don’t want to thwart all development — they just want to see projects built in the least damaging spots. Haaland said that’s the Interior Department’s priority, too.

“We’re always trying to balance everything,” she said. “But, I mean, look. If we don’t move into a clean energy economy, climate change will get worse. More plants and animals will die.”

Getting permission to build a solar or wind farm on federal land can take several years, in part due to rigorous environmental reviews. And despite Biden’s emphasis on fighting climate change, before this week the Interior Department had approved just one new solar farm and zero wind farms on federal lands since Biden took office, as The Times recently reported.

Since then, Interior’s Bureau of Land Management has taken steps to spur more clean power projects.

On Monday, the bureau announced it is seeking developers interested in building solar across nearly 90,000 acres in Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico. A few weeks earlier, the agency said it would lower the fees paid by solar and wind developers.

There’s also a big backlog of projects waiting to be reviewed. The bureau says it is processing applications for 54 solar projects, four wind projects and four geothermal projects across the nearly 250 million acres of public lands that it manages — about one-tenth of the country’s surface area, nearly all of it in the West. Preliminary review is underway for another 64 applications.

Asked about the slow pace of project approvals so far, Haaland pointed to the Trump administration’s decision to move the Bureau of Land Management’s headquarters to Colorado from Washington, D.C. — a decision Haaland chose to reverse.

“There was a mass exodus of BLM career staff, really good long-term career staff who left the bureau when they were given an ultimatum of either to quit or move,” she said. “So we’re working on all that at the same time.”

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©2021 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

UC system temporarily pushes classes back online, partly due to omicron research from UC San Diego

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Gary Robbins, The San Diego Union-Tribune (MCT)

The University of California system will push classes back online for at least the first two weeks of January due to the spread of omicron, a decision that elicited sadness at UC San Diego, which has maintained one of the lowest COVID-19 infection rates of any university in the country.

The chancellors of the system’s 10 campuses made the decision on Monday, according to Dr. Robert Schooley, head of UCSD’s Return to Learn program. He told the Union-Tribune on Tuesday that the group was heavily influenced by omicron surge models produced at the La Jolla campus over the past week.

“This was the right thing to do,” said Schooley, an infectious disease expert. “It will give us the flexibility to continue teaching as omicron passes through.”

Harvard, Stanford and dozens of other colleges and universities nationwide also have decided to hold most classes online during January.

UCSD was scheduled to begin the winter quarter with mostly in-person classes on Jan. 3. Nearly all instruction will occur online at least through Jan. 17. Many scientists believe the omicron variant will surge across the U.S. shortly after New Years.

The La Jolla campus will close for the Christmas holiday break on Wednesday. But there are still about 4,000 students living in campus housing. Many of them are foreign students who are unable to go home over the break. Schooley says that the students will be allowed to remain in campus housing. And students will be permitted to return to dorms after the break. But the university is encouraging them to remain home through mid-January, perhaps longer.

“This decision was based on science and safety — students here understand that,” said Manu Agni, president of Associated Students at UCSD.

“We’ve done everything to cooperate — wearing masks, getting tests and getting vaccinated. But going back online will be really tough. Students really enjoyed the in-person classes and classes and all the fun events that go with being on campus.”

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©2021 The San Diego Union-Tribune. Visit sandiegouniontribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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.

California Makes $495 Million Investment in Transportation Infrastructure

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On Friday, the California Transportation Commission (CTC) allotted more than $495 million for projects aimed at repairing and enhancing transportation infrastructure throughout the state.

“This substantial investment will help improve transportation for all Californians now and in the future,” said Caltrans Director Toks Omishakin. “This includes moving toward a more climate-friendly, safe, and equitable state transportation system.”

Senate Bill (SB) 1, the Road Repair and Accountability act of 2017, accounts for $328 million (more than two-thirds) of the investment.

Some of the projects approved on December 10 include:

  • The Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority ($10.2 million): Union Station Master Plan: Alameda Esplanade. Construct 14,000 of feet sidewalk, install road diet for 2,000 feet of roadway, and provide lighting for 12 intersections
  • Metro ($5.3 million): Reconnecting Union Station to the Historic Cultural Communities of DTLA. Design and construct key pedestrian and cyclist safety improvements connecting Los Angeles Street, Union Station, and El Pueblo
  • City of Bell Gardens ($200,000): Complete Streets Improvements Phase 1. Install or refresh 31 white or yellow high visibility crosswalks, four miles of Class 3 bike routes, two raised intersections, ten speed humps, twelve curbs, mini traffic circles, HAWK beacons, ADA ramps, and striping
  • Huntington Park ($50,000): Safe Routes and Childhood Obesity Project. Construct ramp improvements at 106 intersections, 4,804 lineal feet of improved sidewalks, three HAWK beacons, and pedestrian scramble to improve safety for student pedestrians in California’s most dangerous walking corridors

Visit www.RebuildingCA.ca.gov for more information about other transportation projects funded by Senate Bill 1.

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.”

S.F. startup uses AI to detect wildfires before they become catastrophic

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Gregory Thomas, San Francisco Chronicle (MCT)

As another brutal wildfire season winds down across the Western United States, a San Francisco startup has devised a means of detecting blazes in remote landscapes within moments of ignition. If the early tests are successful, the service could help snuff out the next megafire before it grows to catastrophic proportions.

The 20-person company is called Pano AI, short for the panoramic cameras it has been installing on Northern California mountaintops since its launch last summer and the artificial intelligence software that powers its system. A rotating camera snaps 10 photos of the surrounding landscape every 60 seconds and stitches them into a time-lapse stream of high-definition images that are then scoured for wisps of smoke by machine-learning software.

When Pano’s AI flags a possible fire start, an employee receives an alert to verify it visually. If it appears to be a genuine fire, Pano notifies firefighters with the exact coordinates of the blaze.

“We want to maximize the information available to first responders in the early moments of a fire,” said Pano CEO Sonia Kastner. “The idea is to nip these in the bud before they turn into unstoppable infernos.”

Kastner founded Pano after 12 years in manufacturing and product development for Bay Area tech companies including Nest, the Google-owned venture that uses video cameras and artificial intelligence to help people monitor their homes. With wildfires an increasing threat to Californians, Kastner researched the needs of firefighters and “heard a chorus of calls for more technology solutions,” she said.

As part of its pilot program, the company has engaged local fire districts and utility providers and installed 23 cameras across four states — California, Colorado, Oregon and Montana. Of those installations, 14 are located in the Bay Area, ranging from the Mayacamas Mountains in Wine Country south to the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Early detection and rapid response are the strategic cornerstones of wildfire suppression. Traditionally, forest rangers kept watch over vast, wooded landscapes from the high perches of fire towers and radioed authorities when they spotted smoke plumes above the treetops. But deploying digital eyeballs that monitor remote areas 24/7, sometimes in thermal infrared, can shave precious minutes off response times.

“Even if you get an extra two minutes, and you can triangulate where the fire is, that’s huge,” said Jim Comisky, a retired fire chief who is president of the South Lake County Fire Protection District Board of Directors.

South Lake County has engaged Pano to beta test four camera installations in the peaks around Middletown, including on Mt. St. Helena. The new technology has been net neutral in helping with early detection, Comisky said — about as quick and accurate as 911 calls from people on the ground.

If the network expands, Comisky believes there could be meaningful benefits. Kastner estimates that 1,000-2,000 strategically placed Pano cameras would be needed to cover all of California.

Using webcams to spot wildfires isn’t a new idea.

Academics in California, Nevada and Oregon pioneered a wildfire monitoring system that took root eight years ago in the Lake Tahoe basin. The initiative, called ALERT Wildfire, has since expanded to about 975 cameras, including 850 in California. It functions as a nonprofit and installs video cameras at ski resorts, on internet towers and in open spaces in partnership with private citizens, federal land managers and utilities like Pacific Gas and Electric.

Unlike Pano, which charges subscription fees to access its feeds, the ALERT streams are publicly available. However, not all of ALERT’s cameras are in constant 360-degree rotation and require human observers to spot fires via the feeds.

“We have people in New Zealand helping spot fires in California,” said Graham Kent, director of the Nevada Seismological Laboratory and chief architect of ALERT Wildfire.

That’s where the AI proposition becomes promising: no humans are required in the earliest phase of detection.

ALERT recently partnered with a Korean company called Alchera, which is running AI on more than 100 of ALERT’s wildfire cameras. Earlier this year, Alchera entered into agreements with PG&E, Sonoma County, San Diego Gas and Electric and NV Energy to provide wildfire monitoring and alerts.

“You can see companies starting to flow into this space because there’s a need to do better,” Kent said. A future collaboration between ALERT and Pano isn’t out of the question, he added. “Eventually, the techonology that is most successful in detection will be on the widest camera network.”

One drawback of relying on early-stage AI is the potential for high volumes of false-positive results — alerts about, say, a cloud formation the software mistakes for a smoke plume. However, Kastner says Pano’s system — including its human verifier — identifies fires with a 90% or higher rate of accuracy.

Ideally, the system would eventually function like a home carbon-monoxide detector, quietly checking for danger at all times and blasting an alert when smoke arises — but for entire states. That’s the idea that excites fire authorities like Comisky.

“The fire service has changed,” Comisky said. “If we can utilize some of this new technology, it could be game-changing.”

Gregory Thomas is the Chronicle’s editor of lifestyle & outdoors. Email: gthomas@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @GregRThomas

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Amy Tong Appointed Director at Office of Digital Innovation

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State CIO and California Department of Technology Director Amy Tong has been appointed to a new post, to serve as director of the Office of Digital Innovation, according to an announcement from the Governor’s Office.  

Starting Jan. 1, 2022, Tong will move to the new position, formerly occupied by Udaya Patnaik, who was appointed to the position in May 2020.

Deputy CIO Russ Nichols will assume the role of acting CIO.

Tong is California’s longest-serving State Chief Information Officer, spanning two administrations since her original appointment in 2016 by Gov. Jerry Brown.  She was reappointed to her position by Gov. Newsom in April 2020. 

Upon entering office, Newsom created the Office of Digital Innovation (ODI) in 2019 to improve the way California used technology to serve people, “[with] the authority to develop and enforce requirements for departments to assess their service delivery models and underlying business processes from an end-user perspective. Establishing the Office will improve the accessibility and reliability of the state’s vital services by focusing on business process reengineering and leveraging digital innovation, where appropriate,” according to his first budget proposal.

Since then, the office has grown to nearly 30 staff, and as of July of this year, has an aggressive agenda to take on more projects aimed to improve the way Californians interact with their state goverment.

Since its inception, the ODI’s mission has been confused with the role of the California Department of Technology (CDT).  In July of 2019 after the Governor’s first budget was introduced, the California Department of Technology’s Office of Digital Innovation changed its name to the Office of Enterprise Technology to avoid confusion with the newly created ODI.  “The Office of Enterprise Technology will be a sister organization to the new ODI,” said Tong at the time in a press release.   Both departments are part of the California Government Operations Agency.

Earlier this year, former Google executive Rick Klau was appointed to serve as CDT’s deputy director for the Office of Enterprise Technology. He is among a number of new high-profile appointments at CDT including:

  • Chi Emodi, Chief Project Officer (November)
  • Michael Cave, Chief Product Officer (September)
  • Phoebe Peronto, Deputy State Chief Technology Innovation Officer (September)
  • Pamela Haase, Deputy Director of Strategic Initiatives  (August)
  • Scott Adams, Deputy Director for Broadband and Digital Literacy (April)
  • Russ Nichols, Chief Deputy Director (February)
  • Liana M. Bailey-Crimmins, Deputy Director of the Office of Technology Services and State Chief Technology Officer (February)
  • Rick Klau, Deputy Director of Office of Enterprise Technology (OET) and State Chief Technology Innovation Officer (February)

During her time as CIO and CDT director, Tong championed a user-centered design approach, data-driven decision making, and an agile project management approach, as evidenced by her work with Child Welfare Digital Services (CWDS). 

Prior to becoming CIO, Tong assumed multiple roles within the California Department of Health and Human Services, as well as serving as CIO for the California State Lottery. Tong also spent time with CalPERS, the Water Resources Control Board, and earned an MBA from California State University, Sacramento.

Tong is also a member of the California Northstate University Board of Trustees, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Asian Pacific State Employee Association, and National Senior Advisor for Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs Association. 

Image: Twitter: @darrel_ng “Three unsung heroes of the state’s #COVID19 vaccine efforts celebrating the reopening of the state with their previously virtual teams.” June 16, 2021

She was instrumental in more successful aspects of California’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the rollout of a new COVID-19 reporting system following the failure of the state’s infectious disease registry CalREDIE to accurately report testing data. 

In addition to rolling out a replacement for the state’s infectious disease registry, Tong led efforts alongside the California Department of Public Health to pilot and roll Exposure Notification Express, the state’s COVID-19 Exposure Notification App. 

During her time as CIO and CDT director, she faced multiple IT project crises, most notably at DMV and the Employment Development Department (EDD). 

In Aug. 2019, the California DMV suffered a data breach that allowed federal agencies illicit access to the Social Security information of 3,200 Californians. Around the same time, the DMV also suffered glitches in its “motor voter” program that included tens of thousands of errors, unknowingly registering citizens to vote or making mistakes in their registration status.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, EDD failed to deliver unemployment benefits to claimants while also being defrauded to the tune of billions of dollars. 

In a Jan. 2021 statement, the department noted that “between March 2020 and January 16, 2021, EDD processed 19.5 million claims and paid out $114 billion in unemployment benefits. EDD confirmed that 9.7 percent of payments have been made to fraudulent claims.”

In response to a number of failed and stagnant IT projects in California, Tong argued for more resources and oversight authority at CDT.

“We are, in many times, operating like an ER doctor,” Tong told Assemblymember David Chiu in a Feb. 2021 budget hearing. “If we can actually have more visibility to the database expenditure, the decision-making, and be more embedded with the department, we can be more into what I call preventive care as opposed to emergency responsive care in terms of the health of the IT investment at the particular program department.”

In this year’s budget, the Legislature approved $25 million in grants to create CDT’s Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) that will allow the department to “provide quick funding to state departments to invest in technology modernization efforts or to stabilize IT systems at risk of failure.”

As State CIO, Tong is the chair of the California Broadband Council, a governing body that is working to close the digital divide within the state. 

Following a recommendation from the Little Hoover Commission, Gov. Newsom and legislative leaders agreed to a $6 billion bill that would expand the state’s broadband infrastructure and establish the Office of Broadband and Digital Literacy within the Department of Technology. Tong chairs the Middle Mile Advisory Committee formed to monitor the development and construction of a new broadband network designed to reach unserved and underserved Californians, 

Tong’s compensation is $214,284. She is registered without party preference.

Snowpack in California’s Sierra Nevada could disappear in just 25 years

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Kurtis Alexander,  San Francisco Chronicle (MCT)

As the climate continues to warm, more and more of the snow falling on California’s mountains will be replaced by rain. Already in recent decades, the snow season has shrunk by a month, according to one estimate, while snow levels have moved upward by 1,200 feet, according to another.

Scientists and water managers say that at some point California’s snowpack could simply disappear. This would leave the state without the crucial spring and summer melt-off that fills rivers and streams, nourishes plants and animals, and provides a huge chunk of the water supply. It would also be devastating for the ski industry.

This snowless future, according to a new study led by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, could arrive in California’s Sierra Nevada in as soon as 25 years. The study is among many to detail the decline in snow, but it’s unique in synthesizing decades of research to nail down exactly when the snow might be gone. And it offers a timeline that is alarmingly short.

“Warming just doesn’t allow for snow to persist,” said Alan Rhoades, a hydroclimate research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley Lab and one of the lead authors of the paper. “Our one major goal was to identify how much time we have to roll out adaption strategies.”

Experts say that preparing for a Sierra with less snow won’t be easy, or cheap, but they agree it must be done.

The new study, published last month in the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, projects that by the late 2040s, half of the area historically covered by snow in the Sierra will likely have “low or no” snow for five straight years, given current warming trends. By the late 2050s, it could be 10 straight years that the same area sees low or no snow.

The paper defines “low snow” as when snowpack — technically, the snow-water equivalent, or how much water the snow releases when it melts — falls within the lower 30th percentile of its historical peak. “No snow” is defined as when snowpack falls to or below the 10th percentile.

“It’s always shocking when I see the numbers,” said Rhoades, who grew up in California. “Snow has always been part of my life, since childhood.”

The study’s findings are based on a review of hundreds of scientific papers on snowpack, 18 of which contain quantitative projections. The authors looked not only at the Sierra Nevada but at the Cascades in the Pacific Northwest and parts of the Rockies.

In all of these mountain ranges, the study finds that at least half of the historically snow-covered spots will see low or no snow for five straight years by the 2060s, at the current rate of warming. By the 2070s, the same amount of area will see 10 straight years of low or no snow.

The Sierra Nevada is the first to be hit. The California mountains are more vulnerable because storm temperatures, moderated by the Pacific Ocean, are generally warmer.

Already, the Sierra has seen a glimpse of its future. In 2015, at the height of a five-year drought, state snow surveyors marched into the mountains on April 1, when snow is historically at its peak, and found mostly dry ground. Their gauges measured the snowpack at 5% of average, the lowest ever recorded in decades of surveying.

This year marked another grim milestone. While the April snowpack was greater, 59% of average, the melt-off from the snow was extraordinarily low because of how much water was absorbed by parched soils amid the current drought or lost to evaporation amid extreme heat. State officials said runoff efficiency, essentially a measure of how much snow makes it to rivers and reservoirs, was 20% compared to the usual 60%.

A primary concern about snow loss is the dent it puts in the water supply.

Much of the infrastructure that collects and delivers water in the state is conditioned upon having snow on mountaintops well into summer. Hundreds of reservoirs, including such giants as Shasta Lake and Lake Oroville, rely not only on storms for water during the wet winter months, but melting snow to provide another boost once the weather dries out in spring.

Without this spring and summer bump, as much as much as 30% of the state’s water supply could be lost.

“It’s hard to picture: thinking about a future where our kids and grandkids have little or no snow and what that means for our water resource,” said Erica Siirila-Woodburn, a research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley Lab and the other lead author of the new paper. “Our part in all of this is to put our science out there … to inform some of the policy.”

The authors framed their paper as a “call to action.”

While state water managers are generally aware of the problem, their response has been slow, especially relative to the new, more dire timetable for snow loss.

Some want to expand or even build new reservoirs so that more of the winter runoff can be captured in the face of the decline in spring and summer. One of the biggest proposals is Sites Reservoir, an off-stream storage project in Colusa County that would collect surplus water from the Sacramento River. Its estimated cost has varied from $3 billion to $5 billion.

The high price of these projects, as well as the need to protect fish and wildlife, have made them difficult to get off the ground. Also, most of the good spots for reservoirs have been taken.

Ellen Hanak, director of the Water Policy Center at the Public Policy Institute of California, who was not part of the study, said the state will have to pursue a range of initiatives to maintain adequate water supplies as the snowpack decreases.

One of the best investments, she said, is storing more winter runoff not just in reservoirs but underground.

“California is really well positioned to use aquifers in an active way by recharging them,” she said. “Some of our systems have been doing it for decades … and there’s a lot of interest in expanding groundwater recharge.”

Karla Nemeth, the director of the California Department of Water Resources, speaking at a virtual conference held by the Water Policy Center this month about water infrastructure, also advocated a multiprong approach to the future. Among the most important strategies, she said, is doing a better job both projecting California’s runoff and managing it.

“DWR is really redoubling efforts to improve our forecasting,” Nemeth said. “Foundationally, we need better information.”

In September, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that several billion dollars of state money would go to drought resilience, including expanding water supplies.

A ballot measure proposed for next year, which supporters are still trying to gather qualifying signatures for, calls for even more money for water projects: 2% of the state’s entire general fund budget. Voters in 2014 approved a $7.5 billion water bond, much of which is still being spent on new supplies and storage.

Kurtis Alexander is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kalexander@

sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kurtisalexander

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CalEnviroScreen directs billions of dollars to California communities in need. Here’s how it works

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Yoohyun Jung, San Francisco Chronicle (MCT)

Image: https://oehha.ca.gov/calenviroscreen

CalEnviroScreen — short for California Communities Environmental Health Screening — was developed by the state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment to help identify communities that are most burdened by environmental issues. It’s a science-based tool that helps decision makers put hundreds of millions of dollars in funding each year in places that need it most.

So what does that mean? Here’s what you need to know.

Q: What data goes into the screening tool?

A: The fourth and latest version of CalEnviroScreen, the first version of which launched in 2013, combines 21 different indicators — data points — that incorporate publicly available data from multiple sources, including the U.S. Census Bureau. The 21 data points break down into two broad categories, which are pollution burden and population characteristics.

Q: How were those 21 indicators chosen?

A: The CalEnviroScreen 4.0 report says that the 21 indicators “represent widespread concerns related to pollution burden or population characteristics in California.” The list of indicators has changed across versions, as has the data that informs those indicators.

Many people, including public officials and community advocates, have argued that the current indicators don’t reflect some of the key issues impacting their communities. For instance, despite escalating wildfire risk across the state, there is no wildfire-risk specific indicator — air quality, which is taken into account, can reflect wildfire smoke concerns indirectly.

Another example is the housing burden indicator, which scientists added based on community input. That indicator is based on housing cost, but does not factor in what types of housing situations people are in. In places like San Francisco’s single-room occupancy buildings where hundreds of households live together in tight quarters, the density and limited space increase housing burden for the residents.

Q: What is the CalEnviroScreen score and which data points matter most?

A: The CalEnviroScore is the overall score, ranging from 0 to 100, for each community, with higher scores indicating higher environmental vulnerability, generated by combining the 21 pollution and population indicators. The indicators for pollution exposure are the most heavily weighed, followed by population characteristics. Environmental effects indicators, which are meant to measure “the presence of pollutants in a community rather than exposure to them,” get the least weight.

Q: Why is CalEnviroScreen controversial?

A: CalEnviroScreen is the basis for identifying California’s “disadvantaged communities,” a legislative designation that makes the qualifying areas a priority for certain state climate-oriented funding.

But since the tool was created, an increasing number of government agencies and non-governmental organizations have started using the tools data to distribute funds. Receiving the “disadvantage community” designation can mean access to large amounts of money. Critics argue that it’s often inappropriately used as a way of identifying disadvantaged communities in general terms, and just focused on environmental disadvantage.

Q: What parts of California have communities that are most likely to be designated “disadvantaged?”

A: More Central Valley and Southern California census tracts have been given this designation than Northern California communities. In fact, several northern counties, including Humboldt, Del Norte and Siskiyou do not have any tracts that meet the criteria for “disadvantaged communities.”

Q: Why does this environmental screening tool include so much demographic data?

A: State officials have called CalEnviroScreen the “environmental justice” tool, because the tool’s methodology recognizes that poor communities are even more vulnerable to impacts of environmental degradation.

“This is reflecting a long standing environmental justice concern that some communities have not just cleanup sites, but they have poor air quality, poor water quality, or there’s a landfill nearby and in the downtown, a major traffic corridor with diesel trucks and so on and so forth,” Faust said. “Those are sort of the concepts that sort of underpin this cumulative impact concern.”

Q: CalEnviroScreen is now in its fourth version. What’s new in 4.0?

A: The new version includes a measure of children’s risk of lead exposure, which is common in older housing in low-income communities, CalEnviroScreen officials say. The update to this version also included improving the methods and data behind the indicators. For example, the scientists increased the number of pesticides that factor into the pesticides indicator.

Q: What are the data’s limitations?

A: CalEnviroScreen draws from publicly available data sources to be proxies for what the indicators are trying to measure.

The methodology behind some measures is straightforward, like air quality. For air quality, the tool pulls the annual mean concentration of particulate matter (PM) 2.5 of each census tract from California Air Resources Board data. Others, such as drinking water contaminants, are more complicated and involve combining data points from a variety of sources.

Many data points used in the tool are outdated. For instance, the drinking water index is calculated using data between 2011 and 2019, which means it may not represent the current drinking water conditions in each area. Officials involved with CalEnviroScreen say that’s because up-to-date data that spans across the state that breaks down to the community level aren’t always available.

The tool is constantly evolving based on feedback and suggestions, said Laura August, a research scientist at OEHHA, which developed CalEnviroScreen. “We are always open to input, not just during that window of public comment when we put out a draft.”

Yoohyun Jung is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: yoohyun.jung@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @yoohyun_jung

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PG&E testing wildfire cameras with AI

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Appeal-Democrat, Marysville, Calif. (MCT)

Pacific Gas and Electric Company recently announced that it is testing cameras integrated with artificial intelligence and machine-learning to possibly help wildfire detection capabilities.

The company said it is using the cameras in Yuba County and others to better differentiate wildfire smoke from fog and other false indicators, PG&E said in a news release. These cameras have been added to a growing network of cameras across Northern and Central California.

This recent effort is in collaboration with ALERTWildfire, an association of three universities — the University of Nevada, Reno; University of California San Diego; and the University of Oregon — that provides access to fire cameras and associated tools to help firefighters and first responders.

PG&E said it currently has 487 high-definition cameras in operation with 12 that include AI test software in Yuba, Butte and Plumas counties. There are currently seven in Yuba County.

In the North Valley region, the company already has installed HD wildfire cameras in Colusa, Glenn and Tehama counties.

“Even with the two significant rainstorms in October and November, we are still in a historic drought and California, along with other western states, continue to experience an increase in wildfire risk and a longer wildfire season. We are using every new tool and technology at our disposal to improve situational awareness and intelligence to help mitigate and prevent wildfires, including this new AI capability,” said Sumeet Singh, PG&E chief risk officer, in the release. “Every bit of data and intelligence that comes to us could potentially save a life.”

The cameras that PG&E installs can be viewed by anyone through the ALERTWildfire Network at www.alertwildfire.org.

The company plans to have about 600 cameras installed by the end of 2022.

“We know the cameras are doing well at spotting wisps of smoke from long distances. We plan to assess our initial implementation, continue to gather the data, and develop a plan for using this leading-edge technology on a more expanded basis,” said Eric Sutphin, supervisor at PG&E’s Wildfire Safety Operations Center who’s in charge of the camera installations, in the release.

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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.

California Making Progress with Mapping Technology

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An updated mapping tool to identify communities impacted by pollution in California has won high praise from the Little Hoover Commission, which in 2019 criticized the state for a lack of GIS leadership and multi-agency collaboration.

In a statement released this month, the Commission noted that the updated CalEnviroScreen released by the California Office of Health Hazard Assessment exemplifies the kind of collaborative work the commission called for to enable the state to direct resources to the most vulnerable communities.

The tool, enabled with geographic information systems (GIS), allows state policymakers and others to see which communities are impacted most by pollution. By mapping 8,000 census tracts, findings in each community can be compared to one another. The new version of the tool allows for enhanced analysis of air quality indicators, pesticide use, and water contaminants, including lead in drinking water.

The Commission noted that several other state agencies are now using the CalEnviroScreen to target resources to projects in communities that lack safe access to walking and cycling and to energy-efficient upgrades for low-income households.

“California is moving in the right direction,” wrote Commission Executive Director Ethan Rarick.

But the Commission also reiterated its earlier recommendations, which they say have not been fully embraced or implemented.

Tamar Foster, the Commission’s deputy executive director, said Commission members in 2019 decided that geographic information systems (GIS) are an excellent tool to identify regional disparities in housing, social services, environmental threats, access to health care, education, among other areas. Understanding geographic differences, they argued, would better enable legislators and others to develop programs or direct resources to the most vulnerable areas.

“We quickly learned that the state doesn’t have the capacity to do the broad, expansive, multi-agency look, even though we recognize that lots of agencies have individual GIS systems set up and are using the tool.”

In 2019 the Commission recommended that the state develop a statewide GIS strategy so that departments and agencies can work more collaboratively and avoid costly duplication of technology expenditures. They also recommended that the state hire a full-time Geographic Information Officer, which they did in 2020. And they urged the Department of Technology to formalize a GIS Advisory Council.

Foster said the appointment of Isaac Cabrera to the position of State GIO was a “good first step,” but that the Commission envisioned a more elevated, agency-level role to enable a more centralized and “cross-cut perspective” for GIS projects.

She added that a formalized advisory council of policymakers and other stakeholders from the private and public sectors should be structured to advise the GIO on both implementation of policies and rules we well as technology strategies.

The State GIO did not address the question of elevating the position to an agency-level post, but said the office appreciates the Little Hoover Commission’s GIS mapping study.

“We agree that the CalEPA CalEnviroScreen approach sets an example we encourage others to follow,” Cabrera said in a prepared statement. “We are prioritizing two critical items for 2022: Creation of a GIS Vision and Strategy Plan for the state of California, and formalization of a State GIS Advisory Council. We believe these two initiatives will propel state entities to engage with, approach, and manage GIS holistically by creating a framework for the future, and a forum to discuss and prioritize efforts.”

The Little Hoover Commission is an independent state agency charged with looking for ways to make the state more efficient, effective, and responsive to constituents, Foster said.

“Our commissioners are very committed to addressing the issue of equity in the state,” she said. “GIS is the tool they feel can help policymakers visualize and understand where the disparities may be and where those gaps in services and funding are so they can be more informed when allocating resources or making decisions about what else may be needed.”

Image: https://oehha.maps.arcgis.com/

 

Governor Appoints Chief IT Project Officer

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Chinyere ‘Chi’ Emodi has been appointed as the new Chief Project Officer and Deputy Director for the Office of Statewide Project Delivery at the California Department of Technology (CDT), Gov. Newsom announced on Wednesday.

She brings 24 years of state service, including experience in IT strategic planning, information security, enterprise architecture management, and interfacing departmental legacy systems. She also managed various complex mission-critical services and employed large-business transformation projects.  She spent five years at CDTworking as a principal/data processing manager.

Much of Emodi’s career was spent in critical IT oversight positions directing intricate and sensitive IT projects. Since the start of this year, she served as director of application services at the Los Rios Community College District, where she managed strategic planning, policy implementation, and operations.  Prior to Los Rios, Emodi served in senior-level positions within FI$Cal as assistant deputy director of its Workforce Development Center, deputy director of the Project Management Division, and chief information officer of its Information Technology Division, according to the CDT.

Emodi’s announcement is among a series of new executive hires this year at CDT, including:

  • Michael Cave, Chief Product Officer (September)
  • Phoebe Peronto, Deputy State Chief Technology Innovation Officer (September)
  • Pamela Haase, Deputy Director of Strategic Initiatives  (August)
  • Scott Adams, Deputy Director for Broadband and Digital Literacy (April)
  • Russ Nichols, Chief Deputy Director (February)
  • Liana M. Bailey-Crimmins, Deputy Director of the Office of Technology Services and State Chief Technology Officer (February)
  • Rick Klau, Deputy Director of Office of Enterprise Technology (OET) and State Chief Technology Innovation Officer (February)

Image: LinkedIn

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