Ep.169 Breaking Down Data Silos: How Montana is Improving Data Sharing Across Agencies (and Reducing Friction and Streamlining Services)

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

Joe Toste [00:00:00]:
This is Joe Toste from techtables.com and.

Joe Toste [00:00:03]:
You'Re listening to the public sector show by techtables.

Joe Toste [00:00:05]:
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 lead ears are seen today. And to make sure you never miss an episode, head over to Spotify and Apple podcasts. Hit that follow button and leave a quick rating. Just tap the number of stars that you think this show deserves.

Joe Toste [00:00:34]:
Today we have Kevin Gilbertson, CIO for the state of Montana, Kerry Albro, CIO for Montana Health and Human Services and Adam Carpenter, chief data officer for the state of Montana. Welcome you all to the public sector show by tech tables.

Kevin Gilbertson [00:00:48]:
Thanks for having us.

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:00:49]:
Indeed.

Joe Toste [00:00:49]:
I love this. Well, Adam, thank you for jumping on last minute.

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:00:53]:
Happy to be here. Happy I could make it.

Joe Toste [00:00:55]:
I'm happy you can make it too. This is going to be a fun time. So let's kick off with Kevin for those who don't know you, because people are going to listen to this podcast afterwards. Just short little brief background on yourself.

Kevin Gilbertson [00:01:05]:
So yeah, I've been the CIO of the state of Montana for about two and a half years. My background is mostly in private sector. I spent a lot of time working for a company that did a CX solution, customer experience, but citizen experience as well, and did some consulting around that same solution a little bit after. So that's kind of the majority of my career was contact centers, c hex and things like that.

Joe Toste [00:01:28]:
I love that. And just a quick plug, Kevin's been on the podcast twice before. I want to say episode 81. I'll put in the show notes. I can't remember exactly, but came on. We talked, we had a great conversation, and the second time came on with Mandy Crawford at the Commodore Perry live podcast tour. Totally fantastic. Carrie Short, background on yourself.

Carrie Albro, CIO, Montana Department of Public Health & Human Services [00:01:46]:
I have been with the state for two years previously a ton of private sector and professional services. So what I bring to the table, at least at the state, is just a really deep understanding on how to deliver technology and customer experience.

Joe Toste [00:02:01]:
And you love basketball.

Carrie Albro, CIO, Montana Department of Public Health & Human Services [00:02:03]:
I love Duke basketball. We'll make that clear.

Joe Toste [00:02:06]:
Adam short, background on yourself.

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:02:08]:
I don't love Duke basketball. I do respect Duke basketball, though, at least no. So I came up a little bit different in the sort of data world my background is really in. AI and machine learning. I was a machine learning engineer for a long time and then was hired into private consulting to run the practice for a large consulting company. And pretty quickly, we found that most of the private companies we spoke to really weren't ready to embark on that journey. They really needed to go through the data maturity journey first. And so I spent a few years leading companies through that, and then about a little less than two and a half years ago, got a call from Kevin, and here we are.

Joe Toste [00:02:43]:
You just want to carry that a little bit.

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:02:45]:
Yeah, fair enough.

Joe Toste [00:02:46]:
So, okay, I heard kind of the background story on this, and I want to dive into this. So Kevin said earlier that he texted you, and he was like, at this small company, hey, we're looking for a chief data officer. And you're like, what? Now I ain't taking this call?

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:03:00]:
Well, sort of. I think on a Saturday, I'm hanging out with my kids. Family time is really important to me, so I tend to not answer the phone on the weekends anyway, to be fair. But, yeah, he had called me and I knew he was with a consulting company. I had already moved into private consulting since the last time we caught up. And so I'll admit, I was like, I'll call him back when I get a chance. And I failed to call him back, I think, for about a week. And he sent me a text, was like, hey, man, there's a CDO role available over here at the state of Montana.

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:03:28]:
Suddenly he got a call back real quick. Right. Hey, Kevin. What's up, buddy? Long time no.

Joe Toste [00:03:35]:
Okay. So, Kevin, just take me back. You are looking to fill. And on the survey, you were talking about AI being a very important priority for you. What did you see in Adam that you were looking to bring to the state of Montana?

Kevin Gilbertson [00:03:50]:
Well, a lot of different mean. But first of all, we were just starting. We had never had a chief data officer before, and so I had worked with him in a previous engagement at the consulting company. I was really respected his deep knowledge in data and the work that he was doing there. And obviously it was competitive, but I had a great idea that he would come in and just do fantastic. And of course he has. It's been great. We're so much further than we were before Adam came along.

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:04:18]:
Yeah, I was just going to say it's been a remarkable amount of.

Joe Toste [00:04:22]:
So I like this. But what was kind of the first use case that you were thinking of, Kevin, of how this is going to help Montanans?

Kevin Gilbertson [00:04:31]:
Well, it was really more of the director of administration, and I was within it, I wanted to do the same thing, too. So we kind of had the idea at the same time. But the reality is, just like every other state, the data is so siloed. You're entering your data constantly in different places. One of the use cases that we're talking about, and it wasn't an original use case, but one of the use cases we're talking about is around justice data, where if someone does something in Gallatin county, which is Bozeman, and then goes to Kalispell the next day and does something not so great, there's a good chance that they don't know that had happened. And so we really have some isolated things. And so in the meantime, we're doing some pocs, we're doing all sorts of things. But as a whole, my background was always around making data driven decisions.

Kevin Gilbertson [00:05:19]:
And quite frankly, when I asked for some data, right, when I got there, there wasn't the data that I was hoping to. So I was having to kind of make the decisions in the dark on some things. So it's my responsibility by statute to report on all projects and make sure that they're going well and things like that. But we didn't really have a great way to collect all of that. And so there's so many use cases, and that list has just grown great.

Joe Toste [00:05:45]:
So I just want to touch upon one more thing, and then we'll jump to Carrie, how long have you been with the state again, but sort of.

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:05:51]:
Between them, about two years, two months.

Joe Toste [00:05:53]:
Okay. So you've had some time to get your feet wet and any stories that you would like to highlight, any successes, any learnings? Two years in and maybe where you see this going in the next five years.

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:06:06]:
Yeah. There's a story I told in here a little bit earlier for some of the people present about the permitting. Sewer permitting system in DEQ. Right. So when the governor was running for office, he was hearing from constituents on the campaign trail that it's really difficult to get a sewer permit in the state. And as they get started and they start looking into this.

Joe Toste [00:06:22]:
Right.

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:06:22]:
They figure out that the sewer permitting system is an auto parser, and it's looking for five things. But one of the five things that it lists on the website that it's looking for isn't actually what it's set to look for. So for, we think about twelve years, something like 99% of sewer permits got rejected out of hand automatically. Right. And unless you knew somebody, a deak you could call to get a sewer permit, you weren't getting a sewer permit that amounts to between 20 and 30% of people. So 70% to 80% of potential sewer permits didn't get approved for more than a decade.

Scotty Harry, Public Sector Account Executive, Snowflake [00:06:56]:
Right.

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:06:56]:
And that's one configuration setting in one system, in one agency, and it's one piece of data that was wrong, and that's causing potentially tens or hundreds of billions of impact on housing costs. So data can make an enormous difference to the citizen. Right. An absolutely enormous difference. To Kevin's point, how do you measure recidivism? If the state arrests somebody, but then the next time they're arrested, it's by a county and they get processed through county court, charged and released, punished, whatever, that data never makes it to the state. They never know what happened.

Joe Toste [00:07:29]:
Right.

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:07:29]:
And so we have an entirely unclear picture of what's happening in the state on a lot of levels, and we've made a ton of progress in two years to improve that, but every bit of it makes a huge difference. The example that was used earlier today was how many times you have to enter something. Right? So I'm a citizen of the state. You've printed my birth certificate. Eventually, hopefully a long time from now, you'll print my death certificate. But in between there, every time I go visit you, you're going to not have any idea who I am. I go get my hunting license, then I go get my driver's license, and I've got to fill out the same form and tell you who I am and prove who I am and so on. And you've never heard of me.

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:08:08]:
Right. So getting past that and reducing the cost and taxpayer waste associated with processing that form five different times for the same person every year, it just adds up.

Joe Toste [00:08:21]:
Yeah, that was kind of a similar conversation with Rob the last night that we were touching upon the small successes that you have. Has that been able to. I guess this would be directed at Kevin to help you build the business case to go get more dollars for the transformation across the state.

Kevin Gilbertson [00:08:38]:
Yeah, absolutely. We're still early in that, but it's helped enough that the legislature is actually demanding more. Prove that you are actually executing it against a state strategy. It strategy that it's not just some document that you put out there. And I'm all for that because next time we go in, because we have session every other year, next time I go in, I'm able to go in. We're going to use a balance scorecard for the state strategy, and I'm going to be able to show them actual movement on that strategy and that, hey, if you invest in it, it's going to pay dividends for you. Versus I've been asked in hearings that when are we done spending on this thing, this particular thing in it? And it's a fair question if you're not familiar with the ever changing landscape there. And so what we're trying to do is help that to show that that's creating value in and of itself.

Kevin Gilbertson [00:09:33]:
And so my opinion is the dollar spend in it today, if you're spending it appropriately, actually saves you $3 or earns you $3 sometime in the future. And so it spending, to me is always an investment, and we need to be able to show and prove that it's an investment.

Joe Toste [00:09:48]:
I love that. So you mentioned something. You said scorecard. This is probably the most requested thing I get from CIOs is what does a scorecard look like? Because it varies from state to state. And Jamie Grant talked about this when we were in Orlando. Is that something you'd be able to share? I mean, you can obviously clear out all the numbers and any comments or anything that, is there a template or anything like that by chance that you'd be able to share with other folks?

Kevin Gilbertson [00:10:10]:
There will be. We're actually in the process of putting it together right now. So one of the things that I've done is we've built a number of committees. So we, on an annual basis, get together all of the CIOs from the agencies. We're a federated state, come together and we create the state it strategy. Now, we create that every other year. So one year we create the strategy. In the intervening year, we talk only about execution.

Kevin Gilbertson [00:10:33]:
How are we doing? What do we need to do better? Are there adjustments we need to make? Are there things that shouldn't have been there in the first place? And so we've only done two of those. So that was after I got there. So we've done one setting and one execution, and now we're in about two weeks going to go back into the setting. And the way we prep for that is that we have a number of different committees, and each of the committees have a chair. And then I've asked them to give us KPIs that we can incorporate into the scorecard. So they're working with committees statewide to put together the candidate KPIs. That will be no more than like ten to 15 measurements. And then I'm actually adding a role to my executive team that we're calling the chief innovation and transformation officer, who will actually be responsible for making sure that we're regularly collecting that data and able to report it to all of the stakeholders, the legislature, the governor.

Kevin Gilbertson [00:11:27]:
Like I meet with the governor monthly and do an operations review. And so this would be a document that I would take in for there. So we're still setting it, and I really want it to be a collaborative process, because at the end of the day, it's the agencies that are going to have to be bought into making sure that this is up to date and that this is really the direction that we need to go. And so I think I have a lot of optimism, because the first time we did it, I think that we had a lot of success. People felt like they were more part of the process. And now going in for the third annual event, I think that folks are excited about it, too.

Joe Toste [00:12:00]:
That's great. So this dovetails really well with Carrie. Carrie, you talked about when we met about being the voice for the other agency, CIOs. Tell me more.

Carrie Albro, CIO, Montana Department of Public Health & Human Services [00:12:09]:
I don't know, Kevin. I came in, hadn't been with any sort of government entity for a long while. So very much private sector came into an agency that was sort of thirsty for structure within our technology services division. And really no onboarding, no one trained me. I had no idea, walking into public health and human services, the largest agency, what that really meant. So I just started asking questions, starting with my team. What are your points of pain? Tell me more about what you do. What are we executing against? Which is a whole nother story.

Carrie Albro, CIO, Montana Department of Public Health & Human Services [00:12:48]:
Nothing. Right? Took a long time to get our portfolio together so we could contribute to a scorecard. But at the end of the day, the CIOs come together in a roundtable, and I'm a previous consultant, and I ask a lot of questions that maybe people are not ready to answer or don't want to answer. And so it was interesting over time, I think being involved, having Kevin and his team really working hard to develop a rapport and a stronger relationship with agency leadership made a huge difference in the way that we interact with each other. But through a whole host of everything, as we're planning, with strategy, beginning to roll out more enterprise solutions across agencies, I tend to ask the tough questions and really expect, because of my delivery experience, I want to know, end to end, what it looks like, what's the impact of the agency? What's the outcome? How do we define a successful result at the end of implementation? And got a lot of comments from people who maybe weren't as type a as me, who would come up to me and say, hey, thanks for saying the things or asking the questions. I was afraid to ask. So I love that. That kind of gives me goosebumps because there are people who aren't as feisty as I am, and I'm glad I was able to get their questions answered.

Joe Toste [00:14:09]:
So I love Kevin. I know Kevin really likes goals. I posted a kind of a video that, a snippet I took, and you can't have a goal without taking the appropriate steps to flesh it out. Right. Like, it takes time to chew on what the goal actually is to turn it from, which is oftentimes a lot of folks is just a dream, and you've got to make that a goal. And then there's the number of steps and then what are you executing against and what are the KPIs? So I really like Dave Ramsey. There's a lot that he has to say that I really, not everything, but I really like him. And one thing he has is he calls it the single ringable neck.

Joe Toste [00:14:45]:
So if you have someone who's going to own a goal, and in my case, it's just me, and so, and of course, I can't say to my wife, you're the single ringable neck on this. So we have this. He's got this online platform for managing teams, and it's just me. I'm the single ringable neck every week, and I just rate myself. And so Jamie's always gets always green for her, and I'm always, like, red maybe.

Kevin Gilbertson [00:15:07]:
Yeah.

Joe Toste [00:15:08]:
So I love that. Carrie, the other thing you said was not accepting the status quo. I love this.

Carrie Albro, CIO, Montana Department of Public Health & Human Services [00:15:16]:
I think the reason I pointed that out was really and through my interactions with a team, with my team, that was when I met them and we started to get to know each other, really. They were thirsty for leadership, and they were also. I started to see pockets of people that you could tell really wanted to contribute and maybe had never really been asked to engage in a new project, a new initiative, or bringing them to the table to collect their thoughts about, okay, how do we onboard new technology, what does that look like? And we're all staring at each other. So I think coming from private sector, it's blessing and a curse. And in professional services as well, your clients expect excellent work products, right? So that's been driven in my dna for a good long time. So I think the governor always says to us, better is possible, right? So that's sort of an anthem. Within our division, better is always possible. And I also use this thing.

Carrie Albro, CIO, Montana Department of Public Health & Human Services [00:16:19]:
If there's an issue or a project, I say, poke at it, and they all look at me. The first time I said it. I said, is it squishy? And they're like, yeah, kind of. I'm like, then keep pushing at it. Right? Because behind that, if you hit a wall, maybe let's defer that. But if it's squishy, let's keep poking. Because at the end of that, maybe we can contribute to a better outcome or make a difference in the rollout of an enterprise solution, the squishy thing. And then at one point, I did a jigglypuff thing from Pokemon, and so we were visually, anyway, poke at it.

Carrie Albro, CIO, Montana Department of Public Health & Human Services [00:16:58]:
And if it's squishy, keep poking until you get your answers. Or, yeah, you come up with a.

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:17:03]:
New idea until it pushes back.

Carrie Albro, CIO, Montana Department of Public Health & Human Services [00:17:05]:
Yeah.

Joe Toste [00:17:06]:
So if you've been watching some of the videos that we've been posting recently, we hired this animation company, and this scene right here would be really funny, because what I would do is, I would say, okay, what's the hook? And what do I want? It would be jigglypuff, like fighting back, and it would be like Adam getting dunked on. And it would be really great. I don't know if the state of Montana is going to ever let me release that, but that's what I'm thinking immediately, right off the bat.

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:17:26]:
We can run it through comps.

Joe Toste [00:17:28]:
I love it.

Scotty Harry, Public Sector Account Executive, Snowflake [00:17:28]:
Okay.

Joe Toste [00:17:29]:
So better as possible. Cool. I love that. I think it's a trait. It's almost like a little bit of an obsession of great leaders, of always kind of refining and trying to make it better. When I was thinking about this podcast, because Kevin's been on twice already, so didn't want to bore Kevin, I was like, okay, I got to come up with new material. And I was thinking about this, and I came up with, has anyone been to the Netflix job site? Anyone? Nobody? Oh, this is good. What? So Netflix culture seeking excellence.

Joe Toste [00:18:00]:
And I'm not going to read the whole thing. It's very lengthy and very good. It is very good. But they have a section that I really resonated with, and it had to do with building your dream team. And the reason I like that so much is because I don't hear people talk like that. And to build anything great that's going to scale, you're going to need to build dream team. Right? And that doesn't mean perfection. It just means you want to build the best possible team while seeking excellence.

Joe Toste [00:18:31]:
And it's very long. I'm just going to drop in the show notes. I won't read it right now, but I would encourage everyone here to dive in because I think it's super important to be able to, in all of the different kind of domains that all of you manage, building that team. And sometimes, again, if you're not the right teammate, you need to exit the bus. And so I think that's also important is figuring out who needs to get on the bus and who's part of the team. And we've got kids on the basketball team who. They're great kids and they're just not meant for the team. And so they've got to get off the bus, and some of the kids get better and try out next season.

Joe Toste [00:19:08]:
And so, anyways, I have really enjoyed this conversation. I would go much longer. I want to take a couple of questions because I got seven more of these to do or six more after the three of you.

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:19:20]:
Fair enough.

Joe Toste [00:19:21]:
So not so fair on myself. And I've got to place that Pizza order with Jamie. She was texting me. Any folks in the audience? This is a fantastic opportunity to ask a question to three great leaders. I know we'll probably have to have them come back on so we can dive a lot deeper. And I know it doesn't do justice with the amount of time at 25 minutes or so, but, hey, we've been hanging out. We had a great hike today and everything. So any questions from the audience? Anyone want to come up here and ask a question on the mic? You could ask anything related to, as long as it's not public, to anything that they're putting out.

Joe Toste [00:19:56]:
But if you want to pick Adam's brain on data or Kevin or Carrie, now's the time. Also, did I mention you get featured on the podcast? We're going to put you in the podcast. Podcast is going to do 150,000 views this year on the website? No. Oh, John Rogers. Yeah, this is John Rogers, director of workforce development for the state of Indiana. Thank you, Joe.

Kevin Gilbertson [00:20:19]:
So just out of curiosity, your governor is front and center about wanting to cut red tape, and we talked a little bit at the top about AI. What's the role of using AI to fix?

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:20:30]:
I'm going to say fix.

Kevin Gilbertson [00:20:32]:
Redo, rethink government regulations broadly. Yeah. So we're fairly early in that, obviously. We're just basically now starting to put out guidance in terms of how we're going to use AI. And so the use cases that we're investigating are broad, everything from helping to examine policy. And I've been talking to other state cios, even about, hey, do we train something on all statute in all 50 states and then use that to try and figure out, okay, what's missing, where and things like that. But to be honest with you, I hadn't really thought too much about the red tape relief with that. So that's a great idea we should put into it.

Kevin Gilbertson [00:21:10]:
But for me, the power of AI is, yes, we can do great things in terms of creating policy and doing these other types of things, but there's so much opportunity when you think, and I know other states have a lot more employees, but we have 16,000 in the state of Montana. And the power app for me is, what if I could save every single person in the state a half hour a day by not having to write long emails, by creating meeting agendas, by doing a job description or doing these other types of things. And yes, I want to do these big things as well, where we can use it to work with health data and to do all these other types of things. But yeah, I just want to get it into hands, but I want to get it into everybody's hands safely. So that's really what we're focusing on right now, is the safety part of it, making sure that the nightmare is somebody enters some siege data and becomes a part of a learning model or something like that, and that's more what we're focusing on at the moment.

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:22:01]:
Yeah, I agree with all that. I think to answer it from a slightly different angle. Right. Red tape is sort of a matter of perspective. Right. So if I'm a citizen and it takes me five weeks to get a hunting license because of all the hoops I have to jump through, that's red tape. Right. And so it's not all sort of statutorily based.

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:22:19]:
A lot of it is just the way the system is set up in the agency, the way whatever it may be. Now, don't be wrong. It doesn't necessarily take that long to get a hunting license. I'm not calling out fish, wildlife and parks, but there are places of friction, as in every state, between somebody trying to get something done and the state trying to make sure that it's being done in accordance with everybody's best interest. And anywhere that you can automate any part of that process, whether it's reading the paper form or the livestock inspection report from the veterinarian or whatever it may be, so that you can track bursollosis outbreaks better, or that all is going to end up producing red tape, reducing government intervention in your day to day life because you don't have to go through as many steps and jumps and so on to get something done. So there are a lot of ways indirectly that I think AI can play in that. But the thing about statute itself is that a common law legal system is almost entirely context based. Right.

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:23:14]:
The answer to the question in this case depends on five other cases over the last 800 years. So I think we're a little bit off from AI being able to fully understand that context, even if it can understand all the legal documents it reads. Right.

Joe Toste [00:23:29]:
Kerry, I was just really curious, where are you seeing AI applicable in the kind of health and human services world or what are you kind of chewing on or exploring right now?

Carrie Albro, CIO, Montana Department of Public Health & Human Services [00:23:40]:
I think we're really excited right now. We're just in the infancy of building out a really formalized analytics office. So we're very data rich, really strong on health services. Moving our human services data into our EDW and our public health repository of data is immense. Right. So right now, AI, we're not. I think the vision is, yes, with our new technologies, with some of the investments we're making in our data platforms that will come. But right now we're really focused on continuing to onboard and enrich our existing data assets, create this new analytics office that will focus on really the director's initiative to really guide our clients, our citizens that need our help to use that data and the tools, the AI and others, to help them become more self sufficient and independent.

Carrie Albro, CIO, Montana Department of Public Health & Human Services [00:24:43]:
So I think we're just starting that journey and Adam will be, and Kevin, of course, but Adam very much involved in our efforts.

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:24:50]:
Yeah, we're just putting the finishing touches on an AI project in your agency.

Kevin Gilbertson [00:24:53]:
Well, and then maybe it would be worth mentioning the referral engine too, because there's AI components to that which could have pretty big impact.

Joe Toste [00:24:59]:
Yep.

Carrie Albro, CIO, Montana Department of Public Health & Human Services [00:25:00]:
So just will be launching. It's called the resource referral engine. It's been built in Kentucky and Indiana, Michigan, La county. We now have united way data in that application. We go live. And essentially if a citizen comes in and they're eligible for services, there's an engine, a referral using algorithms that start to create a path of referrals for someone who is currently receiving benefits. So we're starting with United Way data. We will begin to onboard community based partners and faith and faith churches and food shelters or food banks and others to contribute to it.

Carrie Albro, CIO, Montana Department of Public Health & Human Services [00:25:41]:
So that is an 18 month deployment. So about this time next year, it'll be fully operational and it'll be sort of our one stop shop for a period of time for how our citizens engage with us. And it'll be mobile enabled.

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:25:54]:
It's something we're working on. So I've seen New York's open data platform. It's a wonderful thing. I've always been impressed by it. They've had it for a good bit. Now, we are working on getting to an open data platform, certainly, but we're also working on just getting to open data more broadly speaking. Right. So the state doesn't, until the near future, doesn't have an urban planning and development tool run by the state.

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:26:19]:
Right. And really more of a rural planning and development tool in our case. But the point is, if I'm Amazon and I want to build a warehouse here, how am I going to find out if I have the demographics to support it, if there are enough college graduates to support it, if there's enough water and wastewater infrastructure to support it on and on. And so we're putting together that tool because the state has all this data, right, and it just isn't utilized and you can get to it. So a lot of this data at least is publicly accessible, but just having an accessible doesn't necessarily cover you. Another case of this would be our corrections group. Our corrections group has, I think, 45, 49 active dashboards right now, about half of which are public, more coming, which as far as we know is more than any other state currently has in their corrections department. And so we are making progress trying to get that data out, but it isn't necessarily on an open data site sort of bespoke portal yet.

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:27:13]:
That is something we definitely want to get to, though. That's, I think, incumbent on all of us. This is the people's data we hold in trust. Right? It's not ours. So getting them access to it every place, that's reasonable and ethical, we definitely should.

Joe Toste [00:27:25]:
Great question, Varsha. Name where you're from?

Varsha Singh, Nagarro [00:27:30]:
Question, Varsha Singh with Nagarro. I'm from New Jersey, and there's a question for Adam. So we talked about forms and how redundant they are and processes around it. So single sign on is one of the things that private sector has adopted many years ago. Public sector is adopting it. But have you looked into single sign on and how it could enrich your data collection? Is there any thought around that? Data quality, data trust, those kind of things? So that's my question.

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:27:59]:
Yeah, great question. And most certainly so this is something that I work absolutely sort of hand in glove with Kevin on because honest, that sort of single sign on piece falls more into the CIO shop than it does the CDO shop. But then, as you point out, there's an enormous wealth of data that we can pull from that. And so that's certainly part of it. But what thiso doesn't solve for us is the fact that we have a 99 year record retention requirement. People live a long time, horses live a long time. Believe it or not, there's a 30 year retention requirement on horses, in case you're interested. And so it can be difficult to go back to tie a record you get in your new fancy SSO system to that person's birth certificate or the record they had five years ago, or their hunting license, or that felony they accidentally got which prevents them from getting that hunting license or whatever it might have been.

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:28:48]:
Right. Getting all those records into a single source of truth really requires master data management. You can't just do it with single sign on. But single sign on is a crucial first step. That's absolutely a good point. And so that is something the state's done and is sort of expanding.

Kevin Gilbertson [00:29:02]:
Yeah. And actually, at the enterprise level, we're requiring single sign on for all state applications. It'll take us a while to get there, 100%, but we've been doing this for a while, so we're a good way down the path of having almost all of the applications covered.

Joe Toste [00:29:15]:
Fantastic. Anyone else? Any other questions?

Scotty Harry, Public Sector Account Executive, Snowflake [00:29:19]:
Scotty Harry from Whitefish, Montana, from Snowflake. My question is, doing wonderful things at the state level. Curious. When we're looking at the local government, working with cities and counties and breaking down data silos, how do you all plan to work with the local government.

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:29:36]:
Within the state, in short, on their terms? I don't mean to give a glib answer, but the fact is, in a state where the state government is as, I mean, I wouldn't say underfunded, but we don't have the budget that New York state has, for example, or most states have, frankly, because we have a population just a little bit over a million. And so it's just not a huge tax base. And that means that that's even more true as you go down the line.

Scotty Harry, Public Sector Account Executive, Snowflake [00:30:03]:
Right.

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:30:04]:
And so as you get to these counties and commissions and things like that, some of these counties have an average of one person per or seven people per square mile or six people per square mile. And so they just don't have the revenue to do massive efforts. And so a lot of our goal has been to try to set up systems and processes that allow them to interact at the level they can. If what you've got is an excel spreadsheet, cool, send it in. We'll ingest it. If what you've got is here's, a form you can use so that you don't have to do this other thing, or here's access to this tool.

Joe Toste [00:30:34]:
Right.

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:30:35]:
So with the justice data warehouse, for example, we knew if the opening sort of premise of this project to build a centralized justice data warehouse is we're going to go to 56 different counties and say, hey, build us a feed to your data so that we can ingest it, well, then the next step was going to be, no, we're not doing that. We don't have time, we don't have money. We don't know what you're talking about and what's in it for us. Right. And so it has to be a much more reciprocal relationship. It's got to be us setting up a system and being willing to say, hey, what's the best way to get it? Can the vendor, if we pay them.

Scotty Harry, Public Sector Account Executive, Snowflake [00:31:04]:
Get us this data?

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:31:05]:
Can we reach into your system and get it? Is there some in between? Do you have an API, whatever it is? And then we set up so that there is a benefit. I think that's the other key part of that relationship, is if you want to work with the counties and you're going to them and saying, hey, I need this thing. We're not really working with the counties. You're just getting things from the counties.

Joe Toste [00:31:26]:
Right.

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:31:26]:
They're not getting anything from you. And so there needs to be that reciprocal relationship where you say, look, we're going to build a justice data warehouse. And that could, for example, allow us to have your officers at time of arrest understand what this person's full history in the state is or any number of things.

Scotty Harry, Public Sector Account Executive, Snowflake [00:31:42]:
Right.

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:31:42]:
And so that goes, again, back for livestock and disease tracking and so on and so forth. The state touches a lot of things, and that stays true across the whole spectrum.

Joe Toste [00:31:54]:
I'm kind of curious any one of you can pick this up, but I was just thinking about this. Montana is very different from New York, I guess you said, what state would you say is most similar or inspires you? Just based on the demographics of a.

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:32:06]:
Million, mean most similar would be Alaska or Wyoming. The Dakotas, I think.

Kevin Gilbertson [00:32:12]:
Yeah. So we do a lot of interaction with them. Typically the Dakotas, Utah, while they're much bigger than we are, there's a lot that they're out ahead on that we can learn from. Work with Wyoming a lot. So, yeah, the local state or the close states, we all have things that we excel at. We all have things that we can improve at, and we're really open to sharing. How can I help you excel where we're excelling. And how can you help me excel where you are?

Scotty Harry, Public Sector Account Executive, Snowflake [00:32:38]:
Yeah.

Adam Carpenter, Chief Data Officer, State of Montana [00:32:38]:
And I'll say you don't have to be similar to me to inspire me either. I mean, there are plenty of things that we can learn from New York. We've had some incredible conversations with Estonia right over in can. Everybody is going through this similar experience of trying to be human and administer for a large group of people and a bunch of programs and systems or companies and agencies or whatever it may be, and ultimately it ends up being pretty similar across the board.

Kevin Gilbertson [00:33:06]:
We have a program where I've got CIOs from other states coming in and talking to my leadership on what they're doing and their leadership philosophy. And it's amazing how well people are receiving that while the CIOs are able to interact with one another and we can kind of see that and see where we have similarities and things like that. Most of the employees didn't have that, and now all of a sudden they're starting to see these presentations and really appreciating to have a closer connection. So we just had mark from Connecticut. So as Adam said, you take the opportunity to learn from everyone because there's always something you can learn from everyone.

Joe Toste [00:33:43]:
Love it. Thank you for coming on the public sector show by tech tables. I appreciate it. Kevin Carey and Adam hey, what's up everybody?

Joe Toste [00:33:51]:
This is Joe Toste from Techtables.com and.

Joe Toste [00:33:53]:
You'Re listening to the public sector show by techtables.

Joe Toste [00:33:56]:
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