 From Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE. Covering Activio 2019, Data Driven. Brought to you by Activio. Welcome to Boston everybody, this is Dave Vellante and I'm here with Stu Miniman. Finally, Stu in our hometown, you're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. We're covering Activio data driven, hashtag data driven 19. Activio is a company that is focused, started focused on copy data management. They sort of popularized the term, the concept, the idea of data virtualization, of course, big data, digital transformation, all the buzz, it's going to be a tailwind for the company. And we followed them quite closely over the years. Holly St. Clair is here, she's the CDO of the state of Massachusetts, that's Chief Dig and Chief Data Officer. Holly, thanks for coming on theCUBE. Thanks for having me. So it's kind of rare that somebody shares the title of Chief Digital Officer and Chief Data Officer. I think it's rare right now. I think that will change. You think it will change. I think those two roles will come together. I just think data fuels our digital world and it both creates the content and also monitors how we're doing. And it's just, inevitably, I think either they're going to be joined at the hip or it's going to be the same person. You know, that's interesting. I always thought the Chief Data Officer sort of emerged from this wonky back office role, data quality and that sort of- Be careful of the word wonky. Okay, well, yeah, let's talk about that. But the Chief Digital Officer is kind of the mover, the shaker, has a little marketing gene in her, but okay, so you see those two roles coming together that maybe make sense because why? Because there's some tension in a lot of organizations between those two roles? Well, I think the challenge with the way that sometimes people think about data is they think about it as only a technical process. Data is actually very creative and you also have to tell a story in order to be good with it. It's the same thing as marketing, but it's just a little bit of a different hue, a different type of audience, a different type of pace. There is a technical component to the data work, but I'm lucky enough in my organization that I'm surrounded by additional technical folks, CTO, CSO, Privacy Officer, CIO. So we have a lot of supports that might take away some of those roles that are scrunched in under the data officer or the digital officer. So I used the term wonky before, kind of triggered you a little bit, but you're a modeler, you're a data scientist, you're a developer programmer, right? No, but I know enough to, I know enough to recode and get in trouble. Okay, so you can direct coders and you have data scientists working for you. Yes, yes. We got that entire organization underneath you and your mission is blank, fill in the blank. So our mission is to use the best information technology to ensure that every user's experience with the Commonwealth is fast, easy, and wicked awesome. Wicked awesome, I love it. Holly, our team just got back from a very large public sector event down in DC and digging into how our agency is doing with cloud-first initiatives, how are they doing in the same environments? You work for the state of Massachusetts and rolled out that first chief data of the chief digital officer, gives a little bit of insight inside how Massachusetts is doing with these latest waves of innovation. Well, you know, we have our legacy systems and as our opportunities come up to improve the systems or reinvest in them, we are taking a step forward to cloud. We're not so dogmatic that it's cloud only, but it's definitely cloud when it's appropriate. I do think we'll always have some on-prem services, but really when it's possible, whether it's a SaaS service off the shelf or it's a cloud environment, if it makes sense, then we are moving to that. In your keynote this morning, you talked about something called data minimalism. And I wonder if you could explain that for audience because for the longest time, it's been, well, you want to hoard all the data, you want to get all the data, and then what do you do with it? How do you manage it? You get buried by the data. Right, right. I mean, data is only as good as your ability to use it. And I often find that we're ingesting all this data and we don't really know what to do with it or really, rather, our business leaders and decision makers can't quite figure out how to connect that to the mission or to properly interrogate the data to get the information they want. And so this idea is an idea that's sort of coming a little bit out of Europe and or some of the other trends we see around some of cybersecurity and hacking worlds. And the idea is, this actually came from Fjord's digital trends for 2019, is data minimalism. The idea is that you strongly connect to your business objectives to the data collection program that you have. You don't just collect data until you're sure that it supports your objectives. So, you know, one of the things that I also talked about in the keynote was not just data minimalism, but doing a tritest, iterate approach. We often collect data hoping to see that we can create a change. I think we need to prove that we can create the change before we do a widespread, scalable data collection program. Because often we collect data and you still can't see what you're doing has an effect within the data. The signal's too strong or too weak or you're asking the wrong question of the data or it's the wrong collection of data. And that's largely driven from a sort of privacy angle? Is that right? Privacy, the reality of how costly sometimes it can be. Storage of data is cheap, but the actual reality of moving it and saving it and knowing where it is and accessing it later, that takes time and energy of your actual people. So I think it's just important for us to think carefully about our resources. In government we have a little less resources sometimes than the private sector. So we're very strategic on what we do. And so I think we need to really think about the data we use. I wonder if the pendulum is swinging. Do you remember back to the days of, you know, 2006, the federal rules of civil procedure said, okay, you got to keep electronic records for whatever, seven years, depending on the industry. And people said, okay, let's get rid of it as soon as we can. Data was viewed as a liability. And then of course all the big data hype, you've talked about it a little bit in your speech. Everybody said, okay, collect everything, throw it into a data lake. And we all know those became data swamps. So do you feel like the pendulum is swinging and there's maybe a little balance? Are we reaching an equilibrium? Is it going to be a, you know, hard shift back to data as a liability? What are your thoughts? Well, I think as with any trend there's always a little bit of pendulum swing as we're learning, with the equilibrium is, I think that's a great word. I think the piece that I neglected to mention is the relationship to the consumer trust. You know, for us in government we have to have the trust of our constituents. We do have a higher bar than public sector. In terms of handling data in a way that's respectful of individuals' privacy and their security of their data. And so I think to the extent that we are able to lend transparency and show the utility of the data we're using that will gain the trust of our users or customers. But if we continue to do things behind the scenes and not be overt about it, I think then that can cause more problems. I think what we face as organizations to ask ourselves is having more data worth the sort of vulnerability introduces and the possible liability of trust of our customers. When you've tried to trust over your customers it's really hard to replace that. And so, you know, to a certain extent I think we should be more deliberate about our data and earn the trust of our customers on going. How does Massachusetts look at the boundary of data between the public sector and the private sector? I've talked to, you know, some states where, you know, we're helping disaster parking by giving, you know, new mobile apps access to that information. You talked a little bit about healthcare. You know, I've done interviews with the massive and cloud initiatives, you know, here locally, you know. How do you look at that balance of sharing data? I think it is a real balance. You know, I don't think we do very much of it yet. We certainly don't share data that we're not allowed to by law. And we have very strict laws here in Massachusetts stricter than most states. And so, I think it's very strategic when we do share data. We are looking for opportunities when we can. When I talk about demand-driven data I look forward to opening the conversation a little bit to ask people what data are they looking for to ask the businesses and different institutions we have throughout the Commonwealth. What data would help you do your job better and grow our economy and our jobs? And I think it's a conversation we need to have over time to figure out what the right balance is. Some data will be easier for us to share than others and some we will never be able to share. The first data scientist I ever met was somebody I interviewed, the amazing Hilary Mason. And she said something that I want to circle back to something you said in your talk. She said the hardest part of my job or one of the hardest parts is people come to me with data and it's the most valuable thing I can do is show them which questions to ask. And you had talked about, well, a lot of times you don't know what questions to ask until you look at the data or vice versa. What comes first, the chicken or the egg? What's your experience been? Well, I do think we need to be driven by the business objectives and goals. It doesn't mean there's not an iterative process when they're somewhere. But data longs, we can just throw data all day long and still might not give you the answer you're looking for. Careful with that word. Yeah. But I think it's really important for us to be driven by the business. And I think executives don't know how to ask the questions of the data. They don't know how to interrogate it. Or honestly, more realistically, we don't have the data that actually answers the question they want to know so we often have to use proxies for that information. But I do think it is iterative after you get to a starting point. So I do think knowing what the business question is first. I know you got to go, but I want to ask you a last question. Bring it back to the state. We're both Massachusetts residents and we use your services. It sounds like you're picking off some good wins with a fast ROI. I mean, you mentioned, you know, driver's license renewals, et cetera. How about procurement? Has procurement been a challenge from the state standpoint? Are you looking at sort of the digital process and how to streamline procurement? That is a conversation that Secretary Wood is currently in and I think it's a good one. I don't think we have any solutions yet, but I think we have a lot of issues that we're struggling with. But we're not alone. All public sector is struggling with this type of procurement question. So we're working on it. All right, last question is quick thoughts on what you've seen here. I know you're in and out, but data-driven. Good theme. Great theme. It's a really exciting agenda. There's people from all these different organizations and approaches to data-driven, from movie executives and casting to air lot. It was just really exciting to see the program. Oh, thank you, Claire. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. Thank you. Appreciate having you. Great to meet you. Okay, keep it right there. Everybody, we'll be back with our next guest right after this short break. theCUBE is here at Data-Driven Day One. Special coverage, we'll be right back.