On November 20th, Jarrod Millman, Berkeley Open Source Program Office (OSPO) Executive Director, welcomed Monica Bobra, Principal Data Scientist at the California Office of Data and Innovation (ODI), to the AI Futures Lab for a fireside chat with the community. The engaging discussion focused not only on open source data, but the impact it has on real people, and changing the culture around data science at the State.
Photo: Monica Bobra and Jarrod Millman lead a fireside chat at AI Futures Lab
Bobra became involved in the open source ecosystem while working at Stanford University as a Research Scientist, where she was on the science team for a NASA Heliophysics flagship mission called the Solar Dynamics Observatory. Bobra faced the challenge of analyzing large amounts of scientific data in an efficient workflow, while also desiring to become a better programmer. These struggles led her to the SunPy open source project, where she found a welcoming, collaborative community that she is still involved with to this day.
While at Stanford, Bobra began to see the disconnect between scientific research and the impact on operations in society. Scientific research was advancing predictive models, but she recognized a lack of communication with the people those predictions could impact. She wanted to better understand how to connect the impact of research and science to everyday life, which is part of what drew her to ODI – a place where she could examine how this bridge could be built within the State of California.
The California Office of Data and Innovation (ODI) was created in 2022 under the State, providing data science services to other departments in the State with a focus on user research, design, and other data governance and data engineering work. Through the Data Science Accelerator program, Bobra and her ODI colleagues partner with departments to help them build technical solutions and, importantly, a sustainable process to implement the solutions.
Bobra emphasized that the goal of the State is to improve the lives of Californians, and open source data and software play a key role in reaching that goal. She noted that “there is a driver morally to be transparent with data.” Within the State, there is a changing culture to make data more accessible. To further this goal, ODI provides standards for agencies to open their data and software.
The conversation moved towards the perception of data science at the State and the need for cultural change. While there are many people across many agencies interested in using data science methods to solve their problems, Bobra noted that they are often disconnected from one another and find it difficult to convince leadership to invest in these tools. That's why Bobra launched the Data Science Community of Practice for practicing data scientists working at the State. She aims to connect these people across the State and help them build a community to help each other.
In addition to providing technical infrastructure to solve problems, ODI conducts user research to make sure the solutions are easy to use. Bobra noted that “simple models are best – you want something easy to understand and interpretable,” helping teams build their own intuition in working with their data. ODI empowers teams to create a community that understands the value of data within the organization by teaching them skills in roadmap building, team formation, and getting leadership on board.
Photo: After the Q&A, guests gather and share their projects and experiences with open data
A key takeaway from the OSPO meetup is the importance of community in data science. During the Q&A, many guests resonated with the idea that while science is critical, it is equally important to find enthusiastic collaborators – results and impact come from the community of people who are interested in working on projects for the benefit of others.
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