Exclusives

The sheer volume of data that tuns through the mayor’s office of the City of Los Angeles is hard to fathom. But what may surprise people more are the number of data-science programs the city has created to manage that data … and make the most of it.

For Jeanne Holm, chief data officer for the City of Los Angeles and senior technology advisor to mayor Eric Garcetti, the most important of those programs today are geared toward informing equality, diversity and education.

“Equity is so important in terms of how we do our work with data and technology,” Holm said, speaking Oct. 7 at the SoCal Women’s Leadership Summit, presented by Women in Technology Hollywood (WiTH). “The work we do in the city of Los Angeles is meant to be a benefit for everyone, four million people and 500,000 businesses.”

“The way we run the government, and the way we administer programs, we always have to have that eye toward inclusion and representation, across the spectrum, from gender, to ethnicity, to race, to socio-economic status.”

Most recently, the mayor’s office began a program asking Los Angeles businesses to provide data around their hires, to help see what progress they’ve made in diversity and inclusion, for hiring, promotions and more. “We think about gender equity from the beginning, and recently we’ve put a special emphasis on racial equality,” Holm said. “It’s so important to have many voices at the table, included in policy decisions, the way we develop technology.”

Younger voices too have been an important priority for the city, with younger people bringing new, diverse perspectives and approaches to neighborhood challenges, with Los Angeles connecting 18 universities and colleges to different city departments, to offer new insights “and solutions to problems they may struggle with,” Holm said. “We actually hire about 10 percent of the students who come through this [Data Science Federation] program,” Holm said.

Additionally, L.A. employs numerous programs to get young kids with an early data bent involved, including Citizen Science and the SoCal Explorer Campaign. “I’m a firm believer that anyone can be a data scientist,” Holm said.

Los Angeles also uses volunteer data scientists to focus on city-critical projects, as part of its Data Angels program. Black-owned business ownership, making the most of government-owned data, tracking COVID-19 cases, all are projects being worked on by that group today.

Her presentation — “Stories From a Technology Informed Diversity Journey” — showed how data and analytics have informed most every corner of the city’s programs, and how Holm’s data work for Los Angeles can provide a roadmap for starting your own organization’s diversity and equity journey.

The SoCal Women’s Leadership Summit was sponsored by Key Information Systems, and produced by MESA. WiTH’s corporate donors include Amazon Web Services, Cognizant, Deluxe, Expert System, FilmTrack, Los Angeles Duplication & Broadcasting, and Signiant.