California names new state chief digital products officer

Chaeny Emanavin, who’s spent almost two years as California’s deputy state chief technology officer, announced in a LinkedIn post on Friday that he’ll move to the department’s Office of Digital Services to serve as its chief digital products officer — “New role, expanded mission, same passion. How can I help government serve residents best?” he wrote.

Emanavin said his role as head of the Office of Technology Services will be assumed, in an acting capacity, by Shera Mui, who’s spent 26 years with the state’s technology department, starting as a programmer in 2000, and has most recently served as a deputy director at the California Department of Technology. As chief digital products officer, Emanavin said he’s “returning to my product management roots in more user facing projects.”

Before nearly two years as California’s deputy CTO, Emanavin spent nearly two years as a senior adviser at the Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation at The Johns Hopkins University, a role where he helped cities “blend human-centered design and product management with passionate government services,” according to his LinkedIn profile.

He spent four years as the California Health and Human Services Agency’s innovation director and nine months as a product director at the California Department of Technology. He also spent a year, from 2016 to 2017, during Barack Obama’s final year in office, as a product director at the U.S. Digital Service, the fast-moving digital services arm of the president’s office (that was recently rebranded as the DOGE Service).

Emanavin wrote in his post that he hopes in his new role to “help erode silos and support these experts.” He said he plans to continue supporting Poppy, an AI-powered digital assistant designed for use only by state government employees, the state’s Delete Request and Opt-out Platform, or DROP, which allows Californians to request that registered data brokers delete their personal information, and the state’s digital identification and identity gateway project.