State chief data officer urges small pilots, community input for jail data and AI tools

Jason Lally, State Data Science Chief and former San Francisco chief data officer, told the Sheriff's Department Oversight Board on July 11 that modernization of jail technology and use of artificial intelligence should begin with small pilots, clear performance measures and community engagement.

Lally described the approach his Office of Data and Innovation uses: start with basic measures (“How much? How well? Is anybody better off?”), talk to people who will be affected, run low-risk pilots and scale what succeeds. He said San Francisco and California have both demonstrated that local government can publish granular data while protecting privacy, referencing federal and state guidance and the need to balance HIPAA privacy constraints with community demand for more localized information.

Lally described several statewide initiatives, including Engage California, a deliberative-democracy program he said was used in Los Angeles to gather resident priorities for recovery from disasters. He pointed board members to grants.ca.gov as a portal that aggregates state grant opportunities and suggested that many procurement and capacity-building options can be leveraged without large up-front contracts.

During questions, board members prioritized client-centered outcomes. Member Afua Mango asked whether the board should lift practices and guidelines; Lally recommended the Office of Data and Innovation’s published case studies and standards, including a recently released standard on race and ethnicity data collection. Board members and Lally discussed procurement pathways the state uses to allow departments to buy lower-cost, off-the-shelf tools for testing projects while remaining compliant with state security and procurement rules.

Board members raised safety and equity concerns about AI. Lally said that AI adoption raises legitimate fears but recommended human-centered research—interviewing a few impacted people, running pilots and iterating—and noted that many local startups and certificate training programs can help build workforce capacity. He emphasized the importance of user research: design forms and workflows with case managers, deputies and incarcerated people in mind so data collection is usable in the field, including when electronic systems are temporarily offline.

Lally recommended tools and frameworks for performance measurement, described the state’s capacity-building model and suggested the board monitor the Office of Data and Innovation blog and case studies for guidance and implementation materials. He offered to review materials and provide feedback when the board assembles an inventory or proposal for tech improvements.

The presentation gave the board a practical roadmap for incremental technology improvements, emphasized privacy and community input, and flagged grants and state procurement as places to start without committing to large multi-million-dollar systems.