#42: Ted Ross, CIO, City of Los Angeles - Building a Smart City for the Future

Joe Toste [00:00:00]:
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Joe Toste [00:01:02]:
As always, thank you for supporting the tech Techtables network.

Joe Toste [00:01:12]:
Welcome to Techtables podcast. Ted, super excited to have you on this morning.

Ted Ross [00:01:16]:
Thank you, Joe. Great to be here.

Joe Toste [00:01:17]:
Awesome. So let's kick it off. We were talking a lot about digital ethics on our podcast intro call, and I know it's a really important topic over the last couple of years, especially when it comes to emerging technologies. For those not following digital ethics too closely, how would you define digital ethics and talk about digital code of ethics? The city of LA recently published.

Ted Ross [00:01:37]:
Yeah, it's a really interesting question, because when you're talking to a self admitted it guy, ethics is probably the first conversation you think that would come up. But really, the way we see it is this. As Americans, we've become increasingly digital. We've become also increasingly distrustful of digital technology, whether it's privacy concerns or data breaches. All you have to do is look at the news over the past few years, and you'll see that there's many people in our society who concern that the technology that they use every single day will have some profoundly negative impact on their life. As the second largest city in the United States, I think it's really important that our technology not just be innovative, but also be innovative and ethical. And so really, how would I define digital ethics? It's the system of values and standards that the city of Los Angeles uses for all of its electronic interactions with its residents, with its constituency. And so we are publishing our digital code of ethics.

Ted Ross [00:02:30]:
It's 36 pages. It's actually, I think, a really good read, if I say so myself, because really what it captures is why digital ethics matters in government. What is the city of Los Angeles? Five core values when it comes to technology, we have ten standards that we apply to our city. Technology, which I think is a good read, and I think, most importantly, is emerging technology, technology that we've been doing for years. I think a lot of the ethics and the debate has already happened, and I think most folks have a pretty good understanding of what's right and what's wrong. I think emerging is really that area that becomes a lot more dicey. So whether it's artificial intelligence or blockchain or IoT, we have very specific policies in our digital code of ethics for the city of LA to ensure that we can navigate the ethical landscape when it comes to implementing new things that people are unfamiliar with.

Joe Toste [00:03:16]:
I was curious, do you have a favorite emerging technology that you like to focus on in the city of LA?

Ted Ross [00:03:22]:
Favorite in the sense of I really like it, or a favorite one that really concerns me regarding ethics?

Joe Toste [00:03:26]:
Ooh, that's really great. I like both. I like both. Yeah.

Ted Ross [00:03:29]:
Well, I would say I'm absolutely fascinated by artificial intelligence. I know there could be a lot of hype around it, but there's really good insight as to what you can do with really good artificial intelligence. And I'm always reminded of that phone call that Google published in which the Google Assistant is calling a hairdresser to set up an appointment. So the idea that you can have an assistant that's intelligent, that could perform functions for you, is extremely cool if it's done the right way. Now, with that in mind, what are, one of the things that probably give me the most concerns is sometimes the IoT conversation. I'm a big fan of Internet of things. I'm a big fan of what you can do with really good sensors and what you could deploy and how you can engage people in a cityscape where they're really not used to being engaged. But I also get really concerned because I'm reminded of the Mirai botnet and all these other aspects where a lot of sensors can get deployed without the right kind of security.

Ted Ross [00:04:18]:
And I don't want sensitive information to put on a sensor that can't get firmware upgrades. So IoT is one of those types of items that always gives me concern regarding the ethics of it.

Joe Toste [00:04:28]:
Shameless plug for myself, I interviewed Andrei Sherlinko, who's the head of AI and robotics at Honeywell. If you haven't heard that episode, definitely have to check it out. It was really great. So why should we have an important conversation about digital ethics now? Why 2021?

Ted Ross [00:04:43]:
Honestly, I think 2021 and the events of 2020 have only reinforced digital ethics even more. We're really way past the tipping point point of innovation. And that might sound funny, because five or six years ago, it was always my job to say, innovate. Take all these new things and apply them. But the reality is, we are innovating. Governments are innovating. Private sector is rapidly innovating. Individuals are innovating.

Ted Ross [00:05:05]:
Everyone's innovating. But it could become disorganized. It could become chaotic. When I think about 2013 through 2016, I think people were very excited about the opportunities of technology. When I think of 2016 to like 2019, I think of Black Mirror, I think of Westworld. I think of a lot of shows and a lot of things that have captured people's imagination, which they're actually concerned about, the technologies that they had been using. I'm reminded of the fact that Oxford Dictionary officially added the word techlash technology backlash into the dictionary when we launched a very innovative product called Earthquake early Warning called Shake Alert LA, in which we had an app that could tell you anywhere from 15 to 45 seconds in advance that an earthquake is coming. And it's simply using sensors deployed across the region to notify you.

Ted Ross [00:05:53]:
So the communication gets to you at the speed of light, but the shaking moves at the speed of sound, and it can get you that much warning in advance, something that no other city has done. One of the first questions our constituency asked was, are you tracking me? And I thought that was a really insightful question, and the answer is, no, we are not tracking you. But the reality is, there's a very healthy amount of skepticism with all technology that I think digital ethics means it's imperative to maintain digital trust and transparency while all these really cool, innovative products are being deployed.

Joe Toste [00:06:24]:
I really like the example you used about the earthquake in LA. A couple of states have rolled this out, but especially in California, when you think about COVID tracking and Covid vaccination, even more of a larger scale kind of implication, because the question was, are you tracking me? The government's tracking. Nobody wants to be tracked by anybody.

Ted Ross [00:06:42]:
Correct?

Joe Toste [00:06:43]:
Yeah.

Ted Ross [00:06:43]:
We see all these questions regarding Facebook and Cambridge analogy, you name it. Every single year, some tech CEO is being brought in front of Congress with a question around privacy or some other conversation. They're not talking about phones and wiretaps, because that has established 50 years ago what you could do on a telephone. But when it comes to Facebook, when it comes to Google searches, when it comes to AI, when it comes to IoT, that's something that moves much faster than our average politician can, or the Supreme Court. I think as a society, we're grappling with exactly what our rules of engagement around it. And being a CIO for a government, it's extremely important. My constituency has to have trust in the services I provide. That's fundamental.

Ted Ross [00:07:23]:
And so it's not okay for me to do something really cool that actually undermines their trust in my government.

Joe Toste [00:07:28]:
I think the awareness at the CIO level, as far as the constituents, they have to buy in, they have to trust, or the whole system just won't work. This dovetails really well with the next question. How should CIO see the intersection of smart cities and digital ethics taking place in the future?

Ted Ross [00:07:44]:
Yeah, you take the conversation we just had and you amplify it by ten. Because when you think of a smart city, you're thinking of technology, you're thinking of data, you're thinking of resources being deployed, ideally to improve the lives of residents, businesses and visitors. Right. The people who live in LA, the businesses operate in LA, and the people who visit LA. But when you start to drill into it, it can become extremely personal. So when you think of smart cities, you often think of cameras that are used to detect traffic. What else can those cameras be used for? And do unauthorized people have access to those cameras? You think of IoT installed on streetlights. Once again, what are you sensing? How are you sensing? Is it anonymized? Can you detect something about an individual that you really shouldn't be? You think of things like smart push notifications to residents.

Ted Ross [00:08:28]:
Am I harassing residents? Do I know too much about a resident? Am I pushing something to them that they really don't want? Am I even giving them a way to get out of it? All of these things, conceptually, can be used for good and actually could transform life in a city, but these could also be used for evil. And so that's why the digital ethics conversation becomes extremely important for smart cities. Because any city and any government that's going to deploy a bunch of technology right up in your face, right up in your world, right in public spaces, not just innovatively. So they're creating a great experience, but they're doing it securely so it doesn't get misused. And they're doing it ethically. So there's a level of understanding, transparency and trust, and the people who are interacting with that technology before the technology.

Joe Toste [00:09:09]:
There'S a problem trying to be solved. How do you balance the trade offs? Just from a very high level of there's this problem. We think this technology could be a good solution. How do we balance potentially some evil over here that can make this whole thing not actually work? How do you think through that with your team? Just from a very high level?

Ted Ross [00:09:29]:
It's a really great question. One of the things I love about being a CIO of a large city is that problems are endless. That's also what I hate about being CIO of a large city. You never really solve all the problems because our problems are life. People love to talk about traffic in LA. We have traffic because we have so many people because they love being in LA and they want to get around and all these other aspects. So you name the problem. Usually there's a long source of items related to it, but it's a really fantastic question.

Ted Ross [00:09:55]:
So when we think about it, we start with, of course, high priority items. That's always what we want to do. Anything we can really make the most difference in people's lives are often good starting points to it. And when we start to assess really the nature of the problem, when we look at technology, some of it's transformational, some of it's incremental, and so we're always assessing it that way. But when we start to evaluate some of the cons associated with it, a there's often good things you can do to mitigate those risks. So take, for example, the traffic cameras are effectively pointed at traffic, they're not pointed at people. And so it's very easy to be able to manage it that way. Second is where the data feed goes.

Ted Ross [00:10:30]:
It's extremely secure. It goes to a place called ATSAC, which is the automated traffic surveillance and control center. We have a whole litany of security measures to ensure it's being done that way and so it can't be misused. You name the technology, we can start to come up with ways of mitigating any bad effects associated with it. The key is for governments to spend the time going through that effort. It's like a risk assessment. You've got to spend the time and energy to try to think through it. Thirdly, of course, you use people like you do bug bounties, etcetera, to have people test you out, check it out, see if they could misuse it.

Ted Ross [00:11:03]:
Quite often the government conversation is around things like the mosaic effect. If I give you a little data here, and I give you a separate piece of data here and a third piece of data there. Can you bring it all together to uncover something that you really shouldn't know? And the mosaic effect sometimes is hard to think through. But if we can hire really clever people, white hat hackers, etcetera, sometimes they'll help expose things that maybe we're missing. There's a number of ways of approaching it, but I think if you think it through as a government with some intelligent, smart people and you measure twice and cut once before you implement something and then use other smart people to try to check it out and of course, always be ready to iterate and to respond to it, I think sometimes you can often work out some of the issues when it comes to implementing good technology.

Joe Toste [00:11:44]:
That's really great. I like what you said about the mosaic effect. One of the exercises, too, is just to keep asking why and just keep going down the rabbit trail.

Ted Ross [00:11:52]:
The five whys. Yes, I love it. It's funny. I'll admit to it. I came out of private sector, but I ain't been in government long enough to say us. So I am a government CIO. But I think it's really interesting that a lot of governments do some really interesting, innovative things because the use cases are there. And quite often if you have a bunch of money, you can continue an old broken process.

Ted Ross [00:12:13]:
And governments are usually pretty low on resources. So sometimes you really have to think out of the box and come up with creative solutions because you can't afford the old fashioned big iron way of doing things. And I think that leads to some really innovative solutions.

Joe Toste [00:12:25]:
Before we wrap up, part one here, you had mentioned high priority items, transformational, incremental. They probably actually don't care about the incremental stuff. Maybe they do. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but I'm sure they love the transformational stuff. Maybe just one or two on each side of the aisle that you're hearing.

Ted Ross [00:12:40]:
Sure, certainly. And take for example, transformational earthquake. Early warning for us was transformational. Here's a situation where when you think of California, you think often of like celebrities, you think of great weather and you think of earthquakes. Even if there haven't been big earthquakes, everyone associates it with earthquakes. How can you, of course, transform the experience related to an earthquake? You can lecture everyone that they should keep water, medicine, food, etcetera, at home, the classic one. And that's extremely important. But what was transformational was this opportunity that by deploying sensors across the region, if an earthquake occurs on the San Andreas fault line, which is that classic conversation, and you're living in LA.

Ted Ross [00:13:17]:
When we learned that you'd have 60 seconds before the shaking was felt in downtown LA from the San Andreas fault line, I was like, you've got to be kidding me. And yet a communication can go from a sensor at the San Andreas fault line. It can go to the us geological survey at Cal Tech in Pasadena and notify your smartphone in between one to 2 seconds. So this concept that we could actually transform the way you feel or experience an earthquake. And what would you do with 30 seconds? What would you do with 60 seconds? The reality is you can shut down elevators and open up the doors so people aren't trapped in them. The reality is you can stop surgery because someone who has the scalpel really close to your heart shouldn't get shook. You could shut down expensive machinery. You can improve the health and safety of people or simply notify them so they can duck, cover and hold.

Ted Ross [00:14:05]:
That's transformational. And that comes through technology. There's other transformational aspects too, with chat bots and AI and the way that we engage and interact with our people. Amazon Alexa scale the idea that you could find out what's happening with your city from the comfort of your living room through the La city's Amazon Alexa scale, or incremental aspects, just simply making incremental improvements. My ability to improve and the Department of Transportation's ability to improve traffic by 3% is felt. It means that 4 million people who are commuting and transporting around the city are saving minutes in a day. And that's important. The idea that, let's say public safety, reducing a murder rate or assaults or shootings even by a few percent, that's health and safety.

Ted Ross [00:14:48]:
That's someone's life. I don't know about you, but I'd love like to be one of those few percent who survived something because that's extremely important impact. So even incremental in a big city, incremental is also really important. Not everything needs to be swinging for the fences, to use a baseball analogy. Sometimes small ball is really good. If I could just get someone on base and get someone else on base and get someone else on base, next thing you know, we're scoring runs.

Joe Toste [00:15:10]:
I love it. Even on the incremental side, even I sometimes joke, but have to remind myself that even incremental improvements, we think 1% a day, after an entire year, it adds up very quickly.

Ted Ross [00:15:20]:
Honestly, a really big city incremental sometimes is one of the only things you can do in certain areas. This city was built in 1781. That's where its home comes from. Sometimes you can't just tear a bunch of things down and build a bunch of new. So you've got to innovate in space. Innovate with a bunch of things already in the way. I love to swing for the fences, and I love to score home runs, but I am an incrementalist quite often, and I think, as you said, after five years of incremental improvement, you just have a better place. And I'm big on that.

Joe Toste [00:15:51]:
I am not a direct recipient in the city of LA, but I live in Santa Barbara. That earthquake is a great example, because first notice is, hey, this is what's happening in LA. Santa Barbara still gets the same shaking. It's just maybe not as heavy.

Ted Ross [00:16:03]:
And, Joe, we were the first one to create the app. And lo and behold, a year later, the state of California rolls went out. Because innovation breeds innovation. We've even gotten to the place that the state's app has gotten so good that we've actually defunded, and we've shut down our app in favor of using the state's app. Because it shouldn't matter that you're in LA, but if you're some reason you're an Irvine or if you're in San Diego, you can't get notified, it shouldn't matter. A big shout out to the state of California and the earthquake alert app.

Joe Toste [00:16:29]:
Oh, I love that. So, Ted, as a technology leader in a forward thinking city, and, yes, LA is a forward thinking city, how do you imagine the future of the digital workforce in LA?

Ted Ross [00:16:39]:
It's such a great question when I get asked from different angles all the time. Honestly, Covid has been, I think, a tremendous catalyst for all the terrible aspects of the COVID pandemic. I think it's been a really good technology catalyst. There's this old expression that necessity is the mother of invention. Before COVID the city of Los Angeles had less than 35 teleworkers. Most of them were in my department, and most of them were my 311 call center, which took us two years to try to transform them to telework. Then, within ten days of the COVID stay at home pandemic, I had over 18,000 teleworkers at the city of Los Angeles. So it shows this massive shift, and it.

Ted Ross [00:17:18]:
It wasn't about the technology in a lot of ways. We were using some of the same technologies, post Covid as we were, had available to us pre Covid. It really was about culture. And so I really imagine a workforce at the city of Los Angeles that has tremendous flexibility. They could work from office, they could work from home. The location all of a sudden becomes independent of the work itself, which is just fine. I see a workforce that's empowered. They have tools, they have capabilities, they have accessibility, they have connectivity to be able to get whatever work done they need to do.

Ted Ross [00:17:48]:
They can communicate with each other across a variety of forms, which is super exciting because it becomes more tailor made. If you're someone who's more visual, you have tools for that. If you're someone who's more auditory, you have tools for that, as well as something that's sustainable. As I mentioned before, LA is known for celebrities. It's known for Venice beach, it's known for Disneyland, effectively. And it's also known for traffic. The ability to work from home reduces traffic on the roads, or it shifts the timeframe that traffic's on the road. So I love a sustainable workforce who can minimize their footprint.

Ted Ross [00:18:18]:
One of the amateur mistakes someone makes when they move to LA, is that right? When rush hour was coming up, they would decide to drive all the way from the west side to the east side, or vice versa, crossing so many different neighborhoods, which is a terrible rookie mistake, and then they'll complain. But if you lived in LA, you know that after a certain time, you just start to be more local. You start to do stuff that's closer to home or closer to work, etcetera. So sustainability is super huge. I love high quality of life. I'll never forget. One of our first teleworkers was a call taker in our 301 call center. And she said, ted, you have fundamentally changed my life.

Ted Ross [00:18:51]:
She said, I used to come home. She lived in Palmdale, which is 40 plus miles from LA. By the time she come home, after a long day's work, and honestly, taking calls in 301 is not easy work. Everyone's griping, everyone's complaining, and by the time she gets home, she said, I would just eat, watch tv, and go to sleep with telework. She's going out with friends on a weeknight. She's hiking, she's taking walks. So? So telework and a modern workforce can totally change the way you live. And I love the idea of a resilient and adaptable workforce.

Ted Ross [00:19:21]:
If there's an earthquake, if there's fires, if there's riots, whatever it could be, whether it's human made or whether it's nature made, our ability to continue the business of government, even in a pandemic to make us resilient and adaptable. I think La deserves it, and I think that's what I imagine as a workforce of the future.

Joe Toste [00:19:39]:
I like a lot what you said, and I want to unpack a little bit of it. So I was speaking with Mandy Crawford, who's the CIO for the state of Texas, and she's going to come on tech tables. And we were having an interesting discussion before around the teleworking culture in the digital workforce and the capital, Austin. All of the dir folks are in Austin. Plus side la, same thing. La, big city, probably brings a lot of really great workers, great weather. I'm in Santa Barbara. I'm with you.

Joe Toste [00:20:06]:
We could go to the beach. Like really great. I love it. We go to a dodger game. There's a lot of stuff we could do similar. Really great setup, booming town. But you compete against the private sector. This is the question that we're thinking through.

Joe Toste [00:20:20]:
How do you compete effectively in the job market against the private sector? And one of the things that you said that I really liked was the flexibility, because the private sector most times will offer that flexibility. But I think that's a really great perk for a digital workforce as far as the ability for the workforce in LA to not have to commute the crazy hours that it takes. This is my aunt. I was always making fun of her. She would drop her two kids off at school and then have to jet right across town. I'm like, you're spending 3 hours a day in the car. That's a giant waste of time. And Covid happened, and finally it was like the ultimate forcing function where it's, oh, you can do this on Microsoft Teams or on Zoom or whatever it is.

Joe Toste [00:21:02]:
As far as culture and recruitment, how do you think about that in the digital workforce? As far as recruiting people to the public sector?

Ted Ross [00:21:09]:
Sure. We get asked, how do you compete with private sector? In some ways we don't. And what I mean by that is someone who comes to work for government, they're buying into a different philosophy. I worked in private sector. I really enjoyed both what I learned and the companies I worked with. But in some ways, and honestly, I came to government after 911. So you can see what motivated me. And I've been in government ever since.

Ted Ross [00:21:31]:
When I think about what motivates me, I like the idea that the technology I deploy impacts people's lives. I find that motivating. I think it's cool that I could tell my kids that I work and I manage it at the city of LA and that we did this cool thing or that cool thing and it helped these small businesses, or it helped these pedestrians, or help these drivers or whatever it may be. I find that really ennobling and motivating for the work I do. I wasn't as motivated when I worked for universal or when I worked for other companies before. Great companies, great culture, but it just didn't make me tick. Ideally, I'm looking to recruit people who like government and it makes them tick and they like that as a contribution. A second aspect is we find that people who often were really small cogs and really big wheels become really big wheels when they work for the city.

Ted Ross [00:22:15]:
But where else can you start to directly affect a payroll system that pays 50,000 people? Where else can you be developing a website that has 4 million residents as customers? These are all really important areas that you can do in government that you often can't become a part of in private sector. So I find those to be really good. But the reality is, when it comes to a digital workforce, I could try to offer incentives, I could offer items, and it may just be that private sector matches them. It may be that quite often private sector will do as much telework as, let's say, government, or try to be as flexible as government is being. So fundamentally, I want to be able to offer things that make a great work life balance and make it really cool to work in government. But I think quite often where I can win is in the idea of the motivation, what motivates people. And when you look at millennials and when you look at Gen Z, I'll never forget we got a 4.0 graduate of UCLA who came to work for government because they wanted a work life balance and they liked what they were working in. That's the kind of candidate I love to have at the city of Los Angeles.

Joe Toste [00:23:14]:
You brought up the word impact because I think that's how you win the tech tables is not a public sector podcast. But over time, I think I just gravitate more and more towards interviewing public sector types of CIO's because of the impact that they're delivering to people. There's real change, and their impact resonates with me because I'm actually a high school basketball coach. Everyone sees me here on camera, and right now it's basketball season, so we've got ten games this season, practices six days a week. So I'll be at practice today at 430. Those kids have no idea what I do. No clue about any of this, but it is just amazing. To invest in their lives and have that impact.

Joe Toste [00:23:51]:
And I don't get paid a dime.

Ted Ross [00:23:52]:
Your interaction with them, they'll always remember their high school basketball coach interactions. They take very seriously. Even if they do the classic teenager shrug their shoulders and act like they're not paying attention. They're paying attention.

Joe Toste [00:24:04]:
Yeah, they shrug their shoulders for the first week. I'm still young enough to wear. I'll get up on the floor and scrimmage them. I'm the head coach for the JV team. Even the freshmen that play on the JV team are still very much boys and I am a man, so I still get to punish them and I get a lot of respect on the court. And then the shrugging stops.

Ted Ross [00:24:20]:
I love it. I coach myself at a local park and so I was coaching twelve to 14 year old boys and I remember having the really small team. It wasn't exactly fair the way they distributed it and the really small team. So we would box in one for defense and do all sorts of things just to try to help get some more rebounds.

Joe Toste [00:24:36]:
Yeah. Yeah. If anyone's going to watch this podcast on YouTube, I know you can listen to on Spotify and Apple and stitcher. You can see I'm wearing my laptop 2028 gear and my La marathon from 2018. My medal, which was super fun. That actually started at Dodger Stadium, which was a total blast. So anyways, interviewing you, super big highlight. So I got the gear and even the Olympics in 2028 I'm really stoked about.

Joe Toste [00:24:59]:
Back to the actual question. Ted, talk about the roadmap for the Olympics. From data sharing to the procurement portal, how are you planning for the Olympics in 2021?

Ted Ross [00:25:10]:
We're in the process of publishing our smart LA 2028 strategy, which is a smart city strategy, which is really the roadmap of technology investments between now and 2028. We'll start by trying to paint the picture. If you're a visitor who's visiting, and keep in mind, it's both the 2028 Summer Olympics and the Paralympics, and so we're going to be getting both at the same time. You're going to find it just a completely transformational experience. You're going to find from the moment you arrive. You're going to arrive at LAX, which is completely renovating all of its terminals. You can use a brand new automated people mover to select between light rail, airport connections, a ride share, taxi, etcetera. So even the infrastructure will be different.

Ted Ross [00:25:48]:
As soon as you land, you'll be greeted by digital signage that's directed by multilingual electronic wayfinding. You'll be connected through your smartphone to hotels, restaurants, venues, anything you're looking for the state to make it a great digital and physical experience. If you want to visit, go do some sightseeing. You're visiting Hollywood or Venice beach. Smartphones and easily accessible kiosks will be able to direct you there. It'll be multilingual. Doesn't matter what language you speak. There'll be over 110 machine translatable languages to make life easier for you.

Ted Ross [00:26:17]:
You'll learn more about the landmarks, you'll have readily available services, and of course, it's a huge focus on accessibility. So if you're blind, you're deaf, etcetera. We also incorporate all the right technologies to make sure it's a great experience for you, too. When it comes to things like connectivity, we were one of the very first 5g cities. We have already over 2505 g access points. We have another 3000 that are being implemented over the next three years, let alone by 2028, in which we have seven years to have ultra high speed 5g connectivity. We're building out an IoT data sharing platform called I three. We started in partnership with the University of Southern California.

Ted Ross [00:26:55]:
I gave a shout out to UCLA with that 4.0 student before. I guess it's my job to now mention USC on the other side of it. But we do with USC and really takes all this data across multiple kinds of IoT platforms. IoT, there's so many different kinds, there's no one standardized form, and it consolidates all that into one place, not just for governmental use, but also for data sharing with private sector, as well as with incorporating data from private sector IoT. So, parking spots, parking lot sensors, venue information, etcetera, all of being shared through a data sharing platform. And of course, one of the most important aspects when it comes to olympics on the government side is all the procurement. So we are this month implementing a brand new regional procurement portal, which allows both city contracts, other city contracts, county contracts, and Olympics contracts to be bid on by all sorts of different small businesses, medium sized businesses, etcetera. So a brand new procurement portal, who would have thought something like procurement was important? But when you've got hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars of contracts, it's extremely important for local businesses, small businesses, black owned businesses, et cetera, to be able to really compete along with all the big typical ones.

Ted Ross [00:28:05]:
And so all of this is being rolled out as a part of the 2020 Olympics, which has not been impacted.

Joe Toste [00:28:10]:
By Covid, by the way fantastic news. And actually the procurement portal piece, I've talked to a lot of CIO's recently where Covid was a really great forcing function, because when everything shuts down, and I was thinking about all of the kids, for example, who maybe needed chromebooks or whatever, and procurement can't take six months to vet everything. School shut down yesterday, it's really ripe for innovation. And I'm sure the new portal will be fantastic for the Olympics.

Ted Ross [00:28:36]:
It's honestly, it's running on a Salesforce platform. So we went from a custom built, kind of overgrown website called La Bobin to running it off of a Salesforce platform. I don't own any stock, I'm not giving them a shout out. But I think it's super cool. Our opportunities to go from customized legacy platforms to better off the shelf, highly configurable ones that will really grow and scale with us. So whether it's Salesforce ServiceNow, Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Azure, these are all the right investments for us that we can not only take advantage of now, but continue to scale and grow on them, 100% agree.

Joe Toste [00:29:09]:
All those cloud technologies, especially in the next, whatever it is, seven or eight years, will definitely lay the foundation to build. There's so much the data analytics, harvesting all of that data, making sense of it.

Ted Ross [00:29:20]:
Here's a story that I haven't told very often. A couple weeks into Covid and a stay at home order, I get a text message from a deputy mayor on a Friday night and he says, Ted, on Sunday the mayor is going to announce a new testing platform and we need your department to launch it. So it's Friday night and we've got until Sunday to put something together. Fortunately, we are already pretty good at ServiceNow platform. We were able to, over the course of a weekend, build out a brand new website that had triage. So it would walk you through various questions that you could answer regarding Covid, and then it would go ahead and launch a testing app which would help identify your location, identify available testing at sites near to you, allow you to secure a reservation and then email, use the whole soup to nuts process of getting a COVID test. And this is a March 2020 conversation right in the thick of things. Within four weeks, we had 60,000 tests administered through this COVID testing app.

Ted Ross [00:30:13]:
And it only came from the idea of already having a platform, already having some off the shelf, nimble platform. So I didn't have to say, oh my gosh, you want something? Give me six months. I'll need to take this heavy database and put it into an on prem server. I'll need six developers to be able to code everything. The ability to turn around quickly and deliver a minimum viable product that we could then build on is extremely important. It was extremely important during COVID and it only was able to happen because of the investments that we made in the two years prior. For honestly completely other things, we're just able to leverage that investment for this. So I'm a huge fan of wherever people can.

Ted Ross [00:30:50]:
Digital transformation often means having the right nimble scale, agile platforms that you can build on depending on use.

Joe Toste [00:30:57]:
Case the theme of agility that you hit on there super important to be able to deliver quickly, not wait six months, find half a dozen developers and then you just wasted six months of nothing.

Ted Ross [00:31:08]:
Basically the problem may have passed by the time you launched it.

Joe Toste [00:31:11]:
That's right. And a new problem will then replace that problem. And it could be bigger if you.

Ted Ross [00:31:16]:
Don'T have six months to fix the.

Joe Toste [00:31:17]:
New problem and you don't have six months. Exactly. And maybe another mayor is calling you too. So now instead of one mayor, you've got a couple calling, let's dive into innovation. You're what I call the new school CIO, but I think maybe over time everyone will be the new school CIO. So you're not just focused on back end systems, which we can call the chief information officer but also the chief innovation officer. How do you look at prioritizing innovation versus the other traditional IT projects?

Ted Ross [00:31:44]:
Gartner sometimes is really good for various expressions. And so the idea of a pace layered strategy or what they call bimodal it are really good concepts. I can't just be the back office person. I can't be the back office traditional IT project person who because of it, the mayor hires an innovation officer, a data officer, a digital officer and six other officers. Because while I may be it, I'm only doing this very one narrow scope of it, on the other side of it, I can't just be Mister innovation, where all I do is try to launch one sexy thing after another, completely ignoring all the infrastructure and all the legacy systems, which, by the way have tens of thousands of users and impacts every important business process. So I honestly have to be both. I have to be two tracks. I have to have an innovation track in which every year I am prioritizing innovation projects, both projects that are being run by my department, as well as projects that are being run by other departments at the city of LA.

Ted Ross [00:32:39]:
So I have to help empower LAPD, I have to help empower power the library and the parks and the others, as well as I have to help improve and move the needle on my side. The innovation could start off with proofs of concept. We sent a couple of developers to Microsoft for a couple of days. They actually shared a hotel room because we didn't have travel costs. This is a couple years ago, pre Covid, and they went on over and they learned how to code an azure chat bot, a Cortana chat bot. Next thing you know, we had someone we call chip, the city hall Internet personality who's answering thousands of conversations a day, from everything from our 311 call center to LAPD recruits who are asking questions about where they are in the recruitment process. The little bit of innovation that sometimes it grows, sometimes it's great, sometimes it's not so great. But you can be able to start off and innovate from there as well as traditional IT projects, which, by the way, can still be innovative.

Ted Ross [00:33:30]:
Now we're in the process of replacing a custom payroll system with workday, and that's assisted. We're going live January 2022. And that's a system that's going to move us from a bunch of paper based personnel records to be electronic. It gives us employee self service, manager self service, much better reporting, much better employee engagement, etcetera. So I think in an ideal world, you're able to dovetail both of them off of each other. Traditional IT infrastructure ERP system projects dovetail with innovation projects. Honestly, innovation is not one person's job or one team's job, in my opinion. It's really the entire IT department's job.

Ted Ross [00:34:06]:
So where you can start to bolster and build, I think becomes really important.

Joe Toste [00:34:10]:
Oh, man, you say so many great things. It's so good. So when you think about legacy ERP systems and even whether it's like Oracle, SAP, whatever, and the hey, we're going to implement this over five years, that's probably no innovation, no agility, and it's taking way too long so you can innovate within those traditional IT projects. So I really like hitting that bimodal it piece that you had mentioned, Joe.

Ted Ross [00:34:34]:
What I really find, and I'm an ERP person as my background, I'm an SAP, ERP certified consultant. That was my jam 20 years ago. That's what I was doing. So I've become very well versed in business process and big systems and consolidate. And yet I think where people run into the problem is the classic adage that to a hammer, everything's a nail. If you're an ERP person, all you talk is ERP and you ignore everything else. If you're some kind of custom app person, then you don't care about business systems and ERP. I think technology is such a wide toolbox so that you've got hammers and wrenches and pliers and screwdrivers.

Ted Ross [00:35:07]:
And I think the CIO needs to understand the benefits, the pros and cons of each. An ERp system should be stable, it should be reliable, it should be something you can audit. It's not going to bring you necessarily all of the innovation you're looking at for, but it'll be able to run your business and it should be able to support and integrate with systems that you can innovate on. The innovation system should be nimble, should be fast, should be able to change quickly. They should be able to provide some kind of core differentiator, some kind of differentiator in a very specific area. If it's something like transportation management, a very niche kind of area, you can develop really cool capabilities there. Or like I mentioned before, earthquake early warning. That's not an ERP conversation.

Ted Ross [00:35:46]:
That is something that you couldn't go out and find products related to it. So I think it's really important to understand good it strategy. Where are your short term investments? Where your medium term investments and where your long term investments? Because don't bring to me some fly by night system and run my financials, but at the same time, don't take my financial system and try to do earthquake early warning. But I think it just becomes super important to know what's the right tool for the right job. And in our home lives, we get it, whether it's in our kitchen or whether it's like home improvement. We wouldn't try to go ahead and build paper mache patio, that when the rain comes, it just all disappears. But at the same time, we don't necessarily want to build some stone version of something to, let's say, have an at home bar. We understand in real life that different products and different materials are used for different things.

Ted Ross [00:36:29]:
Some are more permanent and some are more quick. But sometimes when it comes to it, we seem to forget all these lessons that we've learned in our home life, and next thing you know, we just start buying into one certain philosophy. So that's, at least in my experience, what I've run into. You've got to be somebody who can zig and someone who.

Joe Toste [00:36:44]:
I love it. That was really great. I could go further with you right now, but I know we're running out of time. I do want to hit the next question. So I was reading this paper by McKinsey titled change vehicles how robotaxis and shuttles will reinvent mobility. The case study that they actually looked at was the city of LA. I don't want to go down too deep. I don't know if you've read it or had a chance to review it, but thoughts on mobility as a service and the robo taxi example that they use in the context of the Olympics in 2028.

Joe Toste [00:37:11]:
Because I would love to take a robo taxi around LA in 2028. Hopefully the traffic will be even smoother then.

Ted Ross [00:37:16]:
I love the concept of it, and I won't go down the rabbit hole too, and I apologize if I'm a little verbose on some of these answers. I've got a lot of say. I see a lot of things, so I apologize in advance. But I love the idea of subscribing to your vehicle, and the younger generation see it the same way. They do not agree or believe in vehicle ownership like my generation did or older generations do. They love the idea that if I need to get from point a to point b, I don't really care. The vehicle I do it in, I don't have to be driving myself. So why not go ahead and pay for a robo taxi to go ahead, ahead and take me? I think one of the most important reasons is they avoid all the insurance, they avoid all the headache, all the overhead that's involved with, let's say, vehicle ownership.

Ted Ross [00:37:53]:
One of the aspects too, is the need for parking. It's a classic statistic. 14% of all land in La county is dedicated to parking. So here you have this very congested region where housing is of a premium. And I can only imagine in San Francisco and these other places, we dedicate space for a car to sit there, especially a car that's not being used. So I think it's an important idea that with robo taxis and service and mobility as a service, you can start to dramatically reduce parking requirements. You can actually reuse land, you can reduce costs for the individual when it comes to cars, and you can save a lot of the time that they require. In addition is the safety aspect we've been seeing during COVID we had these safer from home orders and traffic dropped, but we've been seeing just a huge uptick in dangerous driving and street racing and a variety of other aspects.

Ted Ross [00:38:40]:
Robo taxis are not going to street race, and robotaxis are going to be super safe when it comes to how they drive the speeds at which they go and don't text and drive at the same time. So I love the idea of some of the safety and some of the efficiency that we can get from that.

Joe Toste [00:38:53]:
I actually didn't know this statistic, but I know another one. And so you said 14% of all land is dedicated to parking in LA. That is insane and crazy. I am a little bit of a nerd, actually. I'm probably a big nerd. But I was listening to Tesla's earning call with Elon Musk. I know there's a lot of news out there, but if you actually listen to the earning calls, you can actually learn a lot of information. One of the things that Elon had said was that the current utilization rate for a car is around 5%.

Joe Toste [00:39:22]:
Meaning my car, my wife's car just sit out in the parking lot and it's gotta be probably even less during COVID Let's just take 5%. He makes the case that Tesla could see its fleet hit as high as 80% utilization, which I had not thought about this before, but now I'm thinking if you're in a city like LA, San Francisco, New York, if the car utilization rate goes from 5% to 80%, the parking utilization rate or parking that's taking up all this land should also plummet too. It's a fascinating discussion that we're basically covering in three minutes.

Ted Ross [00:39:55]:
But less cars, more utilization of existing cars, less cost for the individual person to own a vehicle. There's a lot of wins in this conversation.

Joe Toste [00:40:05]:
We can keep going, but I know we're running out of time. Last question before we hop over to your favorite book and podcast. You're a top technology leader. I always love to hear what's capturing leaders attention these days.

Ted Ross [00:40:15]:
Covid recovery. We were in Covid response mode. Now we're shifting to Covid recovery and Covid rebuilding. I have spent more time talking about helping small businesses digitally market themselves and build websites than I ever have. I'm spending more time talking about things like digital inclusion and how to ensure that various communities are competing in the digital economy than I ever have. I'm spending a lot of time talking about rebuilding a workforce. I've lost about 25% of my workforce in the last year. I've lost them to retirement incentive programs, transfers, layoffs, those types, types of things.

Ted Ross [00:40:47]:
Technically not layoffs, but it's attrition where we lose people to other departments. So we're talking about rebuilding a workforce of the future. We're talking about COVID recovery and Covid rebuilding. Those have been really big conversations recently at the city of LA.

Joe Toste [00:41:01]:
And favorite book, favorite podcast.

Ted Ross [00:41:03]:
There's a lot of really good books out there. I actually am rereading a book that was published a few years ago called Machine Platform Crowd. I thought that was an excellent book and I'm actually rereading it right now and on podcasts. Honestly, I'm a reader. When I find myself outside of a long day's work, I don't have a long. I try to live pretty close to work, so I just try to spend time with family. So get on the phone with friends and spend time with family. I wouldn't pick anyone specifically, except probably tech tables if I had to plug you right there, Joe, let's go.

Joe Toste [00:41:32]:
I was going to plug and say, I've got to go talk to whoever's coding the Amazon Alexa and say, play tech tables for Ted every time he walks in the building. Awesome. We're going to wrap up tech tables. This was a fantastic episode with Ted Ross and looking forward to releasing this episode. Thanks for coming on today, Ted. Really appreciate it.

Ted Ross [00:41:48]:
My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.

Joe Toste [00:41:50]:
You're listening to the public sector show buy tech tables, a podcast dedicated to sharing human centric stories from CIO's and technology leaders across the city, county, state and federal agencies. Joining in the conversation and touching the hearts and minds of leaders across technology today, from mission driven leadership to Cloud AI to cybersecurity, workforce challenges, and more. Never miss insights from peers and better partners across the public sector. And to make sure you never miss an episode, head over to Techtables.com and drop your email to subscribe. New podcast episodes come out every Tuesday and Thursday, along with weekly behind the mic newsletter and one of today's podcast sponsors is Techtables plus, an engaging new community where you can have early access to never before released episodes, early access to live event recordings, early access to weekly three interesting learnings, early access to live event ticket purchases, no episode ads and more, plus three extra special bonuses when you sign up today bonus number one, access to the CEO show bonus number two, access to the higher Ed show and bonus number three, access to the digital show. Join tech tables plus today. As always, thank you for supporting the tech tables network.