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Priorities Podcast
Meet CODE PA's new executive director
00:17:07
The Commonwealth Office of Digital Experience, Pe…
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- [00:02]
A
Welcome to State Scoop's Priorities podcast. I'm Keely Quindlen, a reporter with StateScoop. For this week's episode, I interviewed Sarah hall, the new executive director of the Commonwealth Office of Digital Experience, or Code PA in Pennsylvania, about her prior experiences working for the city of Philadelphia, what the transition to leadership has been like for her, and what her priorities are for the coming year and beyond. We also talk about the challenges centralized digital teams like Code PA often face as they have to work across agencies that are pretty siloed. And she tells us how to build trust and get buy in to actually change how work gets done. But first, here's what's happening in state and local government technology news this week, a majority of Americans want stronger oversight of the data practices of all levels of government, according to a report published Tuesday by the nonprofit advocacy group the center for Democracy and Technology. The group's report was based on a survey which also found that nearly 8 in 10 support holding government agencies accountable for privacy violations. Nevada's Technology Agency on Monday announced the hire of Bertram Carroll, a retired army lieutenant colonel, as the state's new chief information security officer. Carroll most recently spent eight and a half years at the workers compensation insurance firm Employers, where he was a CISO and a vice president. Technologists with the New Jersey Innovation Authority last week announced major upgrades to the state's in House Generative AI Assistant. The assistant, which launched in 2024, now includes more transparent responses and conversation control and built in trainings. When Bri Pardo, the former executive director of Code pa, was tapped by governor Josh Shapiro late last year to step into the chief information officer role, Sarah hall, the then head of product management at Code pa, was named acting director in February. She was made the office's permanent leader and has since led the charge in wanting to understand more about where Code PA is headed. I talked with her about a number of things, but first we kick off our conversation by discussing her previous digital services role with the City of Philadelphia and how that has impacted her leadership style and vision for the future of state digital services.
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B
So I started with the City of Philadelphia back in 2017 and I started actually as a product manager for Phila.gov, which is the city's website and we had a small team of a designer and developer. We also really partnered closely with the content team that was doing migration work. So we were building the product side and they were doing the migration, so moving basically all of the departments over to the platform. It was a lot of work. It was a Very small team and we were moving really quickly. So it started as this kind of parallel workstream. It was my first exposure to working with folks in the content space and it was really exciting for me because the work, I've learned so much from everyone who is a content strategist, content designer, content writer. It's been really exciting to learn and see that and really how that's informed my digital services approach moving forward. So it started as one product and as we were building, we're building out the different portions of the site and really learning about what departments needed. It started with small components that were scalable across the platform. That way we were just building something that could grow with what we needed in the Future. And around 2019 is when we started wrapping up some of that product focus work. So we still were doing the content migration, but with the product focused work we were able to kind of pivot to more of what agencies needed. So as we were migrating their content, we were finding, oh, we need a map based application for this, or we need a little bit more robust functionality for this page. And that's where we started branching off and building some applications or some frameworks for applications and partnering closer with their software engineering team. So that kind of grew into a user experience team outside of not just a product team, really focusing on digital services as a whole and how we could start to not just build the website, but scale. So this was probably around 2019, 2020, and when 2020 hit, we had the pandemic and that really refocused our work back to the website. So thankfully we had built that scalable system I mentioned and we were able to stand up a lot of the COVID 19 response work back really quickly with a small team and some of the frameworks we built, so we call them a finder framework, allowed us to create food finders, testing site finders, and has scaled really well since then. And this was right as a lot of digital services teams were coming up. So since 2020, 2021, 2022, we were pushing for a little bit more presence in our IT organization and saw the value in having multidisciplinary teams with content, product engineering, design, really focusing on the whole picture when it comes to building out sustainable digital spaces. So that's when we really pushed. We worked with the CIO and we established the digital services team in 2022 and from there we kind of continued to grow and really solidified what that looks like at this. At the city.
- [05:32]
A
That's awesome. What an. What an incredible story arc that's, that's really cool. And then from there I know you moved into product work supporting PA.gov and the overhaul of that entire site and all of those assets as well. What was that experience like and how did it differ, I guess from the city level IT experience that you had?
- [05:53]
B
Yeah. So moving in to pa.gov work was such a wild time. So I had known Bri since she became the executive director and the team's founding. We were a part of a larger kind of like cohort of digital services folks who would meet up on a fairly consistent basis. So I was kind of tracking the story and the. I think in January of 2024 is when that pa.gov work really started popping off and really started working like more tangibly into the release dates. And I want to say in May of 2024 is when they did their first release. And I started in June, so it was well in flight and really taking off. We had, I think the first launch was around, I would say, 10 agencies. And then every month we were doing eight to 10 agencies, up to the 64 completing in December. So it was very much in flight. And I started June, beginning of June. And then we had my part, my partner in the governor's office, Sadie, starting in a few weeks after me. But through that we kind of really got the ropes and it was such an increase in scale and pace. So at the city we did this work at over five years and here at the state we did it in eight months. And it was such a fast paced, wild, but great experience to move everyone over. And as we continued, you know, over the months, we really gained that momentum and I guess buy in from agencies where everyone was at the platform at the beginning of 2025. And that was like a really great way to start the year.
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A
Yeah, I can imagine that accelerated timeline. Oh, just that stresses me out thinking about compressing all of that into just a couple of months as opposed to the span of a couple years. Well, so now you're leading Code pa. Yeah. And what has that transition been like into the executive role? I imagine exciting, but, you know, I imagine also stressful too.
- [07:53]
B
Yeah, it's. It's been really exciting at the city. You know, it was seven years to build the team and to get into that space. And here, you know, a lot of work had gone into establishing the team. We have great foundation and just the support from the administration and the leadership across the Commonwealth has really, really been helpful. So moving into this, you know, it's the same focus at a different Scale and that was really exciting for me. It's really about delivering that. Wrong. No, wrong door. And that's what it's been built on from the beginning. So with this strong foundation, we've been able to focus on scaling what that looks like across the Commonwealth.
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A
Yeah, totally. So what are some of your like top line priorities? I, you know, I imagine it's thinking through not just right, the systems aspect of it, but there's a huge people and cultural, cultural component to all of the digital services work. So talk to me about some of how that's manifesting for you.
- [08:54]
B
Yeah. So over the, you know, past, I guess we're two and a half years old now or just maybe two and three quarters, but we're, we're approaching our three year mark here and the foundation has been so strong, so really continuing to scale our impact. So that means we've, we've shifted in October to more enterprise platforms like permitting identity and payments and grants. So these are solutions that can scale across agencies instead, instead of building one offs, we're starting small with a few pilots we've had to scale quickly. So similar to what we did with pa.gov but really thinking about it in different program areas and at the same time we're trying to stay nimble so we can respond to urgent priorities while investing in this long term sustainability. We really want to make sure what we build continues to improve over time and we're continuing to meet not only Pennsylvania's needs, but the needs of our Commonwealth partners across our agency partners across the Commonwealth. So a big part of that is strengthening those partnerships and really continuing how to mature how we work, especially around the product practices and shared infrastructure.
- [10:00]
A
Yeah, absolutely. But I want to drill down on that part where you said about agency partners. Yeah. I've talked to several digital services folks over the span of my reporting here and doing this podcast as well. And I've often heard that centralized digital services teams having to work across a number of agencies kind of face this challenge with silos. Right. But I would love to hear from you how you are intentionally building that trust and that buy in from agencies who for the longest probably were just doing these things by themselves.
- [10:35]
B
Yeah. I think the model here at the Commonwealth is pretty interesting as well. I didn't have that exposure to it when I was doing the pa.gov work, but all agencies report into delivery centers and each of those delivery centers have CIOs and then we all report into the CIO to some degree. So it's really, you know, with BRIA as a cio, we've been able to come together more frequently, and now I have relationships with each of the delivery center CIOs, but we also have really great relationships with folks at the agency level and the products we've built with them before. I think a big part of how we go, like, gain that trust and kind of make sure everyone's on the same page is first by understanding. So we have a great user experience, research team, practicing the human centered design methodologies, and making sure that we understand current state of where we are before we start saying how we should change. So we have the goals to work towards more enterprise platforms, and we know that these have existed or these problem areas have existed in agencies before. It's really getting understanding of what that looks like and how we can either adapt or change or even compromise on how we implement so we can make sure that it works for everyone.
- [11:46]
A
Yeah, yeah, totally. You know, you just mentioned your relationship with Bri and like, having a CIO that has such a rich digital services background, I'm sure makes it a lot easier, right? When you're trying to communicate, like, hey, look at these, like, accomplishments, you know, look, check out these metrics, right? But when you're reporting up to leadership, right, because she's underneath the governor as well, what metrics are you looking to and what would you point to as, like, actually mattering? Like, how do you communicate that impact in a way to folks that maybe don't have your understanding, right. Of, like, what this looks like in practice and how to. How to pivot and change?
- [12:26]
B
I think a lot of it comes down to business processes and how we're improving, not only what it looks like for frontline staff, but that resident experience. Using analytics, we can pull time to process or things along those lines, but we really need to make sure we have that baseline first. So a lot of that understanding starts with what are we currently doing? What's the current time? What are these key things that people care about or maybe we hear the most complaints about? And how do we then start to understand what that looks like when it looks good? So what does good look like? We can't be perfect, obviously. Things take time and processes need to exist. But how can we either simplify or make it easier to understand or even just explain what those processes are? So there's transparency in what that looks like?
- [13:15]
A
Yeah, absolutely. Well, one other thing I want to touch on, because I feel like it's on everybody's mind right now, seeing as it's March is next month's. Accessibility deadlines and the compliance requirements for states and localities of obviously a certain population. But with those upcoming accessibility requirements, how is Code PA approaching this? And what does accessibility to you look like in terms of practice? Right. Not just compliance and checking those boxes.
- [13:45]
B
Yeah. So accessibility is really a core part of how we approach digital services. And it's been something that has interested me, you know, since I started designing, really thinking around how do people with varying ability levels interact with the digital products we're creating. We've really focused on shifting from a compliance mindset to an enablement model and a lot of that work. I think you've spoken to Chris Adams, who's the Chief Accessibility Officer, and he and the accessibility team have done really great work with agencies and IT teams to build accessibility into our products. So we're really focusing from a Code PA standpoint, building them in to our products from the start and helping IT teams who are building these products really scale and figure out how we implement those compliance pieces. So this includes things like shared standards, training and practical tools that make it easier for teams to design and deliver those accessible services. And as we approach the SED line, we've been able to make strong progress by focusing on the highest impact services first and taking a data driven, iterative approach. The team has a great set of metrics that really helps explain risk and helps kind of level set what this looks like.
- [14:57]
A
Yeah, gotcha. That's so interesting. Well, last but certainly not least, of course, looking ahead, what are you focused on this year? I would love to like, you know, hear some of what's rattling around in your mind as like, oh, I can't wait to sink my teeth into this next project or like, what's exciting you and what is. Yeah, what's coming up this year?
- [15:18]
B
Yeah, so I can start first, start about like Code P over the next year and then go into maybe some of the projects I'm most excited about. So our focus is really like the strong foundation. We really want to make sure that that continues. And I know I've said this a few times already, but it's been great to kind of step into a role that has such strong support from the administration and from leadership across the Commonwealth in terms of projects. It's like picking your favorite child, I guess. But from my perspective, there's a few that I'm really, really excited to see kicking off and moving forward. It's permitting an identity. On the permitting side, we're moving towards that single scalable platform that replaces fragmented systems across agencies. We've started with a few agencies already and we are really working towards delivering this year their major interaction point for businesses and residents. So approving that has a broad impact so we'll be making those processes faster, clearer and more predictable. And on the identity side, we're working towards single login across Commonwealth Services. So this reduces the need for multiple accounts, improves security, it makes it easier for folks to access what they need.
- [16:26]
A
That was Sarah Hall, Executive Director of codepi. We are sending our many thanks to her and her agency for participating in that conversation. You can subscribe to the Press Priorities podcast@monities podcast.com and wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, be sure to leave a review or a rating on the podcast page. That small extra step helps more people like you find the show. This podcast is a production of Scoop News Group in Washington, dc. Production work is done by Adam Butler and Carlin Fisher. Until next week, I'm Keeley Quindlen. Thanks for listening.