Continuously improve our delivery of health and human services to Californians by nurturing and multiplying the creative potential of CHHS staff
To embed design thinking, user-centered problem solving skills, and other innovative strategies into CHHS so that these methods are no longer thought of as novel and become just how work is done.
| Build and nurture safe psychological spaces |
| Trust others and be unfailingly worthy of their trust |
| Find the Truth, Tell the Truth |
| Design with users, not for them |
| Start small and iterate to create momentum |
| Value what failure teaches |
| Deliver and improve upon imperfect things, instead of waiting for perfection |
| Optimize for results, not optics |
| Design with data |
| Engage, invest in, and empower great people |
| Don’t start compromising right out of the gate, ask for what you really need |
The methods we use in the Office of Innovation are constantly being refined. Before I was director, I was fortunate to witness firsthand early efforts to apply modern digital service techniques in the federal government. At Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and later at US Digital Service, I saw different models of bringing smart, dedicated people from industry to build incredible applications for government services. However, in these models skills exchange was secondary. As a long time government employee I know there were smart, dedicated people already serving in government. There is not an ability gap. There is a skills gap.
Skills can be learned.
I wanted to focus on training existing government staff with the skills I observed that make USDS and 18F so successful. However, I never found the opportunity to build this model out. When CA Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Wilkening created the CHHS Office of Innovation, opportunity finally appeared to make this idea into reality.
Another key is to provide staff the opportunity to use these great techniques. These skills are not simply just absorbed, they must practiced. To practice them well means having projects that run unlike anything the government typically does. To have these unique projects means having high level executive buy in providing high level sponsorship, but also not predetermining what the outcome will be while the team learns. This requires a very unique and visionary leadership from Secretary Wilkening and also buy in from the organization to try to do things differently without any guarantee of success. Incrementally, we are changing the culture at CHHS to think about voice of the user and produce products that make government work better.
As the Director of California Health and Human Services Office of Innovation, Chaeny Emanavin is applying human centered design, iterative/agile methodologies, design thinking and deep dive problem definition techniques to create novel solutions for the State. The approach delivers multi-faceted results. The goal is to drive wide-spread culture change and skills development until these proven techniques are no longer considered novel, but become simply just how work is done.
Prior to joining CHHS, Chaeny was a product director of digital service at the California Department of Technology. He was a product director for the U.S. Digital Service at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from 2016 to 2017 and a program manager at the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from 2014 to 2016. He has served as web team lead for the Bureau of Indian Affairs at the U.S. Department of the Interior from 2005 to 2014. He was a senior multimedia designer at Aspen Systems Corporation from 2000 to 2005 and a multimedia designer at IGEN International Inc. from 1998 to 2000. Emanavin earned a Master of Arts degree in communication, culture and technology from Georgetown University and a Bachelor of Science degree in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University.
Jill is an avid fruit grower based in the south of France.
Ted has been eating fruit since he was baby.
Click here for more information.