Join us as thought leaders from Ohio agencies and the business community discuss their high-level vision and day-to-day objectives in adopting new technologies to revolutionize government IT. SUBSCRIBE to get the latest tech tips & tricks from industry leaders! https://www.youtube.com/user/carahtechtv FOLLOW US ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/Carahsoft CONNECT WITH US ON LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/company/carahsoft/ LIKE US ON FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/carahsoft LISTEN TO US ON OUR CARAHCAST CHANNEL: https://www.carahsoft.com/carahcast READ THE LATEST TECH COMMUNITY TRENDS: https://www.carahsoft.com/community
Building a Resilient Government
Corey Baumgartner 00:00
Welcome back to Carahcast the podcast from Carahsoft, the trusted government IT solutions provider subscribe to get the latest technology updates in the public sector. I'm Corey Baumgartner, your host from the Carahsoft production team. On behalf of Carahsoft and rubrik, we would like to welcome you to today's podcast focused around Terry Behringer, Deputy Director from the Ohio Department of Aging. Peter Vanderburgh, Chief of broadband from the Ohio Department of Development. Sharon Wilhelm CIO from the Ohio Department of Commerce and Jeff phasic, sales engineer leader of sled from rubric we'll take a look at how agencies are modernizing technology securing citizen identity and privacy and enhancing government's responsiveness to Ohioans
Jane 00:45
building a framework for digital government, which is really an exciting thing to be doing here. Improving and digitizing citizen services. We all expect that it's increased dramatically over the last few years by reimagining the future workforce and leveraging enterprise solutions. Agencies are generating cost savings, probably number one, increasing security. I'm not sure that's number two, but okay, let's call it one A and accessibility and providing more holistic, human centered government experience. This session, Our speakers will look at their agencies tell us how their agencies are modernizing technology, securing citizen identity, privacy, and enhancing government's responsiveness to Ohioans. So I'm very pleased to present our esteemed panel here tod ay. Sherry bet injure. She's the deputy director and CIO at the Ohio Department of Aging. Hi, thanks for being here. It's a pleasure to have you. Peter votre. Burke, Ohio Department of Development. Thanks for joining us, Peter. Thanks. Excellent. Sharon Wilhelm. She is the CIO of the Ohio Department of Commerce. Hi, Sharon.
Sharon Wilhelm01:54
Thanks for having me.
Jane 01:55
It's a pleasure. And Jeff phasic, sales engineer leader for state local education organizations at rubric. Hi. Thank you. Okay, it's a pleasure to have all of you today. So let's start with you, cherry. Okay. How are you using technology to improve citizen services and engagement for older Ohioans and their families and caregivers? What are some examples of successful projects or programs that leverage digital tools and platforms?
02:23
Great question, Jane.
Jane 02:25
Great answer your question?
Terri Bettinger02:27
Yes. So I think you know, first of all, there's this that's a broad spectrum. There's a lot of lot that can be packed into that. So I'm going to speak very specifically around the Ohio Department of Aging and what we have done and where it's going to take us. Right. So. With the pandemic, Ohio's, you know, we're the federally designated Unit on Aging. Sounds great. When the pandemic began, I think it prompted us to move extremely quickly. We had just had a lot of new folks on board, we had a very aspirational state plan on aging. And now the biggest, you know, health crisis affecting the aging population comes upon us. So we, you know, in hindsight, and we were actually just having this conversation, you know, it would have taken me years to create the compelling use cases and business cases and ROIs, for mobility for right. Some of the data initiatives for some of the things that we did, we did them out of necessity, right. And so, but we did them out of necessity and with recognition of the value statement ongoing. So some of the things that we did the pandemic hit one of the most detrimental health, detriments you can have as loneliness and isolation. It's as bad as smoking. So we immediately right as the world went into quarantine put in place very quickly in less than 30 days, what we called staying connected, and that theme of connectedness, right it's like it has played out in so many ways and will continue to play out. But in staying connected, we set up a system where anyone could through multiple channels, right I'm going to I'm going to interject a few things here right 67% of those 60 or older have smartphones, that means 33% Don't so we have to meet people where they are on the channel to engage with them. But we set up systems where they could you know configure themselves for a daily call a daily check in call configure their circle of trust so that if they did not make their daily check in call their circle of trust was immediately contacted right to eventually were through some processes, non emergency wellness checks could be done. Those same individuals would have the opportunity every day in that in that daily check in to request a friendly chat. Right Just a friendly chat. This is not governance or compliance or health care telehealth. It's just a friendly chat. And I can tell you in the middle of the pandemic that was unbelievably valuable. We can talk about, you know, testing and monoclonal antibodies and all the things that were but those friendly chats were lifesavers to so many people. And there are many of us who actually worked those phone lines took those calls to assist with that. And it what it did is it really connected people to the need at hand. All right, so now we play it forward. We then built out very mature systems applications that we built our COVID response, bringing together entities that had not been brought together before, and solutions that were recognized by CMS and federal other federal units really as best in class. We brought together agencies that might logically think they work together, we didn't we brought together state and local resources. We brought together ODA, and EMA, all under the same purposeful mission of responding to our the need of our older Ohioans testing vaccines, crisis, staffing PPE, right? Very focused on immediate rapid response. Now back to her government or the Department of Aging. We had a tenant of rapid response, everything that we set up was automated such that for example, crisis, staffing workforce, we know workforce is a challenge, particularly during the pandemic, long term care facilities, nursing home staffing, not available, we set up systems where they could get staffing within 24 hours for emergency needs, right? So we set up these whole systems, there's more and I won't go into that detail. But I want to say again, I think the tenants of what we did play forward now meet people where they are right we have to be omni channel and everything that we're doing right the day of coming into a government building between Monday and Friday, eight to four and filling out paperwork doesn't sound very exciting. Right? So we have to meet people omni channel, day to day to data, day to day to day to interoperable data analytics, predictive modeling, one of the big things that Oda can lead out on was working with the GRC and others on predictive modeling, because, you know, this can apply to so many other things, the flu, you know, Legionnaires disease, other things, right. And so predictive modeling, so day to day to day to meet people where they are, and that interoperability. We again, I think knew, but certainly realized and operationalized, and showed the value of having government, quasi government, local, public private, really breaking down some of the barriers, very intentionally focused on the service that is needed, and not necessarily the verticals of ownership. And so those are some of those tenants will were caring for. And I know we'll talk more about kind of what the future is holding saddle
Jane 07:49
salutely. That's great information, and even a question for you about how you encourage older generations to use new technology, which I think you answered. So thanks very much for your questions. Remember, if you scan that QR code, you can put your questions in and we'll we'll try to answer them here. Let's go to Peter Peter Vanderburg. Peter, you're at the Ohio Department of Development, tell us about your agency's mission, and how you work with other partners within the state to expand access.
Peter Voderberg08:22
That's right. So I will say so I'm a division of the Department development, we are broadband Ohio, our mission is to make sure that we that every Ohioan is connected to internet, regardless of where they happen to live. And when I say internet, I mean high speed internet. And when I say high speed internet, I mean 100 megabits per second download speed and 20 megabits per second upload speed. That's right. So what does that mean? Right? That means that more than one person can be online at your house on zoom at the same time, like that is what that means, right? Because how many of you have been on Zoom? And it says, Turn off your camera? Right? Because I don't have a good enough internet connection, right? That's not okay. Like you should be able to be online, with multiple people in your homes to make sure that you can do all the things that you want to do. So let's start here. Raise your hand if you have internet at your house today. All right, just about everybody. How does it feel when it goes out for five minutes? Terrible, right? How about an hour in Thai? Okay, so you feel like your world is ending. We have people in the state of Ohio who have no internet at all. And it isn't a rural problem. It's not a suburban problem. It's not an urban promise in the state of Ohio. There's about 300,000 households all across the state that don't have access to high speed internet, which means Think about it this way. Most the time when we want to schedule an appointment with our doctors, we do things like my chart right? You just go in and schedule the appointment that way. If you want to apply for a job almost everywhere to apply for a job today even at a Walmart or Target you have to walk in and either use a kiosk there that allows you to do it online, or you actually have to do it from your home. When we're talking about anything from volunteering like four h the equestrian program and four h you have to watch a video and take Take a Test online and we just had someone from a rural area come to us in tears because they had a 20 person equestrian team that had to come into a school on a Saturday to watch the video and take the test one by one because none of the students actually had access to internet at all. And does anybody have a small business out there? Anybody use QuickBooks at all? It's online only. So if you are a small business owner that uses QuickBooks from here on out, if you don't have access to the internet, you don't have access to QuickBooks payroll, to do accounting to do auditing or anything like that. So we're really turning into a digital world. So the reason why Brian Ohio was great it was because we have a whole bunch of assets in the state of Ohio, we have things called marks towers, multi agency radio communication systems, towers, that can broadband, broadcast and internet signal. We have a research and education network called OARnet. Has anybody ever heard of OARnet? Raise your hand if you know what OARnet is? Okay, good, most of you do. So OARnet connects all of our government buildings together. It also connects our schools, as well as many of our hospitals, it makes sure that all of our education, service centers have the capability to do training, it makes sure all of our schools can do testing, and stay online and make sure that our township trustees and our municipalities and county commissioners have a way to get online as well. So the reason I'm here is because one of the things that we do is, it's great to make sure that we have all the things necessary in government to be able to communicate with the government. But if you don't have a computer at home that can get online, you can't do it anyway. Right. So we need to make sure that we have all the resources available all throughout the state of Ohio to get people online. So the good news that we have right now is that in September, we're going to be releasing just about $80 million to be able to increase broadband connectivity throughout the state. And then in January, February, maybe March of next year, we'll have $800 million to finish the job. So by 2030, I won't be here anymore, because I'll either be fired because we don't have internet everywhere. Or we'll have internet everywhere. And you don't need me anymore, right? So that's the goal. By 21 of those things will happen. Right, exactly right. So we so so the great news is both a stable, Ohio and the federal government are taking a huge look at this because you can't be part of the modern economy if you aren't actually online anymore. So from our perspective, from Bremen, Ohio, and department development's perspective, is we want to make sure that you have not only internet connectivity in your home, but internet connectivity within five miles of you at a community anchor institution, whether that be a library or a hospital or Township, trustees Hall, or, or maybe even a place of worship, so that you can go somewhere and be online, even if you can't get online from home. Because if you can't do those things, if you can't get online, then like I said, you can't schedule doctor's appointments, you can't get a job, right, you can't upskill yourself to get a better job. And you can't even do things like be participatory, you know, in for age that you can show horses at a county fair. So that's what we're doing. That's what the department Bill was doing to kind of increase connectivity drugs.
Jane 12:49
Great. We want to hear more about the funding that she talked about. And maybe in the next segment, this talk to Sharon, Sharon will have great to have you here. She's with the Ohio Department of Commerce. What are some of the challenges of modernizing legacy systems, which everyone here who's talking about digitization is doing that support the department's functions?
Sharon Wilhelm13:09
Well, certainly in state government, and I'm sure local government, there's a lot of old systems that have been around. And as many people in technology understand, you have to care and feed these systems, you really need to upkeep you need to pay money, have invest in skills so that you can go to the next stage. But first, I want to tell you a little bit about what Commerce does for those that might not be familiar. We service a large number of businesses, we regulate those businesses. But what we do, the common mission that we have is we promote prosperity by protecting what matters most. So that means from registering your real estate agent, to working with older businesses like liquor, to more entrepreneurial businesses like medical marijuana, so it's a very wide range. And even when that some services you wouldn't think belong under there, which is regulating cable companies regulating cemeteries, or inspecting bedding and stuffed animals. So along with all the things we do, it's a very wide, wide range, but what unites us is our mission. So from that perspective, the common things that they had were old systems. So we have spent a lot of time and money. Our goal is to be consumer friendly. When I interviewed with the director, that was the one thing that she wanted to be known for when she left her role was making commerce efficient. So in taking a look at the technology, there was a lot of room for improvement. We used faxes, who has a fax machine. Anyone here in the room have a fax machine at home that you fax papers around, oh, we've got mine person too, but most people don't have fax machines and therefore couldn't get their paperwork. Yes. paperwork back to the agency so that someone could hand enter it into the systems. So we've spent time modernizing that infrastructure, our business processes, and looking at how they work, and making efficiencies there. First, while we did requirements for systems and look at the commonalities across commerce, instead of having 600 different systems, it's much easier to maintain just a couple that have all of the key functionality that we do. Pretty much through all the eight divisions that we have, we do three common things, and 80% of their business processes are the same. So that's very helpful to know. And looking at that. They're all special and unique, and who they service and how they do it. But the key components of what they need to do is very similar. So with that, we've been looking at we've purchased new systems, one for which I'll talk a little bit about in a couple minutes, unclaimed funds, and looking to we've modernized these systems, as we've gone made getting rid of facts. From the liquor licensing side, we now are able to get the information online, which is a huge first step to us, that process would take more than 11 months to get a liquor license. And certainly during the pandemic, there was a time where businesses paused and didn't need liquor licenses. But as businesses started to open back up, they were allowed to actually deliver alcohol drinks, if that's what people wanted. People were clamoring for those types of things to be able to survive during the pandemic.
Jane 16:40
It's amazing how much change during the pandemic in a way, that was one of the most terrible things that our country our world ever had to live through. But on the other hand, it pushes technology to the point of never going back, right, there's no returning. So it's, it's definitely a glass half full,
16:58
if you will, definitely a silver lining from the pandemic,
Jane 17:01
no doubt about that. Jeff phasic can barely see it down there. But I know you're there. He is a sales engineer leader with state local education organizations for rubric, how do you work with state and local organizations to help them use data to make to make decisions. Sometimes,
17:22
having belief going into what everybody else has said, one of the things that we've noticed over the course of the pandemic and beyond is the amount of data out there is just it. And that's the only thing that did not slow down during the pandemic, it actually increased and the where people are accessing it from completely changed. So organizations, as you've heard, in the initial panel, in this one, it's how people access to it, where they accessed it, and the security that was needed around that. So what people people needed. And what we found dealing with a lot of the state local governments and educations that we worked with, is they needed better ways of understanding what data they had, where it was, and then what putting so they could lay level and determine the importance of data. And not only that, and being able to protect it properly. So the what we found is there's so much data out there that depending on where it access from it needed to be handled in different ways. Whether it was because if somebody actually had a breach or something they needed to notify your understand what the data was, or if it's just determining who has access to it, and how they can access it. We, when we're dealing with state and local governments, a lot of times we've got to determine is data, something that's maybe going to be sieges are FERPA compliant, and how that where that where and when that can be stored, versus just data, that's regular data. And we provide tools beyond just being a data protection solution, which that's kind of where we started was, hey, we wanted to modernize and make it easier to backup and restore and know that you could recover it. But what our customers came to us with was they needed better ways to understand that data, analyze it, but not impact their production environments. They want to be able to do things where they can do all the analysis and everything. But they know that the people that are accessing and using the data aren't going to be impacted. So giving ways to analyze that data, know what it is, where it is, who's accessing it and those types of things, and give it been able to report upon that. And then also analyze the activity and things along those lines to understand how it's being used and see when things are going awry, so that they can make sure that hey, what's going on in this one? Or is as data needs to move to the cloud? How do we get it? What do we what are we using to protect it when it's when it was in the data center, we may have done protected it in old school ways. We just wrote it to tape, put it on a shelf somewhere and didn't have to worry about it. But now data is moving everywhere. So they needed to make better plans on well now, what do we do? How do we make sure that when the data moves to the cloud that There are applications that in the data center can still work with it and can communicate. Or if we lose connection to the cloud are we still going to be able to work are we going to be able to bring those systems back up online in the data center that we need, and just being able to leverage some of those solutions to make sure that what we refer to inside rubric is assured recoverability to make sure, regardless of whether it's a natural disaster, a security disaster, or just connectivity, disruptions, that you're going to be able to know that you have the data somewhere and you've know what it is. So that you know not only that you can restore it, but you can prioritize and properly plan for how you need to restore that data and what's going to what needs to come up first and foremost, because when we're dealing with a lot, it's one of the ones I've dealt with a lot is police departments and that type of data. And they've got data that if they can't get to it, they might not be able to dispatch police responses, they might not be able to when they pull over a car, if they can't get to their data, they don't know if this person's got an outstanding warrant, or if he's just going out to a grocery run and somebody they don't have to worry about. So it's it not only affects the ability to do their jobs, but it affects the ability to stay safe when they do it. We've we ran into a situation with one of our customers where the they got impacted where they all of a sudden their systems were down for about 24 hours. And what they ended up taking this was what happened was the city had us but the county didn't, we were able to get the city back up in a matter of a weekend. But the county literally took three months because of the difference. They were still on the legacy solutions hadn't migrated over. And but during that even during that 24 hours when they were coming back up, they had concerns about well, if somebody gets in a car accident, they had no way of dispatching the ambulances things. And that's one of the things we've done in partnering with our state and local governments. And those is we've taken things that have happened. And we'll work with them to figure out okay, if yes, we're able to get back up in a much better way than ever before. But how can we even do that better. And we've developed technologies to enable them to recover faster and know what to recover. So that as as technology develops and moves, we work with them and truly consider our customers, our partners in determining what directions we need to go when we're going forward.
Jane 22:28
Right and giving them the information that they need to ensure that they do have a backup system or digital twin or something somewhere that they can pull back up again. Exactly. Yeah, great information. Thanks very much, Jeff. All right. Terry, back to you. The Ohio Department of ageing, I don't know what your staff looks like, I'm not going to assume that they're, you know, aging. How do you put a culture of innovation? How do you inculcate a culture of innovation and an agency or department that may be a little resistant to change.
22:58
So I'm going to share a fact with everybody, we are all aging, just so you know, no matter how old you are, or how young you are, we are all aging. And so we all have a vested interest in healthy aging, right? So we definitely have a focus on healthy aging. I have some of my team here, so I'm not going to look at their face, right? So I'm just gonna say you set the bar really high, you set the bar really high, you set the bar high for and clear with expectations, right. So I bring people to the table. And I bring them from diverse perspectives, diverse backgrounds, diverse industries, while we cover a spectrum, we've talked, the spectrum now that technology has to cover is both broad and deep. Right? We've covered just in this four, four conversations, write everything from legacy technologies to user experience to broadband and connectivity. And and you know, the securitization of it, the predictive capability, the speed. I mean, can the spectrum we're covering is right. So we need teams who can cover that spectrum. Right to be successful. We need teams. You know, I'm gonna be honest. You know, I think I was looking for unicorns for a long time, right? I was looking for that unicorn, that one person who could do it all right, and even if there's unicorns out there, most of the time, they're probably rhinoceros and tutus, right? And it's just not feasible. So you have to have teams with diverse perspectives. That sounds good, right? Check the box on paper, that sometimes when you bring people together who don't have the same language don't have the same experiences. It's not easy to actually recognize those synergies that you need, sometimes it actually create. So I'm gonna say again, as a leader, you have to one acknowledge that set the expectation of what the culture is what your value statement is, I need you to bring to the table you have pharmacy background you came from pharmacy, we need that perspective at this table. No, we're not a pharmacy. But that is one of the many stakeholders of our ecosystem. Right. So So again, bringing them to the table, setting the expectation of their value statement, not just permissioning it but expecting it right. And I think the second part of innovation culture, and this is I'm not, I'm both right brain and left brain I like to, you know, read and say, but I'm a put your hands on it kind of person. Don't just tell me about it. I don't want pontificators on hypothec haters, right? I want put your show me build it, bring it right. I'm gonna give you an example. Right now. I have a digital companion. A robot Her name is Le que I'm, I'm experiencing this myself, I want to understand it, I want to now it's actually creating family friction, because my mother in law calls her her BFF. And I'm like, It's my robot, not yours. And but I think there is no substitute for being avidly just obsessively curious and curious to go get it, go look at it, put your hands on it, experience it, there is no substitute for that. And then it's infectious. I believe if you model that, as a leader, you expect it out of your team, you're clear about that expectation. I think it's infectious. It makes it okay to ask stupid questions, right? It makes it okay to not know something when everybody knows you're gonna go find out, right? It makes a whole lot of those dynamics really work better. When you set that culture of go find it, go touch it, bring it back. Let's all talk about it. Let's experience it. And again, role model it yourself.
Jane 26:46
And there's a whole bunch of customer experience. methodology that comes out? Absolutely. Yeah, get find out who your biggest detractors are.
26:55
And there's nothing sizing other people's stuff, right. I mean, you want to critique your own, but no, I in there. Like I said, there's no substitute for putting your hands on it, experiencing it from to really know what that user experience.
Jane 27:08
I think that is great. Thanks very much, Terry. Peter, you're getting a lot of questions. I think we're
Peter Voderberg27:14
gonna jump in here. Your next
Jane 27:17
related to the funds you talked about? Right? So are they coming in from the Cares Act and the American rescue plan? And then just quickly, the questions seem to deal with, you know, how do I apply? Am I eligible? Do we have sustainability with once the funding goes out? And the broadband is put in place? Do we have sustainability?
Peter Voderberg27:36
Sure. So I think so from the state's perspective, starting all the way back at the Cares Act. So the Cures Act, the big broadband thing we did, there was the robin, Ohio connectivity grant. And that was to make sure that we had students who had the capability of being able to be online for the duration of the pandemic. So that money went out and did everything from making sure that people had hotspots to making sure that communities had places that they could go where we had public Wi Fi and parking lots and things like that, to connected devices, there was $50 million in a non competitive grant that made sure that everybody, every school district in the state of Ohio had the capability of applying, so they could actually get some money to do that. From that point on, we really went forward and said, Okay, well, it's, you know, that was kind of a band aid, right? That was just the let's get everybody past the initial shock of having to work from home and learn from home. So what are we going to do to make sure that it sticks around. So the state of Ohio created the Ohio residential broadband expansion grant program or or beg, as it's called, I didn't name it. That's what it was called from the beginning. And so with the Ohio residential broadband expansion grant program, we had a $250 million to be able to go out and work with internet service providers to bring internet into the communities that don't have it. So basically, what we do is we come in and say, like, Hey, you're the company that wants to go out into this place, you know what your return on investment is going to be? Right? Like, you know, that the project costs $3 million, but over the next 5 million, you're going to make $2 million as a $1 million difference in your ROI. So if that's what you need, then you come to us and say, like, I need that million dollar difference. And if I had that million dollar difference, I can sustain that model, because I'll actually be able to build that project out and make a return on investment in the amount of time that I need to make. So that's called the broadband funding gap. So the way that we make it sustainable is because we're really only funding those projects where someone is saying, like, Hey, I could go here, if I just had a little bit of extra money to make the money back in that time limit I needed to be able to make this project successful. So we're keeping that going. Right. So we're actually continuing to make sure that in the federal funds that we're using, both from ARPA through the Coronavirus capital projects fund, as well as the broadband equity access and deployment because they all have to have super long names. So in all those programs, we're keeping those principles in place. So what we're doing is we're working with providers to say like, Look, we're not going to subsidize your rates. We're not going to come in and pay for people to be online. But we are going to do is subsidize your infrastructure. So you need to tell us how much you think that subsidy for your infrastructure will be so that you can make a profit so you can keep going. Right. So that's what we do to make it sustainable. We're working with our industry service provider partners to say like, this is what you need to tell us you need. So you can actually have a successful project. And the reason we don't subsidized rates, it's because there is a program for the federal government called the affordable connectivity plan, or ACP and the affordable connectivity plan, basically knocks $30 off your bill, if you're eligible, and allows you to get $100 device grant now I will say $100, device president's great. But the main thrust of that program is the $30 off a month. So the other thing that we're going to be doing is all of the people who want to apply for our grant programs to be able to build out that infrastructure, they all have to promise to be participants in that program. So the reason we're not necessarily subsidizing races, because we're going to say that if you actually want the grant funds from the state of Ohio, you have to be able to take that that program, so that people who are going to be on that or that may not be able to afford your services will be able to afford your services once you build it out. Because not only are we going to say that, it's that that subsidy program you have to participate in, but you'll also have to have a low cost option, so that anyone who can actually be in that $30 subsidy program can have it for free. So we're going to make sure that we have the return on investment makes sense, we're going to make sure that all the people who may be able to afford the program have a subsidy make them able to afford it. So that's kind of how we're going to keep the program going so that people can continue to be connected all throughout the state of Ohio.
Jane 31:29
Okay, great. You're gonna probably have a lot of fun with this. And we want to talk to you about sir, share, let's talk about your new initiative to return unclaimed funds. Who wouldn't want to hear about that, to citizens more quickly? What new technologies and business processes have you implemented to get there?
31:48
So unclaimed funds, again, another division under commerce, that not necessarily a business, but we've worked with all of the businesses in the state of Ohio, they have a legal requirement to return funds that they have that are citizens that they cannot find, whether that be a rent deposit, an insurance claim, or any of the other many different ways that people can leave money on the table, gift cards, all of those types of things. So we have almost $4 billion worth of citizens money for the state of Ohio. Since I've been there have been at Commerce a little over four years, that's grown by a billion dollars. So that's a significant amount of money. And that shows that we're not meeting our goals of getting that money to people. So in looking at this overall process, I was talking to the superintendent of the division, and he didn't understand why he was uniting more people with money, but the claims were actually less. So this was a great opportunity to for our current system to look at data analytics to understand what's really going on here. What's the problem? How can we fix this problem? So what we realized is there were certain steps in the process that were taking an extraordinary amount of time. Certainly, probably because you had to come into the division, you had to fax your paper, you had to mail it, we asked for a lot of validation, no matter if your claim was $100,000 or 55 cents, you had to supply the same amount of validation for us to know that it was you. Or if someone in your family had passed away, and you were the executor of the will, there's even more validation that you had to provide to show that this 55 cents was yours. So we looked at what all the problem points were. And we started to redo that process and validate what the law said we had to do versus what we historically have done. Because a lot of it was well, we've always done it this way. Therefore we have to people weren't empowered to raise their hand and say this looks like a problem. I've got a whole bunch of stuff in the stack. And I think we could do better. So bringing that using data analytics, to the attention of not only the superintendent, but the executive staff, and in some cases, the legislature to get things changed so that we could process more better and reunite people, we've started to see a difference. Along with that fact. I mean, I have to put in a shameless plug here, go to missing money.com. And see if you have money, because you will be surprised, your chances are much better than winning the lottery. Probably none of you won the Mega Millions. That race live, I wouldn't be sitting here today, you might be on a beach someplace. So I highly recommend that you go out and look and see what money you do have. From that perspective, we've also realized the system that we had currently would not meet the needs that we had on go forward basis. We needed to be able to do some type of fast track for those claims that were under a certain dollar value. We don't need as much value addition, we don't need as much paperwork, there's some simple questions that we can ask to know and get all the information that we need to be able to allow people to electronically upload the information, that validation that we do need, so that someone can process it that same day, and cut that check and get it out to the citizens and get them with their money. So we've done looked at it from a lot of different perspectives, we've selected a new system, the vendor believes that we can implement that in about six months. So we're very excited to see those next steps come to realization, as we've determined where all the problems lie.
Jane 35:38
You know, it's hard to believe that people forget they have money, but you really can. It's easy.
35:42
We had a couple of people had more than $100,000. That idea. I mean, it's, I wouldn't forgotten that exactly. Most people would. Last one to add on to what Terry said, along with her staff, and each of our staff, I mean, we're every company is limited by headcount or dollars. We also need great vendor partners, someone who's vested in what we're trying to accomplish, and understanding what we truly need to do and what our outcome needs to be. Because we can only hire so many people, technologies, limited skill in the state of Ohio, not everyone has those skills. And although we're looking for people that have a wide variety of skills, we cannot necessarily be as deep as we need to be for some of the things that we need to implement within the state of change. Okay, great. Thanks
Jane 36:32
very much. I appreciate that. Jeff, to you. From your work rubric. Can you explain how the environment? Well, you we all know, the environment is getting more complex, right? There's cloud data centers, on prem data centers. This requires all the all the data that's being collected by these agency to stay safe, even in that complex environment. But challenges has that created for you, and how are you working around that?
Jeff Fazek36:58
So one of the I, we've heard about this from quite a few people today already, but a couple of things that we obviously needed to make sure is that when people are accessing the data, they are who they say they are, that's goes to the Zero Trust framework, multifactor, authentications, and building all of that into the solutions from the ground up that way, it all goes to when you have the data, you want to make sure that people that are adjusting how it's controlled, where it's stored, and that are the right people have the authority to do so. So we've we've had to see and build a lot more of that in when make sure that used to be some of those things you could turn on or off if you wanted to. But that's something we saw as over the last specially over the last three or four years. As we start seeing the industry, not only the data and the staff getting smaller, but it's almost we're seeing more technology and more work going into the bad actors than the good ones there. Because that's all they have to do. And what we're seeing is the we're people are struggling because you and in in the government and in the state in the education systems, you have to be right in every decision you make. The bad guys only got to be right once to get in. So you have to make sure that you've got all that you've got all these layers of protection. But no matter how much you do, as you see, just by watching the news on a regular basis, they're still getting through, they're still getting in there still doing things. So making sure we put in processes to help make sure you can recover quickly. Then instead of automation on it to where if you have a site, maybe your primary site goes down. And that might be just due to all the construction and things that are going on with new buildings going up. The cable might get cut, the broadband gets disconnected. So they're not there, we can put in automations that in ease the work of the people inside the government because we know they a lot of times we've we've seen staffs go from 1015 people down to two or three that have to do everything. So we want to put in processes that enable them to automate those things create basically checkboxes to say if this happens, do these certain steps automatically. And that way you can run tests on those on a regular basis, you can make sure that your primary data center goes down, everything's going to come up re IP come up in the right order so that within minutes, you're going to be up and your secondary data center without having to have somebody drive in from home. If it happens it what always happens, it's usually going to happen at six, seven o'clock at night on Friday or Saturday. It almost never happens during the day when everybody's in the office. So just making sure we have put in those technologies that make it easier to do more with less because that's unfortunately, not going to change anytime soon.
Jane 39:41
No, I think it's just going to get worse before it gets better if it ever gets better. Thank you very much for that, Jeff. All right. This is a lightning round. Okay, a minute or less. All right, challenge you. Okay, Terry, how do you kept your feedback from internal and external clients on the use of ability have something that you've already initiated? And then use that feedback to improve your process?
40:05
Sure. I think the answer is one, ask, ask for the feedback, make sure your processes are absolutely just oozing with those check points in touch points. Ask the actual user are not the proxies for the users. I feel like sometimes there's proxies for users, policy administrators or whoever it might be. So I think one, your process just has to be embedded with that, too. I think it's, you know, Sharon makes a comment about, you know, we need vendor partners, right? Are the people our constituents who we're serving, right, whether it's a workforce, or individuals or companies or whoever, if they need us to have skin in their game as well. So we need to like walk in their shoes, we need to show a collective understanding of what is the task at hand, so I go back to feel it, touch it, see it. If we're sitting, you know, in the distance just talking about it, then we're probably not connected to create a really good user experience. So
Jane 41:03
that's a foot stop. Thank. Thanks, sir. It's great. All right, Peter, how do you measure the outcome of the broadband projects that you're going to spend a lot of money implementing what metrics you're looking for?
Peter Voderberg41:16
Sure. I mean, ours is actually relatively easy, right? The answer is, did you bring broadband to people you said you were gonna bring broadband to right? So we get to measure it by saying like, Okay, did you actually build the infrastructure? You said, You were gonna build? Is it on the polls? If it's if it's being broadcast? Can we actually measure the signal that's being broadcast? And is it reaching locations? You said you were gonna reach? Because the answer from us is, if it doesn't go where you said it was gonna go, if it doesn't reach you, it's who you said it was gonna reach. And if it's not the speeds you said it was gonna be at, we get the money back, right, like, that's the way that the statute is written. So we're making sure we're, we are not yet at the point where we have done the validations yet, because people are still in the process of building everything right now. But we will be going out and actually spot checking and making sure that the fibers on the poles that the towers have been constructed, that you said you were gonna construct, at the speeds are at the speeds they're supposed to be. So that's how we're gonna do the metrics, we're gonna be able to come and say, like, Here you go. Here's all the people that people said they were going to build to. And here are all the houses that now have the capability of getting broadband that didn't have that capability.
Jane 42:14
And are you looking at whether or not they use the broadband?
Peter Voderberg42:17
So great question. So the answer is no, we will be asking them the we will be asking for generalized statistics as to what weather like how many people are taking the broadband from the locations that we send it to? The reason is because we don't want to know the specifics. They're not actually allowed to tell us according to the FCC, as to whether an individual is actually taking or not taking someone's service, but they can give us general statistics and say, Hey, we built out to this area, we have 25% of the people in that area now on online, and then they can report to us how many people are continuing to get online, they just can't tell us the individual addresses they're getting.
Jane 42:50
Okay, that makes sense. Great. Doing it. Sharon, what about the some of the best practices and lessons learned from implementing agile and DevOps methodologies, so
43:00
many, especially at the state, it's a little bit different, because I'm from private sector. What I learned is one you need to the business to be your partner, you need to train people, you can do videos you can have people come in, but what they really need is that mentorship and that example of what is this new thing we're doing? What is agile? How does that impact me? Kind of the where are we? Where is the gap? And why are we going there, it's been very helpful to get them to understand and again, business partners. So my team going into doing agile and doing DevOps, they don't know what best practices are, they can read about them. But when you're actually configuring that system and setting it up, they're not going to be experts, they need someone to help lead the way. So finding that business partner to help us to implement the best practices based upon what we were trying to do was extremely critical in our success. And then having those mentors to help build those habits, those good habits was also another success. And we learned that there's some give and take in that in regards to agile, it's certainly not the manifesto. But it's the cultural fit for us. That helps us to get things done more effectively, efficiently. It helps us It allows us to set that safe ground to fail fast, and just pick what we have the option to fail on. And it gets something in front of our business partners. So now as Terry said earlier, it's much easier to throw rocks at something that someone else has done than to come up with it for your for yourself from scratch. So it gives that good constructive feedback sessions to make sure that we're all occurring and also something else that was mentioned earlier is about getting the feedback. That's one way we get the feedback. And we do that continuously throughout the process, but also once we're done with whatever we've developed and delivered is having another critical conversation in regards to our retro OHS what went really? Well, let's celebrate that all together as a team between the business and IT to help to break down those silos. And then where do we have opportunity for improvement and fitting that information back into every process that we do every project that we do going forward? Oh, great.
Jane 45:18
And Jeff, finally, if you had to say one thing to the government leaders that are in this room, about how they recover from emergencies, disasters and other disruptive events, what would it be?
45:28
So what one of the things I would say is you got to make sure you have a plan in place in advance, make sure you know, what steps you're gonna do, who you need to call who you need to bring in. And make sure you that one of the most important things is make sure that plan is not stored on the servers that can be impacted. So you got to make sure you have access to it when the worst case scenarios happen. So and the partners that you deal with can help. And that's one of the things we even have, that's one of the things I take one of the biggest prides in with us is we have a rapid response team. That's that's all they do every day. So when the first thing when that worst thing happens, our customers call us and they get an entire team that comes in and helps guide them through the proper steps and knows who to talk to when to talk to them. They stick around until we're told to go away, basically, because that's one of those that what a lot of people that when they get hit, it's the first time they've ever dealt with it and panic mode sets in. And the best laid plans are sometimes hard to execute when your hair's on fire.
46:30
Well, that is
Jane 46:32
very true. And very well said thank you all. We have about 30 seconds to wrap up. What is your vision for the future of technology in Ohio? So 30 seconds.
46:44
I think it's a lot of what we said before it is meeting people where they are with good, good solutions are user friendly, allowing them transparency and engagement, their own service or care, day to day to data predictive predictive analytics. Back to right now, especially in aging, you know, workforce is so important, you know, we need Peter and his team and all these things, but being able to predict where we need things before we need them. Right. So it's it's just our ability to really get out ahead of things. And and be a solutions provider and not just to oversight compliance. I think it goes.
Jane 47:25
Foot stop again, gonna
47:26
stop right. Peter?
Peter Voderberg47:29
I'll just say the easy one for us is everyone has access to broadband capabilities in their home or in their community. That's what we that's what we are hoping for.
Jane 47:38
And we can't wait for that.
Peter Voderberg47:39
Right? neither can we?
47:41
Sure. I will add just looking in terms of outcomes, talking to people in the common language, something that they understand. And then also making technology simpler. Being in technology frequently, we talk a lot about the technology. And we don't realize, even when we think we're talking in business speak for an end user technical speak, it's technical to that person, because they don't have that grasp that we do because we've worked with all of our lives.
Jane 48:11
That's excellent advice. And then finally, Jeff.
48:14
Yeah, I guess the I'd wrap it up with just kind of saying, obviously, as the team's grow smaller, but the data continues to grow. It's just a matter of making sure you've, you've got the proper plans in place. You've got the proper trainings, and you're working with the proper teams to stay protected and continue to look forward. Because if you're not looking forward, you're already behind.
Jane 48:34
All right. Wonderful. Thank you so much. You're all brilliant. It was great to have you and get your insights today. Please thank our speakers.
Corey Baumgartner 48:43
Thanks for listening, and thank you to our guests, Spencer wood and Mitch Spaulding. Don't forget to like comment, and subscribe to carrot cast and be sure to listen to our other discussions. If you'd like more information on how Carahsoft can assist your organization, please visit www.carahsoft.com or email us at SLG marketing@carahsoft.com. Thanks again for listening and have a great day.