Greg interviews Darshan Shah, the Chief Data Officer of the State of Indiana and the Executive Director of the Management and Performance Hub (MPH). He also speaks with Doug Huntsinger, the Special Assistant for Drug Prevention, Treatment, & Enforcement at Governor Holcomb’s Office. Through the MPH, Darshan, Doug, and the rest of the Indiana State government are able to utilize big data and analytics to make data-informed policy decisions.
Greg asks both Darshan and Doug how the initiative for the MPH began. Darshan explains that the seed for the MPH really started back in 2005 when Governor Daniels signed a multitude of executive orders, one of which established the IOT (Indiana Office of Technology), which consolidates technology across the state, and one that established the OMB (Office of Management and Budget), to consolidate financial management across the state. Under the OMB, the GEFP (Government Efficiency and Financial Planning) was set forth and established to derive efficiencies and improve state government, which in turn allowed future governors like Governor Pence and Governor Holcomb to keep pushing for big data utilization. This data was then in turn used to in the fight against the opioid epidemic sweeping the state. As Doug explains, “…In May our office released a strategic plan on how we’re going to fight the opioid epidemic and it really gets to four things: harm reduction, access to treatment, stopping supply, and prevention. And as we go through all the tactics of how we go about executing that plan the first thing you’ll notice is that data is very prevalent in each one of those, and through that we engaged Darshan and his group – the Management and Performance Hub – to help us collect data, analyze that data, and then ultimately use that data to help us make decisions.”
Listen to the podcast to discover how the MPH gets agencies to continually work together and contribute to the system in their fight against substance use disorder.
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