 Bingo, we're live, it's one o'clock, rock here on Think Tech, Think Tech Tech Talks. Member Tech is our middle name, Todd Nakapui, CIO of the Office of Enterprise Technology of the State of Hawaii, and Pankaj Benot, Deputy Director of Department of Human Services, what an interesting combination actually. So welcome to the show, Todd. Thank you. Welcome to the show. Thank you. I hope you guys are coming down. So we're here to talk about something called HAC, H-A-C-C. Who thought of this? You, Todd. Governor did. Oh, all right. Two points for that one. So what is it? What is H-A-C-C? So it stands for Hawaii Annual Cold Challenge, and this is the first year that we're doing it. We purposely put in annual because we want this to continue. And really what it is, is challenging our developers community and our high tech community to help us solve state problems. And so this idea came about where the governor and I were judges at the AT&T Hackathon. So it's based on a hackathon type timeline where, you know, the developers are presented a set of questions or a set of problems to solve. And usually a hackathon is a 24 or 48 hour period where they develop and come up with an application to solve that specific problem. And so the governor, like I said, the governor and I were the judges at the AT&T Hackathon and God just looked at me and said, we should do this for the entire state. And I said, you know what? That would be a great idea. And so that was about eight weeks ago now. And we're kicking off and getting ready, you know, to launch our Cold Challenge on August 27th. So Saturday. Saturday, August 27th. It starts at 10 a.m. And it's at Aloha Tower at the- Right down the block. Right down the block. I believe it's called the HPU. What do they call it? Well, everything is HPU down there, so it's in their big conference room that's down there. Yeah, we're going to come with our cameras. Great. Yeah. So then, of course, you know, the question does present itself, Pankaj. I mean, why are you here? You guys, you know each other. You're friends. You decided to come down and spend the afternoon together. What is it? Yes. All of the above. Todd has been an instrumental partner in our efforts to streamline some of the service delivery models that we have for human services. As you know, Department of Human Services, we provide benefits and services to almost 50% of the Hawaii's children and one in four of all Hawaii's residents from financial assistance to medical to food benefits, childcare benefits, child protective services, adult protective services, and vocational rehabilitation services, housing and services for at-risk youth. So for all of this, we also need a very robust enterprise type of approach to our IT. And with Todd's help and leadership, we have been able to put in play DHS Enterprise System, which we are using to build a lot of different applications to address our eligibility and various service delivery needs using that technology. So that's the partnership. And that's the reason why I'm here because we have asked Todd and his team to accept one of our demands or requests for hackathon. We want to do a code challenge, building a mobile application for eligibility determination where a family can use the mobile application and they can actually put in their various data, including their household composition or income and other circumstances so they can figure it out what potentially they may be eligible for. And this is going to be a great way to increase access to services. It's a proof of concept that we are testing. And I think this is a brilliant way to do it without actually going through procurement and many other things that we have to go through in order to get it. This can actually give us a very good idea of what will work and what would public use and what would it take to operationalize at a larger scale. I'm getting thrilled now. Whoa, that is really something. And this is not, you know, during the Abercrombie administration we had, what was this name, it's going to come to me, a fellow. Sunny Bywalia. Sunny Bywalia was here and trying to evaluate how the state was doing. And Neil Abercrombie said over and over again we're going to change the world, but it actually didn't happen. But now this is like not the backbone of the state system. This is a whole new idea you're talking about. That is good. And it's an idea whose time certainly has come. I mean, it's one of the ways we deal with the disadvantage, the homeless and all that, we give them a cell phone. Cell phones are good for everything. I heard a piece on NPR this morning, you know, they make diamonds in San Francisco now, just as good as you'd find from Africa. How do they operate the diamond machine with an iPhone? You know, apps are everywhere doing everything incredible. Anyway, so this sounds really thrilling what you're talking about. Because I think our families are quite sophisticated with the changes in technology and different platforms that are being used. I think it is time for us to also adapt and make sure that we are able to reach our constituents effectively. And they are served also timely. And this technology we believe the various steps that we are taking under Todd's leadership, I think is going to literally poise us towards that end to provide timely access to services. So they can have all their needs addressed so they can focus on raising their children, getting better health outcomes for themselves. That's in the end is the goal. It's inspired. It's inspired. It's a wonderful, beautiful idea. And gee, does it exist elsewhere like this? I doubt it actually, I haven't heard of it. There are efforts around the country for similar sort of things. But I believe that the way we have done it with a partnership with the ETS is a very sort of systemic approach to roll out at enterprise level. Let's just do, because I'm a true believer of micro adaptation. You do a targeted demonstration, a very controlled environment. And then you replicate after you built it successfully, rolled it out successfully, then you build on it, then you replicate and start to bring in other things. And I think that's the gift from Todd because he truly believes in it and he's allowing us to do so. And Governor is fully supportive of this. What I hear, though, is that you start now with human services. But this could be a restatement, a re-imagination of the relationship of government and citizen. Absolutely. That's not just re-imagination. That's the whole point of the co-challenge, right? True. And really how it's set up is that we've gone out to every department. So we brought DHS because they were one of the first, and they were always willing to partner with us. But every department submitted ideals, including Scott in Homelessness. And to develop different apps, right? Because if you think of the government process today, if Punkage wanted to develop a mobile application like this, there would be an RFP, there'd be scoping, there would be a lot of add-on pricing that would increase that. And we couldn't move as fast as we would want to, right? So by creating a co-challenge, I guess, it really enables us as a state to be reactive, if you will, to be able to solve problems quickly instead of going through this monolithic approach that has always been around in state government, right? The Dreaded Procurement Act. Exactly, right? And this really does that proof of concept, right? You know, if we were to, we'll take payroll and time on tenants, for example, we went out and when we initially scoped it, it was going to be an 80 or 90 million dollar price tag for us to do it. But because we're taking different approaches to everything from procurement and what we're using as far as the technology piece, we're able to reduce that cost significantly, and the initial put-out is going to be about $35 million, right? And so we're taking that type of approach to everything that we do. And again, DHS is one of our flagship departments that because they do so much public services, that using technology is just enabling them to deliver those services in a more open and efficient manner. I'm really thrilled about this, you were saying? I think Todd is absolutely on the right track on this and hitting the nail on the head. I think the approach that the department has over the last year or so, we are extremely focused on trying to create approach for the whole family because as you know, and you've been here for a long time, that historically we either serve the children in a silo or adults in a silo. We, even if we did serve the family together, it was for very narrow purpose, which is always either a person centric. Now the approach is called Ohana Nui, which means extended family, where we serve the child and the parent early and concurrently because we can assess the whole family situation, even auntie, uncle, grandma, grandpa, henai parents, whoever is involved that's influential in the life of that family, we can actually take into account their opinions as well. Bring them together. Bring them together. It makes a family out of them. This is what it is all about. And do this as a group. Absolutely. This is a great idea. Absolutely. And I think that way we can really drive the self-sufficiency and the health and well-being of the families to the forefront because that's our job. Yeah. OK, let's talk about exactly how you do it. OK, so months and it's in the space there in Aloha Tower and you're going to try to get people to come down and actually do code challenge. Who are they that you're going to get to come down? How are you going to organize it? How are you going to motivate it? So really how a lot of these hackathons work is and our code challenge will be very similar to that is we need to reverse pitch these guys. So we need to. So Pankaj needs to stand up in front of the developer community and convince people to come and work on this project because we're only going to have so many developers. But we have a ton of ideas for people to work on. And so what's different is that we have buy-ins from the department. So it's not only that you show up during that day, right? But throughout the month as you code and you develop your application, Pankaj and his team will be available to answer those questions because what we've learned is solving government problems is very complex, as you know. There's not a single bullet to solve it or a lot of these things would have been fixed, right? And so if you're asking someone to develop an application or fix a problem, they're going to need to know, right, the complex factors that surround this issue. And so that's why the departments have committed to make people available to these teams that are going to form and start working on these problems. It's an iterative process. It's an iterative problem. You bounce off the wall to come back. You try something else. And Pankaj is there to show you the way, essentially. So all the learning that's happened, right, all that innate knowledge that they have about solving the problem, they can advance the team further, right, so that it's not starting from ground zero. So that's the idea. Not that we'd have a finished product at the end of the 30 days, but we'd have, hopefully, a more innovative approach to solving some of these issues that we're faced with. OK, so I come with my laptop, I guess. OK, and I talk to Pankaj and he tells me what to do. You'll have specs and everything you've written out. What kind of platform are you looking for? What kind of language or languages are you looking for? So it's really open. We're encouraging everyone to use more open source tools so that we don't run into some of the legal issues that we have, but it's going to be open. So we're also exposing a lot of our data sets to all of these teams. So we're opening up our GIS platform so that these teams can see that. We're doing anything that we have listed on our OpenData.gov platform. We're exposing to these guys. Bert Lom is going to be involved. So Bert Lom is heavily involved in what we're doing. Shout out to Bert Lom. Good to you, Bert. He's right. So all of those things are going to be exposed to these guys. So they'll have all of these data sources to draw from, to get the information that they need and develop their applications. We're also going to have training on board, because we're going to do things. We're going to have, I think, it's a 30 minute or an hour set on design thinking. We have a lot of different things that will happen throughout the month. He's going to be involved. Mr. Design Thinking? Promotion. Promotion. Yeah, we're having, I don't think it's ocean that's going to be there doing that. Someone will be there though. That would be doing our design thinking for us. And again, we're going to have programs throughout the month to help teams. Dev League is heavily involved. So they will be showing to some novice programmers. We're calling in everyone. We're calling in everybody, because we have a lot of problems that need to be solved. And we have a huge community that wants to be involved in this, right? And so we're trying, again, to really get everybody together, bring them to the table and say, look, let's look at a different, more innovative approach to solve the issues that we're dealing with today. Very, very exciting. So a big question, before we take our break, is who do you want to show up on September 27th? Make that August 27th. Who do you want to show up? So we want anyone with any type of development skill, regardless if you're a full-stack developer or not, regardless if you're a junior or senior developer. We have categories in elementary, intermediate, and high school as well. So we're asking for any students that want to be involved to come out. The best ones. Yes. They're really good at what they do. So we're asking anybody that has any type of development background to come out. And we're also asking people that don't have that tech background but want to be part of these teams, because part of the team is doing the pitch, right? They're going to have to show up and do a pitch, explain what they did, think through some of the business logic that would have to be done. So the team, most of the time, won't only consist of developers, right? We'll have other people involved as well. I think when he talked about the pitch just now, he was sort of getting closer to defining the reverse pitch concept. But we're not going to tell you what it is right now. We take a break first, and that'll be our cliffhanger for when we come back. We'll be right back. And Todd is going to tell you what a reverse pitch is and how you can do it. And how you can come down and participate. We'll be right back. Hi, I'm Chris Letham with Think Tech Hawaii. And I'd like to ask you to come watch my show, The Economy and You, each Wednesday at 3 PM. You're watching Think Tech Hawaii, meeting people we may have not otherwise met, helping us understand and appreciate the good things about Hawaii. Great content for Hawaii from Think Tech. Hey, everybody, my name is David Chang. And I am a new host for the show, The Art of Thinking Smart. I'm really excited to be able to share with you how to get the smart edge in life. We're going to have awesome guests in the military, business, political, nonprofit world. So no matter what background you're from, we have something for you. Please join us every other Thursday at 10 AM at ThinkTechHawaii.com or on the art of thinkingsmart.com. I look forward to seeing you. Hello, I'm Crystal from Quok Talk. I've got a new show here. You've got to tune in, check out my topics on sensitive provocative female issues. So Tuesday mornings, 10 o'clock, don't miss it, it's going to be fun and dangerous. Bingo, we're back. You've probably been wondering and scratching your head, what is the reverse pitch? Now you're going to find out, Todd. So really a reverse pitch is us selling all of your development community or whoever is there to come and work on my project to just tell them, look, these are the reasons why. One of the big things that I haven't told Punkish that he should do, I've been saving this for others, is that is when I go and pitch my problem to developers and Punkish don't steal this idea. When I pitch our problems that we want the developers to solve, my reverse pitch is really going to consist of telling them, look, if you solve this problem for ETS or for the state of Hawaii, you can solve it for 50 states. So if you develop an application that really works, that solves a problem for us. There's a monetary gain that could come of it if you develop an application that other states could use. And the beauty of all of this is that all 50 states and six territories, they have same programs, same source of funds and same issues. So it is the start somewhere and then replicate. So, okay, a question does come to mind. At the end of this month, who is going to own the product? So there is just like every other hackathon that the code is open source. So the IP that's developed isn't owned by... Public domain. It's public domain, right. So it can be used by the state or by them. There is some legal documents that need to be signed for you to participate in and that's to protect the individual and also to protect the state. Well, you acknowledge that it is public domain. Yes, yes, so. Okay, so should I come? By the way, how do I sign up? Do I have to go to a website? Yes, if you go to hackhacc.hawaii.gov, you can sign up for it. You can be part of the mailing list and get all the information that you need to sign up for the competition. That is so easy to remember. And I guess the thing is if I can't remember that, they shouldn't come. Hacc.hawaii.gov, lovely. Okay, and I bring my machine with me and bring my skills or my curiosity with me. Both, bring both. And you're going to tell me what the problem is. You're going to tell me what, you know, the potential solutions are. You're going to show me how to code and how to collaborate with other people. Are you going to have the GitHub thing working? Yes. So everybody, you know, can upload and download and sort of code control, version control. So you're going to show up. All that's going to be there. We're going to have food for you throughout the day, Wi-Fi access to do that, right? And all the departments that have submitted ideas will be there with their representatives and again, reverse pitching the people. And then just organically how it happens that every hackathon team will form to solve problems. And again, we're going to have the professional developers that are there, because we have a category for them. We're going to be looking for, you know, high school and intermediate students, as well as elementary students to participate. Wow, you guys are going to be, you're going to be there. You're going to be governing, guiding this thing every day. It's not 24 by 7. No, we're not asking, yeah, we're not asking people to work on, on this code challenge for a month straight, right? What we're saying is we've made it a month because we know that people do have schedules and work and that 24 or 48 hour hackathon really is asking a lot, right? For people to commit themselves to that. And so what we did was say, look, a month's a better time period. People can work on it on weekends. And again, we're going to have schedules throughout the month for people to meet up to help them continue the project, to really push them to get it over the finish line and they'll present it at the end, right? Okay, so they can meet on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or Tuesday, Thursday, whatever. Once they establish the team, the team can decide its own schedule. Correct. So that makes it convenient for people, that's great. You know what, I wonder though, so you have this project, it's a big project, you got to break it down, don't you? You know, you can't have one team working on everything, but you have to have all the teams coordinating their efforts for the greater good, all connected in some way. How are you going to handle that? So what we've done for this first code challenge is we've kind of filtered some of these projects down. So anyone, so we're not really asking someone to build a new ERP system, right? We're not asking someone to build something very complex. What we did was take very specific challenges from the departments and so that we feel that that could be accomplished in a 30-day time period, right? And so again, if DHS has one, or Department of Human Services has one project, you know, Department of Economics has another, people can work on them individually, right? And again, the idea is to try to get them as complete as possible in that 30-day window. So, you know, hopefully in the next, go around next year when we do this, again, we may look at changing the format to take on some of the really complex issues. We'll learn a lot from it, right? So yes. So you mentioned earlier about the Book Sherman code and I just want to come to peace with that. So when I go and work on this, am I paid for my time? No. Am I given love and affection? What happens to me? Aside from the food, food is good. And food somehow does motivate people to be creative and to write good code. I know that I've seen that. In fact, some people cannot write good code without food. It's that simple, you know? So we do have a price pool of $10,000. It could go up as we get more sponsors, but that was our goal to get a price pool of $10,000. So the prizes come from sponsors? From sponsors. It's not state funds, yeah. It's not state funds. Okay, it's really, really creative. Yes, yes. So the sponsors are doing that and they're putting in the prizes and the cash pool for that, right? So that's one aspect. We also are going to recognize the winners with the governor. They're either. What's that worth, huh? That's worth a lot. Worth a lot. Certificate, what not? Yes, yes. So you'll get an award with the governor and those types of things. And again, the department may look at you and look at your project after it and say, hey, look, this is something we may want you to build. And then they'll go through the state procurement process in order for them to either purchase the product or have the team work on the product, right? And you're getting exposure, or they're getting exposure to you for the possibility of engagement as an employee of the state working on these kinds of things. So that's the... For you. So it's not for Punkash, it's for me. Sorry. Okay. Okay. Sorry. That's exactly very clear about that. It's all about... Okay, okay, okay, yeah, yeah. So yes, we know... It really is. It's for us as ETS or as a state to really show the developers' community that, hey, a lot of them don't think about coming to work for the state. A lot of them don't realize The state runs some of the most complex pieces of software out there. We run some what we call the biggest iron, right? I mean we employer over 65,000 people. We have a network that supports that, right? Most commercial industry out here is less than 5,000 people. So if you come and work for the state, that's outside of the DOE or I mean DOD, sorry, right? So if you come work for the state, you know, you're running one of the largest networks, right? And we run some of the the latest pieces of software out there. And so really that's it's for us to showcase to them the platforms that we're running and get them interested in possibly working for the state. So at the end of this 30 days, we are going to see something happening on the September 24th, a ceremony, a recognition, a summarization of what's been happening. Would you be there, Pekka? Absolutely, absolutely because I think one of our applications hopefully will get picked and I think we're going to be there fully supportive. Whether we are our application is in or not, it doesn't matter. I think this is the step in the right direction and we are fully supportive of Todd. And you know pretty much by that time, you know that it works because you've been guiding it through all over the months. Absolutely, absolutely. We will know. Yeah, and so okay, so now we have applications or a combination of applications, I guess. What happens on September 24th? So there'll be an official judging where they will come up and they're going to pitch to us the judge, the panel. Right now... This is a straight pitch now. Yeah, this is a straight pitch now. So there will pitch their idea to us, right? They'll talk about the technology that they're used, how it solved the problem that they were trying to accomplish, and hopefully show us that it works, right? And then we will rate them on a set of criteria that's published on the hack website, right? And then we'll select the winners from there. And the winners could get cash prizes, but more than that their stuff could be used. So what about the use possibility here? Let's say you know what you're going to get because you've been watching it as it has developed. What do you do with it on September 26th, the Monday? What do you do with it? So it's going to be up again, so let's just take DHS and someone solves his problem. DHS is not the only one. Right, yeah, there are a lot of other state agencies. So DHS says, hey look, you know, developer team A, we love your product, we want to purchase it, right, or contract you to continue to use on it. And there's again other, we'll go through the SPO process, obviously, right? But they're contracting vehicles that they could be used for them to hire them as contractors or bring them on board to develop the app. I think for us is very straightforward. If this proof of concept works, if it works, that's proven. We can actually use it as standalone for the families to actually come in through a portal, internet portal, they can come in, they can just plug their information in. And for their own purposes, they'll be able to figure it out what they may potentially be eligible for. And they don't have to go through this whole process of doing eligibility and they can figure it out. Then they can start the process. Now they have good enough idea that they qualify, they may qualify and they can just go and apply. And it will be a great avenue for them to really know beforehand. Other than they feel embarrassed, they go there, their over income, or they don't meet the criteria, they feel embarrassed. And that would take that aspect away as well. So they're going to have a conversation. And it's confidential, private, in their own environment that they're trying to figure out rather than giving this information to a stranger to figure it out. I'm eligible or not. And somebody says, no, you make too much money. Yeah. Yeah. So on the 26th, on the Monday, then September, let's assume you have one you like. Maybe you need to do a couple of things to polish it off, get it ready to propagate. But essentially, you're going to put it on a server somewhere. You're going to make it an iPad app somewhere, right? And then when I go on my iPad, I look at new apps, I find this, I download it into my phone and I'm off and running. Is it that simple? Can it be that simple? It could be that simple. Yeah. Wow. This is going to change things. This is really going to be disruptive technology, I believe. Not only here, and for a worthy and important group of constituency, but for other constituencies to follow, not only for the Department of Human Services, but other state agencies to follow. It has the potential of changing government. This is really disruptive and very promising, I would say. It is an era of disruption, especially in public service. We need to change the way we do business and we need to transform if we want to be more efficient and more accessible in modern ways. Yeah. How can you sleep at night? Not much. We don't get a lot of sleep. There's a lot to do. Okay, give me the opportunity of speaking to the public, okay, and telling them, you know, what this all means in the larger sense for the immediate group, the immediate agencies and the public in general going forward. Todd? So really what this means is we're giving our constituents an opportunity to really partake in government and solve government problems in a way that you've never had the opportunity to do before, right? And a lot of ways right now what's available to a constituent like myself is to, you know, petition our legislature to have a change or to make something happen in that sense. But in this way, if you're a developer or any type of techie, you're going to have the opportunity to solve a government problem that may have been nagging for you or, you know, or nagging for a family member and make life easier for people in Hawaii. And really, that's what we're trying to do is that outside the box thinking to solve government problems, enabling you as a constituent to really participate and do that on your own. Pankaj, how much of that do you agree with? I agree with him wholeheartedly, because of very simple reasons, because for us it's very simple. Provide increased access to services to our constituents and families, improve timeliness in service delivery. And we also are very interested in streamlining the service delivery models that we have and increase efficiency overall. Because this will have less impact on families going into offices and talking to the workers and getting their things done. Instead, they can do it in the comfort of their home and they are able to take care of their business without even going to an office and know exactly where they may stand. And I think that's the strength and the power of this application that we are hopeful that Todd and his team would select us and we'll be able to streamline some of these service deliveries for our families. You know, one of our threads here at ThinkTech is to observe the relationship between citizen and state. Citizen and government also on a federal level. And you know, it's a problem that we have identified that people are disaffected with government, don't have confidence in government, don't feel connected. You know, you are you, we are us, we don't care, we're not involved, we don't want to vote, nothing. We don't have a connection anymore. This is very damaging and destructive, I think. But this program, this kind of thing that you are doing, and I'm sure that you've thought of this, is actually a way to reconnect with government for all of us. So I'm just so thrilled with this and I will come down with cameras and we'll take a look. And we'll meet all of your interns, let the record reflect, there's half a dozen interns back there and behind the cameras. Thank you so much, Todd and Fanote, but again, I know Pankaj. Pankaj. Thank you very much for coming down. It's been great to talk with you. I wish you well on this project in every way. Thank you. Thank you.