Maksim Pecherskiy - Chief Data Officer of the City of San Diego

Welcome to the Tacos and Tech Podcast where we discover cutting edge technology and the builders making it happen. I'm your host, Neil Blum, San Diego's Tech Ambassador and together we're going to uncover what technology San Diegans are creating with our own blend of local lifestyle. This podcast is proudly brought to you by by our friends at Cox Business. Cox Business provides broadband Internet and cloud services to the modern tech company. Cox Business, a longtime sponsor of San Diego Startup Week, will be hosting the World Cup Viewers Lounge at San Diego Startup week headquarters from June 25th through the 29th. Come hang out and cheer on your favorite country in between the panels. All right, welcome back to another episode of the podcast. I'm here with Maxim Percherski. Hello, Chief Data Officer of the City of San Diego. Thanks so much for being here.

Thank you for having me.

This is exciting one. I think our audience is going to be really excited to know we have a Chief Data Officer of the city. So tell us a little about what that role entitles.

Yeah, I've been here for. It's actually going on the fourth year, so I've been here over three years now. Initially, the role was created around the open data policy, which the city passed with a lot of support from the mayor and the city council. And Open San Diego pushed a lot for it. And the open data policy was a way to push city data out to residents so that they can build things on top of it, which is the core of our job today. But then as time went on, the role has shifted a little bit and now what we do is we do a bunch of different things. We obviously still push out a lot of open data. We have an automation system, so we do a lot of data delivery and data integration and alerting for departments so that they can get alerted when things are going on. They can get automated reports delivered so it's much more consistent. And then we do like ad hoc analytics consulting, which can be anything from sitting in a few meetings to make sure that a department buys the right product for what it is that they need, to doing training with CARTO and Tableau and to going all the way and actually working with large data sets and trying to figure out insights to either improve a process or shape a policy or figure out resource allocation or. Yeah, so a variety of different things. Interesting.

That's really cool to know that the cities is up to that. That's for sure.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's.

So.

It's been interesting to see the city grow in the past three years. There's definitely. I think the current leadership has really pushed for a culture shift, and I'd like to think that we helped, too. But the city is definitely becoming more data driven. You can see more and more things. More and more decisions being made based on data rather than intuition. So that's really cool.

All right, well, we're going to dive in even deeper on this in a little bit, but first, I want to know what brought you to San Diego? How did you get into the interest of data and technology? And then what brought you here?

So, my background's in software engineering. I've basically been in front of a computer since I was, like, seven. So I'm originally from Ukraine. And the first computer I used, I think, was based on tape drives and, like, 30 minutes to load paint. That was pretty cool. And, yeah, so my dad got me into computers. He's a PC service technician. And then I did a lot of. I did a bunch of cybersecurity stuff. And then I kind of got into creating, which is, you know, I did consulting, I did web development. I worked at a few startups. I built out a lot of APIs, data integration stuff, and then I kind of got in. You know, something hit me, and I decided that I wanted, you know, it's really cool to, like, make websites for people and, you know, help them make money, and, you know, that. But then I'm like, I feel like there's something that I can do to, like, you know, help the world a little bit, you know, in a small way. So I went to Code for America. It's a nonprofit in San Francisco, and they partnered with governments to help them use technology better. Through them, I worked with Puerto Rico, which is awesome. Spent a lot of time working in Puerto Rico. And we built them a really simple thing. It was a way to. They have a lot of economic development incentives, both monetary or introductions or hope. They have a lot of agencies that handle that, and we basically just helped them build a search engine to connect people with the agencies that offer these services. And seeing the impact that made kind of made me realize, like, hey, there's a lot of really cool things to do in government technology. And then. So I was in the Bay Area at the time. I saw this on a mailing list. Somehow, I'm not sure. And I figured, you know, what the heck, I will. You know, they're probably looking for a bureaucrat. I'm definitely not a bureaucrat. And I think I even wrote my cover letter. I'm like, I might not be the person you're looking for, but let me just try. Yeah. And here I am.

Wow, that's awesome. Did this role exist or is this the first time they were hiring for this role?

No. So basically this role got created by the policy. So I, yeah, it was great. First few weeks of work, I basically showed up two weeks later. I was a counsel, like with the council with the policy being passed to like that created my job. Wow.

So I'm like, okay, yeah, that's pretty.

Cool to map out what you're going to do. Yeah. So the policies, I think it was written really well. You know, I obviously wasn't here when it was getting crafted, but I got to, you know, put in my 5 cents right before it passed. And it's written pretty broadly and pretty flexibly so that it. Let me define how this thing is going to run. And basically it was do a data inventory, launch a data portal by a certain date and then continue releasing data sets and maintain a list of data sets you're going to release and the full, all the high value data sets should be released by 2020. And that part is for those people that know data. A data set is a very fuzzy thing that can mean. And so that last part's a little. Probably we're going to think about changing it or I don't know.

But beyond that, the milestones, you mean the milestones or the kind of end.

Product or like the end product? Because I think data release is just going to continuously keep going as we get new systems, as we start doing new things, stop doing older things, there's continuous flux. Yeah, but that was it. Right. So that was the, that was the, the entire set of guidance. Right. And so because of my background in software development, it kind of made sense when we were doing the inventory. It was. But the inventory is basically just a survey, like, hey, what data do departments have? What data sources do we have? And so we were able to create the kind of like the first. It was very, very rough. Like there's a lot of stuff in there that was completely irrelevant, but it was like the first bird's eye view of what data the city has. And then it let me kind of shape our release processes based on technology rather than on people. So all of the data that goes out on the portal is handled by a data automation system. There's no people manually uploading data ever. And that's kind of like a core rule that we have. And so which is very different from most of how other cities do it. They have like, they have data stewards and they have processes for data release and somebody has to go and run a report and upload it. And we just decided it's a lot easier to build a technology that handles it for people. And we've leveraged that same technology in a lot of other ways across the city.

Sounds like, I mean, a scalable approach, right? Kind of taking that tech startup mentality, building in that process. That's pretty cool. How can the private sector interact with that, interact with that data?

So we release all of our data. Data.san diego.gov okay. And so basically those are. I mean, it's very simple. At the end of the day, it's CSVs or, or Shapefile, Geojson, Topojson. We do a lot of like, we do a lot of format for people so that it's really easy to integrate. And so all of that is just links to S3 for now. And they can go, it's a stable link. They can go pull a CS start, like connect to a CSV file and just continuously suck it in and use it for their own purposes. At a certain point we will be having APIs, but it's like true RESTful APIs or GraphQL or something to that effect. But I haven't had enough demand yet to really justify building that out. And so we're kind of hovering in that area, thinking about what's the best way to approach it while we're doing a bunch of other things instead.

Got it. And what's demand like? I mean, are you getting specific pieces of industry coming directly to you saying, I'm interested in this kind of data or these kinds of tools?

So what usually ends up happening is obviously we, we track downloads on the portal, right? We track traffic and you can geolocate an ip. But that's about the most that I know about anybody that downloads it because the policy doesn't allow me to ask, which I'm happy with. I think that's really great. So I work with a lot of scale. San Diego, we work with. I know a lot of people in the community. I go to meetups every once in a while. And so people will just. The idea is for them to know me, to know our team and to kind of just make those requests and we can see, maybe we have it, maybe we don't. Maybe it's city data, maybe it's not. Maybe we can't get it, maybe we can. So it's really. And then there's also on data.sandiego.gov, datandiego.gov is basically an email that just goes straight to us.

Okay.

The other good source that we continuously get or find things to release from is. So one of the first things that we did when I got started here is we brought in Next Request, which is san diego.nextrequest.com and that's the portal where you can make a Public Records act request. And before, it was just an email or phone call that triggered the process, but now it's like a standardized routing system for Public Records act request requests. And whenever something's released, it's released to the requester, and then I think three days later, it's released to everybody else.

That's great.

So what that does for us is I'm like, hey, people are continuously requesting this, this, and this for updates, like what Andrea was saying earlier. Just like, we request it all the time. And so we'll look for those things, we'll find them, and we will integrate directly with the system, automate the release, and put on the portal.

Yeah, that's great. There's a big Smart cities initiative throughout town, wiring up a lot of things, kind of becoming an Iot city. Street Lights and others. Are you getting pretty involved in that effort?

Yeah, so just a data piece. So. Yeah. So I'm sure there's been a lot of conversations about the sensors that we have growing up and all the smart street lights. So. Yeah, so that's one of the things we're thinking through right now. What are the most effective applications? How can we use it internally within the city? I am also the master of the API keys for that system. So. Yeah, and it's been a really interesting journey seeing the city approach something this technologically innovative and how we're doing. And I think we're doing it really well as an organization. Of course, there's still a long road ahead, but I think that I get to interact with a lot of other smart city initiatives in a lot of other cities, and we learn from them. And so, yeah, so it's kind of cool to see how the city's approaching it.

Yeah, that's pretty cool. Do most of the Smart City and other cities, I mean, are they able to recruit technology from the private sector, Talent from the private sector, the way that kind of you came into that.

Fold, or where are you seeing other.

Talent coming into smart city initiatives? I think that.

I mean, recruiting into government tech has been a big topic in government tech for a long time.

Yeah.

And so I don't think. I don't think. I mean, I don't think Like, I'm a magical unicorn that has software development skills and can, you know, go and work in government. I think that, you know, if you were going to offer me a position where I would be writing an SAP backend and, you know, flipping out tickets and, you know, the salary, the compatible salary I could be making in the private sector is double that. Like, hell no. Right. But if you're, you know, if the position is, hey, like, you get to do really cool things. You get to actually, you know, influence how we dispatch fire trucks. Right. Like, or you get to, you know, like, you get to like, understand, like, I don't know, like parking meters. Right. Like stuff you interact with every day. That is a much easier sell to somebody in the tech sector. And also we have this expectation, you know, you're obviously more than welcome to come here and work for, you know, the next 10 years, but more likely than not, you're going to stick around for two and leave. And that's cool, right? Like, there's nothing wrong with that. And one of the things that we think about is how can we help you go to the next place you want to go to? You know, so I think there's, I think there's, I think there's a variety of different ways that government can recruit tech people. Yeah, I think it's just, you know, just a matter of being creative about it because you're not going to compete on salary and you're not going to compete on like having sleeping pods or like three beer. Right. But I think there's a lot more important things that government can offer that like, private sector can't.

Well, this is a good time. Maybe do a shout out for what you're recruiting for right now. What are you hiring for?

Yeah, so we actually had a recruitment over. It's closed now.

Okay, all right. Too late.

Maybe. Bummer. But I mean, that doesn't mean that people still shouldn't keep an eye out.

Definitely.

But yeah, so we were, we were recruiting for a data scientist position and. Yeah, so what I actually did is this time is I actually wrote a little medium post because our, you know, our recruiting page is just like you have like a very formal job description with very certain qualifications and it's kind of exactly what you would expect a city recruiting posting to be.

Yeah, so I put all recruiting posts on.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, they're not the most, you know, creative or grabbing you out of your chair. Exactly.

Yeah.

So I read this little medium post and I'm like, hey, can't offer you sleeping Pods can't offer you coffee, free coffee. Definitely can't offer you free beer. And you're gonna probably work in a place with like, drab cubicles and like, you know, but, you know, you get a MacBook and you get to do some very freaking interesting things. And, you know, so that seemed to work really well. I got a lot of, like, claps or whatever it was on medium.

And a lot of applications, hopefully.

And a lot of applications.

Yeah, it's great. I mean, you're setting managing expectations. Yeah, that's what's important.

Yeah.

People, that's the whole part of recruiting is like, you hype it up and then there's this letdown after you've invested two months of your time into like the recruiting process. Just be up front, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And I don't, you know, I don't want anybody. When people come and apply, like, I mean, I, you know, I want to make sure they tell them that. Yeah. Like, there's really cool things. There's really great things about working here. There's also like a grind of bureaucracy. Right. Like, and of a large organization that you're going to find in, you know, you're going to find in any large organization. And they balance each other out at the end of the day, make a really good and fun job. But you got to take the good with the bad sometimes.

Yeah, for sure. So do you have some interesting examples or instances of how the data's been used, places you didn't think could be used?

The data.san diego.gov data so scalesd has been a really cool user. They've been holding a lot of different events and design events.

Okay.

Around. So I think the last one they had was around transportation. Transportation data.

Okay.

So we have like parking meters, we have traffic counts. There's like a lot of that kind of stuff. And then the other one I was going to say is disaster recovery. So sdxd, San Diego User Experience Design Group, not last weekend, but the previous weekend, they had a really cool event and they obviously centered around the data that was available. But it was almost like a tangent. Right? Like, what they did is it was like a journey mapping what you're gonna do in case there's like there's a fire coming. Right? So like with an actual scenario, like an actual person that pretends to be a part of it, you get little cards and like, what happens. And then we brought in some fire, some people from the fire department and from like our Homeland Security and like disaster response from the county and it was really cool to see because a lot of. I think a lot of the problems we solve is, you know, it's not. We're not building neural networks and trying to solve, like, high technology, like, papers and journal type of problems. Right. Like, most of the problems are human problems. Right. And discovering what those are and how to best address them has been a really interesting journey and kind of. And using the data as a tie in to kind of enable those conversations. I think that's probably the thing I least expected to happen, but I think it's really cool that it is.

Yeah, that's really cool. We'll have to highlight what skill's up to. And sdxd too. Damn. Well, this is a San Diego tech focused podcast. We want to know. I mean, the change of life is not huge from SF to here, but being here for a little bit. Tell us, what are some of your favorites around town? Favorite taco place?

Favorite taco place. Yeah, this is hard. I would probably say. Well, city tacos. I love city tacos. That's one. But Humbertos. Humbertos, it's. Yeah, it's by.

It's by Krakatoa.

That's basically just my little corner. Krakatoa Turf Club Humberto's. And then there's a Russian place called Pomegranate Zovaka. I can just like, I kind of do live around there.

Yeah, I get it.

Yeah.

So then is there coffee right in there too? Do you have a favorite coffee spot? Krakato?

Yeah. Oh, man. Love Krakatoa. If I ever leave San Diego, like, I don't know, I'll probably just, like, fly back for weekends and just, like, spend Krakatoa.

That's funny. What about beer? Favorite San Diego beer.

Ooh, favorite San Diego beer. I don't have. I'm not like a big beer person, but there is a really good rum distillery.

Ooh. It's like the name of a ship it's on.

It's a python. Yeah, it's the name of a ship. And they have. I love their rum. It's just ridiculous.

I haven't tried it.

Yeah, definitely. And they have a tasting room too. Oh, cool. You can just go and, like, get a tape, get like, some tasting, buy some bottles.

Cool.

Yeah, it's awesome.

Well, Roop, really appreciate your time. Thanks for this. This is good getting to know you and look forward to having you more in the community too, throughout the startup and tech world as well. However, we can help.

Awesome. Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah. And I mean, you know, and if anybody in the audience ever wants to reach me, I'm Mr. Maximize or the KS on Twitter and dataandiego.gov those emails go straight to me and my team. That's probably the easiest way to ping me by email or just maximpandiego.gov that just signed. Yeah. So always, always open to be in touch.

Awesome. Yeah. Thanks, Maxim. Cool. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thanks for joining us on the Tacos and Tech podcast with Neil Blum. Thanks again to Cox Business for helping make this possible by expanding the of the San Diego tech ecosystem. This has been a partnership with the San Diego Venture Group and the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation's SD Life Changing Campaign. You can find Neil bloom on Twitter eelbloom and on LinkedIn. And join us next time to hear from April Wentzel, founder of Compassionate Code.

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