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I sat down recently with Jeffery Marino, Director of California's Office of Data and Innovation, for a conversation about government innovation and impact. ODI is a relatively young State department. It was created through Governor Newsom’s first budget in 2019. ODI became a stand alone department in July 2023. Its policy space is data and innovation. And it’s become one of the more interesting examples of how government actually changes from the inside. Because while ODI doesn’t offer a public benefit program, it has the ability to help departments provide better services to Californians. Jeffery leads a team of subject matter experts in human-centered design, data and analytics, engineering, and product that serves other state departments. ODI helps state agencies and departments build capacity, run pilots, and rethink how they work. Think of it less like a traditional government agency and more like an internal innovation studio. It focuses on agile and iterative problem solving, which is not a known process for most government agencies. ODI is the home of CalAcademy, which is the innovation skills training arm for the State workforce. We covered a lot of ground: how ODI thinks about its audience, why there’s opportunity to reimagine vendor relationships (as co-creators), how the Governor's Innovation Fellows program is prototyping a new culture inside state government, and why evaluation needs to happen now — not in year 10. But the throughline wasn't any specific program or tool. It was something harder to measure. And I believe more important. Collaboration is harder than we admitJeffery opened by naming ODI's approach for impact. And it wasn't technology or talent. It was collaboration. Yes, collaboration may seem like a buzz word,, but it’s a structural problem that the government hasn't really solved. The government is built in silos. But people and problems don't live in silos. And one of the biggest barriers isn't bad policy or lack of resources. It's people becoming gatekeepers, sometimes without even realizing it. He said something that sounded almost too simple: Sometimes collaboration just means picking up the phone when something isn't working.
But in government, based on my experience of working inside and outside of public institutions, that can feel genuinely risky. Because real collaboration requires vulnerability. And vulnerability is not exactly what bureaucratic systems reward. Innovation here isn't disruptionIn the private sector, innovation means disruption: raise capital, move fast, overturn the industry. In government? You spend political capital. Completely different currency. You build relationships long before you need them. You create "air cover." Calculated risk in government isn't about moving fast and breaking things. It's about investing in coalitions and credibility so that when you do need to move, people are already with you. Slower — but more durable. Who's the customer, exactly?When Jeffery stepped into his role, the first thing he did was clarify who ODI actually serves. He has been a champion of reframing the public as customers. He often speaks about the customer experience, and advocates for measuring success through metrics and data. Per its statute, ODI was created to train state supervisors, managers, executives, and other staff in leadership positions about service delivery and data best practices. It was designed for efficiency. Co-creation vs. being an internal vendorEarly on, ODI kept getting treated like a vending machine. "Can you build us this app?" Their answer evolved to: What is the problem you’re actually trying to solve? Let’s research, and through discovery determine a solution together. Then, we will build capacity, and train you how to do it on your own. That shift is cultural, not technical. Co-creation means shared ownership, shared risk, and shared failure.
To support it, ODI built a training division that partners with departments upfront, pairs staff with ODI specialists, and trying to leave behind lasting capability not dependency. Prototyping a new cultureThe Governor's Innovation Fellows program is one of the more interesting things Jeffery described. And, I covered it in more detail in one of our previous issues. The program was developed as a result of the Governor’s Executive Order from July 2025, “The California Breakthrough Project.” Fellows are existing state employees with roughly 80% of their time carved out for innovation work. They go through ODI bootcamps in product management and UX research and move quickly from problem definition to low-cost proof of concept. The fellowship works when top-down air cover from the Governor's office meets bottom-up energy from people inside agencies who are ready to try something different. Both directions matter. We need both top-down and bottom-up to make government more impactful and innovative. Evaluate now, not in year 10We're pretty good at tracking dollars and timelines. We're not great at tracking value in real time. Jeffery made the case that government oversight needs to shift toward a harder question: is this actually producing value right now? That requires a culture that treats learning as a feature, not a threat. And as AI tools expand how quickly teams can prototype, the case for continuous evaluation only gets stronger. What I actually walked away withI didn't leave thinking ODI had a magic formula or secret sauce. I left thinking: The hard work is almost entirely cultural: trust, clarity, coalition-building, patience, humility.
The goal of all of these efforts, the Executive Order, the Fellows Program, CalAcademy, and ODI’s mission is beyond just running good programs. It's to institutionalize the hows (i.e. the trust-building, the learning systems, the collaboration habits) so they create a better Government for all Californians. That's ambitious. And worth paying attention to.
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