“In your everyday life you have these great
interactions with business,” said Mike Wilkening,
the governor’s special adviser on innovation
and digital services. “They make it as seamless as
possible for you to conduct business with them
— and the state does not.”
While there’s broad agreement that
improvement is needed, some critics and
supporters alike see potential for the new office
to become just another layer of bureaucracy.
“It’s going to be interesting to see how they
organize those 50 people, how they ensure
that they are not being redundant with what
the other organizations are doing and how
they integrate,” said Teri Takai, a former chief
information officer for California who now runs
the Center for Digital Government, a 20-year-old
national research and advisory organization for
best practices in state and local government.
She was an adviser to Newsom’s transition team
and advocated for the creation of the office.
She said other states are initiating similar efforts,
though not all with a full department like
California is doing. Alaska and New Jersey, for
example, recently hired chief innovation officers.
Administration officials say the office would
complement, not duplicate, existing state
programs. An agency could, for example, bring a
problem for the office to tackle, or the Newsom
administration could request the office look into
something specific.
“The governor would have no lack of ideas on
ways we can improve services to Californians,”
said Brian Ferguson, a Newsom spokesman.
Once it comes up with an idea, the office would
kick back some of the work of making it happen
to the state agency that brought the problem
or to the California Department of Technology
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