Ep.108 The Digital Deep Dive: How Texas Attorney General's Office is Revolutionizing Citizen Services with AI and Automation

Joe Toste [00:00:01]: Hey, what's up everybody?

Joe Toste [00:00:01]: This is Joe Toste from Techtables.com and you're listening to the public sector show by techtables. This podcast features human centric stories from public sector, CIOs, CISOs and technology leaders across federal, state, city, county and higher education. You'll gain valuable insights into current issues and challenges faced by top leaders through interviews, speaking engagements, live podcast tour events. We offer you a behind the mic look at the opportunity unity's top leaders are seen today. And to make sure you never miss an episode, head over to Spotify and Apple podcasts and hit that follow button and leave a quick rating. Just tap the number of stars that you think this show deserves. And to continue this darn good conversation, head over to the Q a section on Spotify.

Joe Toste [00:00:39]: So today we have two special guests, Krishna Etel, director of Enterprise solution services, Cloud and AI at the state of Texas, and Shauna Rogers, chief digital and data officer at the Texas Attorney general's office. Krishna, welcome back to Techtables.

Shauna Rogers [00:00:52]: Thank you. Thank you.

Joe Toste [00:00:53]: Shauna, welcome to tech tables.

Shauna Rogers [00:00:54]: Thank you for having me.

Joe Toste [00:00:55]: This is a long time coming. I'm excited to have shauna on. I met her at Galveston and Little side connection. She's got a connection to Santa Barbara, so I guess immediately.

Shauna Rogers [00:01:06]: Yeah. And we both like basketball.

Joe Toste [00:01:07]: And we both like basketball. Yeah. Loved it. Today's podcast is titled the Digital Deep Dive. Sean, I'm going to start with you before we jump into the cloud. Transformations with automation and data intelligence into AI. You had posted a quote by Andrew Carnegie on working towards a common vision and achieving uncommon results. Carnegie said teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision, the ability to direct individual accomplishments towards organizational objectives.

Joe Toste [00:01:34]: It is the fuel that allows common people to achieve uncommon results. First, what's the micro vision for your team at the attorney general's office and how do you keep that focused on the North Star?

Shauna Rogers [00:01:47]: Yeah. So first I would like to mean we really are focused at the Texas attorney general's office on serving the public. Right. And so one of our areas of service is child support. And so whenever we are trying to help the business solve problems or get ahead of things like the influx of calls or chats that we had with COVID it really is about serving the business and being a really good business partner. Now, in saying that, we've also done a lot of mentorship and grooming and new hiring of current state staff and bringing in new consultants as well. And so it really is about teamwork, right? Bringing in the smartest people that we can upskilling our current employees and then being very focused on small, iterative wins that serve business value and really provide service back to the state of Texas and the constituents.

Joe Toste [00:02:45]: Is there a small win or maybe a favorite win that you have? Top of mind?

Shauna Rogers [00:02:49]: Yeah, I mean, first I would like to say we build cool things. One of the wins that I'd like to talk about was one of the wins that we had with COVID So we had an influx. On average, we have 500,000 calls a month coming into our child support hotline for assistance. And with COVID you could imagine there was just such a large influx of calls and emails and chats. And so as a technology organization, we were really able to step up and help relieve some of that pain using robotics process automation with our business partners to help get ahead of some of the problems that we had. So we're really proud of that win.

Joe Toste [00:03:25]: Awesome. I love that. And is there a business partner sitting next to you right now?

Shauna Rogers [00:03:30]: Yes.

Joe Toste [00:03:31]: So for those who are interested in RPA. I know, I know. I kind of teed it up. But if you are interested in RPA and the cloud and AI coes with Krishna, we actually covered it twice on two episodes on tech tables. I forget the episodes, but you can just use the search function on the website and type in Krishna and his face will pop up. But Krishna, I'm actually kind of curious just a little bit. But what's new since 2021 for the state of Texas? Cloud and AI Joe, that you would like to share.

Shauna Rogers [00:04:01]: Thank you, Joe. So when we first talked about the CoE, we were in the early stages. You do the crawl, walk, run and fly. And now I can say, we can say confidently that we are moving from the crawl space to the walk area. We still have a long miles to go, but we are collaborating a lot. We are learning from each other. We are doing a lot of training. And if you remember, last year, 2021, just after the episode was done, we won the state national innovation of the award last year itself, within six months of the CoE being established.

Shauna Rogers [00:04:33]: I think that was a big win. And we have today, as of today, we have about 35 proof of concepts, five in production. So what we're trying to do is help all the agencies out frontier, who are in turn helping the citizens so that we can make the services, just like how Shauna said, we can make the lives of people easy, and we can get the service to them faster and cheaper, and we can save a lot of lives.

Joe Toste [00:04:56]: What's your favorite POC that you can.

Shauna Rogers [00:04:58]: Publicly talk about one of the joint PoC means where we have to come in and help show. Already talked about it. But the other interesting thing, what I can talk about in addition, is that when you get the queries from people in an email format in about 2000, or you take a number, majority of them are password resets and things of that kind. And we kind of told two pocs in two pods, we introduced natural language processing. And what it will do is that it will separate the critical items, bubble up top. And Shona did that very well in their real life scenario. And then we proved that in NLP at the parks and wildlife as well, so that we can quickly address the top issues and not worry about how to get to your office, what is the direction to the office, et cetera, et cetera. And the machine will do it.

Shauna Rogers [00:05:49]: And you don't have to have the team, the people who are taking the phones or being to the list, go through one by one and spend all day and understand, look the critical one that impact the child support cases at the very bottom. So I think I'm very happy about that kind of an outcome in the state.

Joe Toste [00:06:07]: Awesome. Shauna, jumping into the data and digital side, how are you leveraging automation and data intelligence to drive better experiences for the citizens of Texas who consume those services?

Shauna Rogers [00:06:17]: Yeah, no, that's a great question. Right now, we're doing some digital discovery in the space. So we have built this wonderful reference architecture in 2000 and 22,021, we started moving a lot of our services to the cloud, and we focused on a customer identity solution so that we can actually track and personalize digital engagement for our citizens. And then this year, now we're starting to build out all of the data elements that we need to really move into machine learning, artificial intelligence, and making sure that everything that we do enables the citizens of Texas ease of use to the services that we provide.

Joe Toste [00:06:55]: That's great. You had asked me, so I threw a live podcast event three weeks ago in Phoenix, and one of my guests who said, joe, no, no worries. His name is Judy. No, no worries. I'm going to be there. It's going to be great. And he's the chief of AI. Yeah.

Joe Toste [00:07:15]: Chief innovation officer. Yeah. At Maricova County Superior Court. And he's like, I'm so excited. We met, we wrote the questions, he's so hyped. And then I get a call at midnight, Joe, my wife's having a baby right now. That's crazy. I didn't know.

Joe Toste [00:07:33]: That's great. Congratulations. But there was a question that I had asked you that I was going to ask Aaron. Well, since Aaron's out of office for the next couple of months, I'm going to cheat and I'm going to reuse that question on you. So my question is, how are you measuring the effectiveness of those services that the citizens are consuming?

Shauna Rogers [00:07:54]: Yeah, no, absolutely. Through data and analytics. So sending out customer surveys, having live feedback, analytics around how people are interacting with our platforms and the success rate. We also look at case measurement or business outcomes as well. Right. Because we are a government agency that has to actually provide services, but we also have an enforcement branch. So making sure that people pay their child support on time, for instance, is really important to us. And people may or may not give us a great rating.

Joe Toste [00:08:27]: That's a no win situation.

Shauna Rogers [00:08:30]: But we would say that that would still be a win because we're able to make sure know every child in the state of Texas that has a child support case to support them has the financial and emotional support of both parents. That's the mission.

Joe Toste [00:08:43]: That's great. Krishna, what have you learned from Shauna and the attorney general's office that you've applied with some of your other work at Dir?

Shauna Rogers [00:08:51]: That's an excellent question. So when I went to OAG, mainly the child support division, and you should understand, they give out or disburse about $4.5 billion a year to children. Right. And it was very close to me because my grandmother was a single mother raising my mom, and later on, all of us, and we clearly was able to relate to the people who are doing this. And then when we walk into the office, like previously, the deputy CEO had said, look, I was able to build that trust with people in government. This was my first appointment or order at a state agency. I was coming from Freddie and Fannie Mae trying to do a joint venture. But when I come to the child support office, people threw me a red carpet at that know I felt so good and I was able to build that relationship.

Shauna Rogers [00:09:44]: And I was there only for about three weeks, but ended up five years. And I learned everything from people building the trust, how to work with government. And in that journey, we built about 570 servers, all at Dir and DCS partner in that particular journey and build about 14 environments. But more than that, what we were doing is we were not building servers. We were actually helping the child support system so that people can benefit from that. So putting people first and technology second. And that's what we do together all the time because we tell the agencies and colleagues and everyone I still remember Mandy and Rick. They all gave us a mandate to go and work with Sherna.

Shauna Rogers [00:10:26]: And I was at HhSe office for a year, camping there. So if you ask me, either parking lot or in the evening, we'll be hanging out and doing different departments.

Joe Toste [00:10:35]: That's how I found him, by the way, was in a parking lot.

Krishan Edathil, Chief Technology Officer/Assistant Commissioner, State of Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board [00:10:40]: I think to cut the story short, it is that relationship and how to change. For me, it's not a server down. Rick was talking earlier as well. When a server is down, someone who has to get a child support is kind of delayed. Or someone at the dfPs. If somebody has a big threat at home and if they are calling dfps, and if the server is down, it is not a server down. So changed that completely and that kind of helped us go know, embrace technology and have a great.

Brad Booth, Account Executive, SentinelOne [00:11:12]: So.

Shauna Rogers [00:11:12]: So I think that is a big win that we had where we can work together, collaborate, and I think that's a great thing for us to do.

Joe Toste [00:11:21]: Yeah, no, I really like that. Shauna, what have you learned from Krishna that you're applying at AOG right now?

Shauna Rogers [00:11:27]: Don't blush too much. So I'm going to say I was very new to technology in the government space. I did over 19 years on Wall street building really concurrent technologies very quickly that brought stock ticker prices up. Right. Very powerful. Yes. And so going from that public sector space into a private sector space, into the public sector space, not understanding what the differences were in between, really working for a CEO, again, that was very focused on financial outcomes. Right.

Shauna Rogers [00:12:05]: And into the government space, where things just work differently. And Krishna was just a great person. He was a great mentor and a great friend to work with. So if anything, I would say Krishna probably could do a side hustle, writing a book on how to build a career in the public sector. And that would probably be helpful for.

Joe Toste [00:12:22]: New people coming in, camping out Monday through Friday.

Shauna Rogers [00:12:27]: I'll definitely take up on that because you need a lot of stories like this to inspire and just to shine back on. Shona, you have to see that when we are playing the game from Dir side, we need someone to play pretty quick and fast. And I would say very competitive game. And we understood that we had that chemistry. And I think such team play is very important for state to move to the next level.

Joe Toste [00:12:53]: Yeah, that's great. Interesting fact, I actually grew up on child support payments. So every time my mom would say, oh, the child support is not here. I'm like, now I'm reflecting black. I'm like, oh, well, there wasn't cloud back then, but I'm sure there was some on prem device that was not functioning the way it should have been. So I want to open this up to the audience right now. So do we have any audience questions? Again, if they are too specific, like hey Shauna, do you have an RFP? Again, no, the would not be asking that and that will get cut out. So, any questions for Shauna or Krishna?

Brad Booth, Account Executive, SentinelOne [00:13:31]: My question is around what the bleeding edge is in your respective domains right now with AI.

Shauna Rogers [00:13:38]: So right now we are doing some really cool things with using technology to build real time digital analytics on our digital engagement channels. Right. It's kind of a new concept is what I'm finding that people actually have the data to make decisions on product fluency and the roadmaps based off of interactions with technology from the citizens. So we're very focused on that. We're about five sprints into building really cool analytics that are real time. And so the next iteration of that is for us to actually take a response or an action with the citizen to be able to drive down call center volume or be able to drive down chat center volume. That's human manned.

Shauna Rogers [00:14:18]: So while show and the team are much more focused on the current items, right, things that they are taking into production, Mandy and John, they have assigned us or our team to look at the future. So we are looking at five years, six years, seven years, ten years down the line. And those are some of the pocs. That's why it takes a longer time for our pocs to become or get into production. So that's show journey. So the one we are focusing heavily on, if you all know the center Bill 475, it said not to capture the biometric information. So we are working with two companies, I don't want to call the name out now, but we are working on digital assistants who will look like you, like a know it's already in production at the DFW airport, et cetera. So what it will do is that it will respond to you with empathy.

Shauna Rogers [00:15:03]: So we are bringing the chat bots, the chat solutions, we're bringing the backend automation and also giving it a facial expression so that, for example, it'll be a great case study, for example, Rick down the line four or five years, because this can be a kiosk in a hospital, and you can go and ask which way to go. And then that digital assistant will respond to you with all the questions and it can even recognize. I would have played a demo right now, but if you ask me who is Krishna. It'll come and tell you exactly who I am. And then if you change it, it can quickly capture. And the best part is that it capture about 35 points on your face like a facial expression. And it is going to react the same way when you are angry. It'll calm you down, and when you're lost somewhere, it'll find you the right direction to go as well.

Shauna Rogers [00:15:52]: So that's what we are. Excited, and we have great blessing from our leaders here, and we hope to keep Texas ahead of other states and collaborate as well.

Shauna Rogers [00:16:06]: No pun intended. Sorry.

Shauna Rogers [00:16:10]: Yeah, again, collaborate.

Shauna Rogers [00:16:11]: And Joe, we ought to be number one. Sorry.

Joe Toste [00:16:15]: Yeah, Kevin's really here just to know what pocs you guys are working on. He's going to run back. Yeah. Great. Anyone else? Any other questions? Go for Mark.

Brad Booth, Account Executive, SentinelOne [00:16:28]: You mentioned Senate Bill 475, and I think a lot of agencies are coming up with strategies for addressing that. And I want to specifically hear what you all are doing in relation to the data governance piece of that legislation.

Shauna Rogers [00:16:44]: Do you want me to take that one?

Shauna Rogers [00:16:45]: Yeah.

Shauna Rogers [00:16:45]: Okay. We are standing up a data governance program now. It's a great time for us to move into data governance for data standardization, classification, tagging, categorization. Actually, we have a CMDB now, which is awesome. We have an automated CMDB. So we're in a great space to actually hold information related to our product owner and our data owner and what type of information is actually being held in the system. So for us, this is a great thing. Hopefully, we will be right in there where we need to be become next year.

Shauna Rogers [00:17:21]: And I'm excited about the fact that we're going to be able to really do some neat things on the security side with automation and technology because of SB 475.

Shauna Rogers [00:17:32]: Yeah. Just want to add one point on what Shona said. It's going to create a kind of a foundation, if you will, so that we can start data sharing. For example, I was hearing a story. Is it sad or you can call it your way, that if someone is going to TDLR, Texas Department of Licensing and regulation, and if that person was arrested a few hours ago and let go on a bail, there is no way that this agency can quickly find this person. We should not give him that particular license. So once we get into this shared data sharing kind of a concept, and 475 is laying a strong foundation. So from 510 years from now, it will take time.

Shauna Rogers [00:18:17]: It's government. We all know that. But we'll have that quick and easy managing, how will I put it, the people side of things so that you don't have to enter your id or things five times. It'll all be pretty quick and easy.

Joe Toste [00:18:35]: Great. Any other questions?

Brad Booth, Account Executive, SentinelOne [00:18:37]: So how has the pandemic impacted your overall technology, and particularly AI strategy? Are there any lessons that you're taking forward from that?

Shauna Rogers [00:18:47]: I came in to my role in the agency on April the first of 2020, and so it was a wonderful time to come in and to try to modernize. What I would say is, I feel very lucky to come into the organization at the time that I did because everybody was so open to change and adoption of new technologies, because we had problems everywhere. Right. Everybody was doing the best that they could just to keep up with their daily work effort. On top of the fact that they might have been sick, their family members were sick. It was a new world. They're trying to take care of their homes and their children and their families at the same time. So I would say I'm very lucky to come in whenever I did, even though it was really hard.

Shauna Rogers [00:19:36]: Right. And, and we, we came out of the gate, I mean, eight, eight weeks into my job, we were implementing robotics, process automation to support the business. So I'm not a five or ten year person. We're a little bit shorter term as far as being able to innovate and release product. But Krishna is just great to be able to work with in that space also, as far as innovation and what other people are doing. And he's always a great sounding board.

Shauna Rogers [00:20:03]: Thank you. The only point I would add is that if there was no pandemic, for some reason or the other, it would have taken at least about ten years or so to just. We were talking about cloud, just like that AI, they'll ask if it is a blood group or things like that. So it'll take a long time for us to implement that. But this gave us a tailwind, if you will, and it was like, whatever, 100, whatever you quantify, and we were able to take that and channel that into the right direction. And everyone, after the first or second week, when people went from office to home, we were able to stand up about 160,000 teams across the state. So I'm just talking not just about the AI, but how that technology. So, same thing.

Shauna Rogers [00:20:50]: We were able to adopt in different agencies and save lot of quick wins. For example, when the COVID happened, we got a lot of data from different entities and we had to deduplicate them. Means if I had five names, so five entries, so if I had positive. So how do you make sure that it's one and we implemented one of the RPA technology solution and thankfully we had a procurement and everything in place. So we were able to quickly introduce that and get that value to the customers within few weeks. So otherwise we would have taken a long time to sell to the business, sell to the leaders and then get the talent right. Very, very critical. And we were able to partner and it was at the right time.

Shauna Rogers [00:21:37]: We had the Tiger team means it's a collaboration of all the team I talked about in the last podcast. That's why I didn't mention that here. But that team really made 200 people, really made that big difference and we would not have done that without all this technology momentum happening.

Joe Toste [00:21:54]: Anyone else? I know you're itching.

Brad Booth, Account Executive, SentinelOne [00:22:02]: What you guys do, get to build cool systems. I heard the pilot coming out potentially at the airport with facial recognition and using human behavior behind AI. Walk me through or help me understand how do you recruit people to be on these teams? Or what nontraditional backgrounds are you looking for? Because not everyone's in it. There's probably a lot of creatives that are like, I know how to do this thing. What's the makeup of your team and what type of people you try to work with?

Shauna Rogers [00:22:31]: So other than standing on the street corner with a sign that says we need to hire developers, please come work for us, right? I would do it, but nobody would help me in that space either. I would say we have brought in some people who are wanting to support the cause of public service that have been cool building really cool technology for a long time. And the we are hiring people right out of college to pair them with. And as far as recruitment, going back to what Ricardo Blanco said earlier, we are really big on hiring veterans. We're a veteran first, if we possibly can, so. But it's been difficult. My CIO, Tina McLeod's been really great in supporting us and she's know chat forums and leaderboards. I cyber stalk people on LinkedIn and ask them to apply for a job.

Shauna Rogers [00:23:27]: So it's been difficult in this market in Austin, but we have been able to fill some data scientist positions as of this week. So proud about that.

Shauna Rogers [00:23:38]: I'll add only one thing. Just like we have been collaborating a lot. For example, I'm sitting next to a champion who wanted to start code sharing between the state agencies. If Shauna has a code built, why not we use it? Why not some other agency do it? Why we spend the same tax dollars again and again. So that's a big win for us because, look, we collaborate and we show that I'm glad that you put us together today. And the, the second one is the interns. So the moment I go and sell it to our leadership saying that it's mine, they'll shoot it down. It is tendency.

Shauna Rogers [00:24:09]: Okay, let's not have, I'm not talking about the internal, the small p, but people don't like certain things. But what we did here was that we had three interns. Mandy was there when we had their final presentation and everything. They came and they are the face of the technology. They are going and pitching it to the leadership saying that look, which is better, is it Google better, azure better or which technology is better? And they make the pitch. What I'm saying is that we will put the Eng team up front and one great cloud company, number one maybe. And one of two of the people asked me, how can we come and work for the state? And we will come and work for the state because you have the cool technology and we don't care for the money. So imagine those kind of conversations that is happening in the area.

Shauna Rogers [00:24:56]: And I know that Corey and all are working on having more of the internship programs and I think that is going to take off in a big way and that's going to change the world. How the mind would come and talk through and push the technology forward.

Joe Toste [00:25:11]: That's great. Well, Krishna, thank you for coming back on techtables. And Shauna, thank you for coming on today. I really appreciate it.

Shauna Rogers [00:25:17]: Thank you. Thank you so much.

Joe Toste [00:25:20]: Hey, what's up everybody?

Joe Toste [00:25:21]: This is Joe toste from techtables.com and you're listening to the public sector show by techtables. This podcast features human centric stories from public sector, cios, cisos and technology leaders across federal, state, city, county and higher education. You'll gain valuable insights into current issues and challenges faced by top leaders through interviews, speaking engagements, live podcast tour events. We offer you a behind the mic look at the opportunities top leaders are seeing today and to make sure you never miss an episode, head over to Spotify and Apple Podcasts and hit that follow button and leave a quick rating. Just tap the number of stars that you think this show deserves. And to continue this darn good conversation, head over to the Q A section on Spotify.