A poll conducted last month by Reuters found that 61% of respondents believe that AI technology is dangerous for the future of humanity. Photo from Getty Images.

By Mia Hilkowitz
Indiana Capital Chronicle

INDIANA — The Indiana Management Performance Hub is encouraging state agencies to embrace data in their work through a new artificial intelligence policy and data proficiency course.

Jeff Mullins, communications director for the MPH, said the agency helped the state’s chief data officer create and release a policy on using AI in state government. The policy, released this past February, guides state agencies on how to ethically implement AI to collect and interpret data.

This policy relies on the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s artificial intelligence risk management framework, and was released shortly before Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb signed a law to establish an “AI taskforce” to study how state agencies can use the technology.

“We’ve got to leverage AI responsibly,” he said.

The MPH also launched a data proficiency course for state employees in 2023. In the course, employees can earn up to three badges, and Mullins estimates employees have collected around 3,700 badges.

“It’s another way for them just to make sure they understand that data is very important to their jobs,” Mullins said. “Every employee really has a data job, whether it’s data entry or you know, the data scientists. Data entry is very important, and it helps us have the clean data we need to do some of these projects.”

Former Indiana Gov. Mike Pence established the MPH through a 2014 executive order, originally as a data-sharing system meant to help the governor and his staff determine how well state agencies were performing. The 2017 Indiana Open Data Act later officially codified the MPH as a standalone state agency.

For the last seven years, the MPH has also hosted “Data Day,” a conference designed to help attendees learn how to use data to address issues in education, workforce development and public health. During the 2024 conference, the MPH organized panels about how to use data to identify overdose intervention methods, analyzing pregnancy and health care data and more.

Mullins said the hub had approximately 5-10 employees in 2014. Now, he said there are 38 MPH employees.

“The data space is growing every day, I mean it’s just everywhere,” Mullins told the Indiana Capital Chronicle. “The technology is evolving so quick.”

The MPH also has outside contracts with private entities. According to data on the Indiana Transparency Portal, the MPH has held contracts with at least eight private groups, including open-software group Posit, Staples, healthcare software group HC1 and other research and law firms. While most of these outside contracts ranged from $18,000-$2 million, the MPH’s contract with Resultant LLC, a data and technology consulting firm, was valued at $15 million. The agency also had contracts with Indiana University and Wayne State University.

Recent Initiatives

The MPH works with a wide variety of state stakeholders ranging from the governor’s office to legislators to “agencies of all sizes,” according to Mullins.

“We partner with them on data initiatives, especially ones that cross agency initiatives, that require maybe data sets from multiple agencies,” he said. “We kind of serve as the agent there to make sure that everything can be connected properly.”

Mullins said that sometimes state leaders and agencies will come to the MPH to request help with a project, like when the governor’s office requested help collecting and analyzing data on opioid treatment, prevention and enforcement for its “Next Level Recovery” initiative.

But sometimes an MPH initiative is spurred from laws enacted by the legislature. For example, a 2006 Indiana law requires the Office of Management and Budget to report the progress of the state’s school corporations to the State Board of Education, Governor and General Assembly — so the MPH helps track and collect data for this initiative.

“We always like to remind and mention, you know, we are an agent of the agencies. We don’t house any constituent services,” Mullins said. “I think it’s important for us to always remind everyone that we’re working with agencies. These are not just projects that we are doing standalone without input or anything like that.”

The MPH has aided more than a dozen other state projects including working with state agencies to create a heat map showing naloxone administrations, track arrest rates by county and crime type and improve the tracking of Medicaid data.

The state budget for 2023-25 allocated more than $9 million to the MPH for fiscal year 2024, and around $9.8 million for fiscal year 2025. This appropriation is around a $2 million increase from the state’s investment in MPH in 2022 and 2023, when the state budget allocated around $7.4 million for each year.

Value Of Data In State Government Work

Mullins said the biggest challenges the MPH faces when developing large-scale data initiatives is making sure it uses “clean data,” meaning that all the data is consistent without errors or outliers. He said clean data is necessary to make new AI systems work properly.

“There’s so much data available,” Mullins said. “Some of its old data. There’s many state agencies that are required to report data using federal demographic standards, for instance, and sometimes those standards vary from federal agency to federal agency. When we try to bring that state level data together, there’s a lot of cleansing that has to be done.”

He also said using data promotes “transparency and accountability” in the state government. For instance, he said the MPH has worked with the state comptroller’s office to add data to the Indiana Transparency Portal, which hosts publicly available information including state employment and salaries, the state finances and travel activity. The MPH’s Indiana Data Hub also includes public databases on education, public safety, health and environmental services.

Mullins said the ability to use data is “crucial” for state government agencies to make “data-driven decisions.”

“Especially during a crisis, data informs those emergency responses since you’re able to allocate resources and coordinate efforts and protect citizens with real time information,” Mullins said. “So it’s really important. Data’s empowering state agencies to make informed decisions, enhance services and serve Hoosiers more effectively.”