Innovating State IT Systems: A Conversation with Marcie Kahbody

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Narrator

We're in an era of rapid change where resilience is vital. The Davood for Thought podcast dives into the most important topics in government and technology today. Our host, Davood Ghods, sits down with his vast network of colleagues to dish on the tech challenges that affect us all. Follow this podcast on your favorite platform and join the conversation by sharing it on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook.

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Davood Ghods

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Direct Technologies, the Davood for Thought Podcast. I'm Davood Ghods and I will be your host today. The way I stay up with the pressing topics of tech and government of today is to tap into the panel of experts I've had the honor of connecting with over the years. Today we have Marcie Khabody. Joining us on the podcast, Marcie has held various information technology positions within the state of California for the past 2627 years.

00;01;00;15 - 00;01;30;07

Davood Ghods

But she is currently the deputy secretary and agency information officer for the California State Transportation Agency, where she is responsible for setting policy and coordinating information technology activities at the agency and statewide. And Marcie, without going into too much of your background, mainly because that's my first question to you, I want to welcome you to our podcast. Welcome.

00;01;30;10 - 00;01;54;26

Marcie Kahbody

Thank you very much, Davood. Thank you for having me. A little bit about my background, as you mentioned, not too much I. I immigrated here when I was 18 and I'm bilingual. I speak both Farsi and English. Computer science kind of got my attention when I was in college trying to kind of figure out what I wanted to be and what I wanted to know.

00;01;54;29 - 00;02;21;21

Marcie Kahbody

And I went into the computer science field and I have a bachelor's degree in computer science from SAC State. So I'm a local I'm Sacramento's local. I've been here for many years. I then started in private industry. I worked for a company named Cellulaire one. I was there as a consultant for for a few years. And then I got into State and I became a public servant.

00;02;21;21 - 00;02;59;10

Marcie Kahbody

For the last 30, somewhat years, I've been a very passionate civil servant working in a lot of different departments. Rest of my state service experience is in DGA, so I was there for about 21 years, and after that I've been in various departments, Department of Corrections, the Healthcare Services and Transportation Agency, I, I.T. Leadership Academy, 20 graduate. I have Microsoft Certified Engineering degree in the year 2000. Basically have had many years of experience working for public sector.

00;02;59;13 - 00;03;30;26

Davood Ghods

Very impressive. And I'm sure you've seen all kinds of projects in your current role and in prior roles being successful, not being successful. So we want to talk a little bit about those. But I want to ask you next about what emerging trends are you seeing in your field that we should all be paying more attention to?

00;03;30;29 - 00;03;58;25

Davood Ghods

I'm sure that with the departments that you have under your agency that each one of them is implementing something of new technology, emerging technology. But what is what are some of the common ones? What emerging technologies are you seeing?  

00;03;58;28 - 00;04;28;17

Marcie Kahbody

So emerging technology, as we all know, because of the pandemic, we all have to get in gear and provide telework to everybody that works for a state. A lot of the departments that are under the agency, as you know, DMV, high speed rail, Caltrans, they all had to provide these services. 70% of the task force had to telework or anybody that actually could work from remote locations. So we had to get in gear. We had to create a lot of collaboration tools. We had to strengthen and improve our VPN technology.

00;04;28;19 - 00;04;58;26

Marcie Kahbody

We had to provide a lot of services online for constituents. For example, DMV, we had to make sure that constituents could actually do a lot of their driver's license services online without walking into the offices because we had to actually close up a lot of their a lot of DMV offices so that they would not have to stand in line or walk into the office.

00;04;58;26 - 00;05;39;04

Marcie Kahbody

So as a result, a lot of these services were provided by DMV that side. We provided the chockfull on the websites chat, but creates a better user experience. They can actually ask questions that are receive responses on text. Besides that, cloud services are very popular and we are trying to move away from owning a lot of hardware. When we started teleworking, what was missing was collaboration sites.

00;05;39;07 - 00;06;16;18

Marcie Kahbody

We put together a team from all departments to work on Microsoft teams collaboration sites so that all departments could share ideas, could share files, and have a means of getting together without being in-person and share documents. So very quickly, we were able to create these sites very quickly. We were able to have all staff have access to OneDrive on all of their shared drives.

00;06;16;21 - 00;06;52;25

Davood Ghods

Yeah, thank you. This is a this is a great lead in to the next question. Marcie, I think you would agree that adjusting to the pandemic was challenging for many organizations and now everyone is thinking of what the next major disruption like the pandemic is going to be and how can we better be prepared for it. So resiliency is a big topic of conversation these days to the point that we direct technology have started the service offering and really resilience as a service. So what are some examples of resilience you've seen in your business in the past year? What is the one thing that you and your departments are doing to improve resilience?

00;06;52;28 - 00;07;20;15

Marcie Kahbody

So, you know, to improve resiliency, we had to create to make sure that we have a clear vision and mission. And also we create a strategic plan for agency that lists everything that we have to do within the next six months.

00;07;20;15 - 00;08;04;09

Marcie Kahbody

So instead of creating a strategic plan that addresses two or three years in normal situations and two to be able to track these closer, we created one that is just for about six months and very quickly, when the pandemic has started, all of our departments as well as agency, we started purchasing ourselves so that we can provide everybody who can work from remote sites, a laptop that also has access to Internet and to all of their files that are batteries lighting at work.

00;08;04;10 - 00;08;53;21

Marcie Kahbody

So OneDrive became the norm and standard in our department. Also, we for to create a better business process and make sure that that everything that needs agencies approvals goes through a very clean process and quick approach. We deployed an application using Salesforce that automated the approval process. So that the departments could send in their issue memo or anything that needed the agency's approval through an application and a software service.

00;08;53;23 - 00;09;25;07

Marcie Kahbody

And we could access from anywhere that we had access to Internet. So and also we deployed e-signature. So that was done very quickly for agency. So all the deputy secretaries basically can work from anywhere, not just deputy secretaries of the agency, but also the department level. A lot of tools were deployed so that everybody could easily access files.

00;09;25;09 - 00;10;07;18

Marcie Kahbody

Work could easily work from anywhere if their duty statement allowed that, of course. Very good. Well, these are great lessons learned for those who want to make sure that they have a resilient environment where if there is an opportunity, if there is another disruption, that they can be back in business soon after.

00;10;07;18 - 00;10;36;13

Davood Ghods

My next question is an interesting one, because most all organizations, as far as I know, always when they get engaged with the client, they talk about how they are going to get that project or that effort that they have underway done at direct technology. Not only we ask and talk about how, but we ask ourselves why we are doing what we are doing. What is your why? In other words, what motivates you in your work?  

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Marcie Kahbody

As you know, as I explained, I've been a public servant for 30 years, so we for me, anything that helps improve the life of people, I feel like they are here to serve the people of California. So if we can provide something that improves the life of people, if we can provide some but something that reduces the cost to state because I feel we are responsible in spending people's tax dollars and we have to be very careful on how we spend it. So providing services that are important to the constituents is important to me to make it easier to create a better user experience.

00;11;08;17 - 00;11;44;15

Marcie Kahbody

I have a lot of people around me that it's difficult for them, for instance, to drive the DMV to get their work done or to get their driver's driver's license renewed. If we can do anything to make these processes simpler. Those are the ways I look for simplicity. I look for a reducing cost. I look for what are the ways that we can simplify or make, make it easier for people to do what they need to do online. Well, helping others, simplifying and cost reduction.

00;11;44;18 - 00;12;16;01

Davood Ghods

Absolutely. Motivators. Absolutely. Well, this question that I just asked and the next few are really in line with our motto, what direct technology. We want to shed more light on the human side of tech action. That's why we are here, right? Yes, exactly. So the next question revolves around two key words inspiration and innovation. What inspires innovation on your team or in your organization for or for our team?

00;12;16;04 - 00;12;54;09

Marcie Kahbody

I feel their leaders, of course. I have to create an environment that allows us innovation and I add agency. I have created a very collaborative environment where the CIOs feel very comfortable discussing issues or taking risks. So one of the key points of innovation is taking calculated risks and the environment and the culture has to allow that.

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Marcie Kahbody

I have kind of broke those boundaries. When I started that agency, the departments were working in a silo. The CIO didn't even know each other. There was no collaborative work there. There was really no connection between the departments on they broke those barriers. We have a lot of team building exercises that we actually get together, all of us.

00;13;23;21 - 00;14;00;25

Marcie Kahbody

And we we work on the ways to improve the processes. We ask each other what are the best automated tools out there that we can utilize within the departments? They actually, their CIOs, learn from each other. If something has been deployed in one department, we get we have presentations and we have demos. So it's really a culture of collaboration within the agency that allows the innovation in our team.

00;14;00;26 - 00;14;34;19

Davood Ghods

Excellent. So you mentioned a couple of times about the CEOs that are part of the Transportation Agency. Would you mind listing them, please? The departments that are under the agency?  

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Unknown

Yeah, absolutely. The Department of Motor Vehicle, the CIO is the piano Transport department, Transportation. The CIO is George Akiyama, High speed rail is Patty and I. Songer Office of Traffic Safety is Jessica Chan, CHP is Chris Childs. Very good. Yeah. And the newest is Chris Wright new as is Chris before that. Jessica Oh, okay. Very good. Well we are getting to towards the end of the questions and my next one is what is something that would surprise people about your background or interests?  

00;15;02;09 - 00;15;27;02

Davood Ghods

Oh, okay. Very good. Well we are getting to towards the end of the questions and my next one is what is something that would surprise people about your background or interests?

00;15;27;04 - 00;15;58;17

Marcie Kahbody

Oh yeah, I'm, I'm a very simple person. Um, as I said, I'm bilingual. I don't think that's surprising because I have the accent. I do love traveling. I've traveled to a lot of countries outside the US. I do love hiking, going camping. That sometimes surprises people. And I don't understand why I am an animal lover. Although the policy at my house was no animals when the kids were grown and growing up. But I do love animals, but I think they're very difficult to care for. I do have two cats now and I think that's about it. A very simple person. Very nice, very nice. You know, we share our cultures together. So I sometimes hear that accent when you talk, but I have the same. And I appreciate that in people who have come from different cultures because I know the struggles that they've gone through. And I'm also an animal lover. I have a fish, a goldfish. My we have a cat as well.

00;15;58;19 - 00;16;29;27

Davood Ghods/Marcie Kahbody

Um, where can people find you and keep tabs on what you're working on? How can people support your work, if any projects that are going on? Absolutely, I'm available. And then also they can get to our website of course the that here that goes and reach out to me that way.

00;16;29;29 - 00;16;52;25

Davood Ghods

Fantastic. Well, thank you so much, Marcie, for joining us today. And thank you listeners out there for joining us as well. We will see you all in the next episode of the of Davood for Thought, where we will shed more light on the human side of tech.

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