Overview

October 13

In 2020, Minnesota IT Services (MnIT) went live with the state’s first data lake to integrate and report on disparate data sets and fuel operational improvements in the state public health system.

Join Government Technology on October 13 at 11 a.m. Pacific/2 p.m. Eastern as we talk with Minnesota leaders about how the Minnesota Department of Health is using the data lake to house many of its critical COVID-19 pandemic response data sets, including Minnesota’s Disease Surveillance system, the Electronic Lab reporting master archive, the COVID Immunization Registry, and more. We’ll also discuss how the state is looking to extend the lake to include other data, including birth and death records, cancer data, and hospital discharge information.

Join us to learn:
· Why an agency-wide data lake is a necessity – not a luxury – moving forward
· How data lake technology allows data managers to combine disparate data sets in unique ways without data standardization and normalization
· How data lakes can empower the move to artificial technology and machine learning (AI/ML) applications

Speakers

Stephanie Meyer

Supervisor, COVID Epidemiology and Data Unit, Minnesota Department of Health (MDH)

Steph is an infectious disease epidemiologist with the Minnesota Department of Health. She’s spent 20 years working in foodborne diseases conducting outbreak investigations on a state and national level. She was her section’s informatics lead, handling data structure and communications with CDC. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Steph has been working on various aspects of the response including case investigation and contact tracing, healthcare worker monitoring and follow up, variant surveillance, and vaccine breakthrough surveillance. She is now the supervisor of the COVID Epidemiology and Data unit. The common thread throughout this work continues to be a has been a close and collaborative working relationship with the Minnesota IT (MNIT) services team developers and cloud infrastructure staff in IT to ensure successful management of huge amounts of data as the pandemic has progressed.

Steve Gorg, M.S., P.E.

Data and Cloud Initiative Supervisor, Minnesota IT (MNIT) services, partnering with the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH)

Steve works for a brilliant team of engineers and scientists as the supervisor of the MNIT MDH Data and Cloud Initiatives team, partnering with MDH. This team collaboratively supports and further enables the growth of MDH data science efforts by providing useable, accessible and reproduceable data and empowering data-driven decision making through the use of advanced data science analysis tools; essentially making data-related hopes and dreams come true.

Betsy Baker

Digital Services Lead, State and Local Government Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Betsy is a public health leader with a focus on health information exchange, data analytics and citizen engagement. Betsy currently leads AWS’ data lakes and digital services engagements, working with public agencies, community based organizations and technology partners across the country to improve data aggregation and exchange across the U.S. – including engaging citizens in public health education and response. Betsy was formerly a Director of Client Services, leading large enterprise analytic implementations in Medicaid agencies and has over a decade of experience in the public sector arena, promoting data driven programs and policy.

Dugan Petty — Moderator

Senior Fellow, Center for Digital Government

For 15 years, Dugan Petty served in Oregon state government. His goal was to improve its effectiveness at the enterprise level. He served as the state’s chief information officer for six years. His collaborative leadership led to a new e-government delivery system, open government applications, strengthening security, and improvements in IT governance. He moved to Oregon in 1998 to become the state’s chief procurement official. During this time, he co-led a cross jurisdictional taskforce in the modernization of Oregon’s procurement statutes. In 2003-2004, he led a sourcing initiative called Smart Buy that improved contract outcomes and reduced spending. Dugan is a past president of both the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) and the National Association of State Procurement Officials (NASPO). Additionally, he was a founding member and past chair of the Western States Contracting Alliance (WSCA). He received the Julio Mazzone Distinguished Service Award in public purchasing in 2004, and Government Technology magazine named Dugan one of its Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers for 2011.

Webinar

Why Data Lakes Are a Necessity for Health and Human Services