Marcie Kahbody, who serves both as the deputy secretary of technology for California State Transportation Agency (CalSTA) and as Caltrans’ CIO, shared the progress and plans for GenAI, highlighting the significant effort it’s taken to steer an agency the size of Caltrans toward new tech.
The CIO said early introductions to the evolving technology highlighted the need for a comprehensive approach to the massive department’s data holds, comparing it to jumping into the ocean with almost no idea how to swim. She advocated for the creation of an executive position, the chief data and artificial intelligence officer (CDAO), which, up until very recently, was Dara Wheeler.
“I felt like we need a strong organization around generative AI, and I needed somebody in leadership, somebody that would be dedicated to setting up policy, setting up the right governance, bringing together the districts and basically creating some cohesiveness,” Kahbody said.
What resulted was the start of the department’s data and AI program, which included getting feedback and buy-in from the various divisions. Kahbody acknowledged that the early days of this process included a fair amount of pushback and reluctance, but she said the proof-of-concept projects and constant engagement helped to show value.
The CIO said that once executives and their staff began to see the potential for real returns, they began to embrace the technology, even suggesting other use cases and areas for added efficiencies.
The work happening at the department is not just theoretical or foundational, either. Just Monday, training for and access to Microsoft Copilot was made available to 18,000 of the 23,000 Caltrans employees, expanding on the initial pilot of just 100 licenses, Kahbody said.
“We did a survey at the end of the POC, and people were saving about two and a half hours a week utilizing Copilot, so that showed value,” the CIO said.
There are also new projects coming down the pipe. CalSTA Secretary Toks Omishakin has asked that a new GIS data hub be created to streamline access to siloed department data across agencies under the CalSTA umbrella.
That list includes the departments of Motor Vehicles and Transportation, as well as California Highway Patrol, the High-Speed Rail Authority, the California Transportation Commission, the Office of Traffic Safety, the New Motor Vehicle Board, and the Board of Pilot Commissioners.
That data hub work is being driven by business representatives from each department in the hopes of completing it by the time the curtain closes on the Newsom administration later this year. Early workshopping around this project has identified work zone safety as a priority focus for this data hub.
In addition, Kahbody said there is also a chatbot in the works to help Caltrans staffers navigate the hundreds of internal websites they need to access daily.
“Caltrans has hundreds of pages of internal websites, and if you want to search for anything, it’s very difficult,” she said.
Kahbody was quick to point out that the work being done in this space isn’t happening in a vacuum, noting that none of it would be possible without input and assistance from industry partners. Assuming that solutions meet a real-world need, the CIO said she’s interested in hearing from the private sector and potential demos.
“What can that tool give us back? What problem is it going to solve for us?” she said.
This story first appeared in Industry Insider — California, part of e.Republic, Government Technology’s parent company.
