Introduction
This week I’m joined by Ahsan Baig, the Chief Information Officer of AC Transit.
In our discussion, we cover Ahsan’s perspective on how the pandemic has created a silver lining for his organization and stakeholders. We talk about the importance of innovation and how he navigates bringing new technology into a government entity. In addition, he shares his view on what it means to be pragmatic when it comes to innovation. Lastly, we get personal and discuss how the pandemic has changed his perspective and how he is preparing for the post-pandemic period.
Speaker Profiles
Ahsan Baig LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mabaig/
Ahsan Baig Twitter: https://twitter.com/_Ahsan_Baig
AC Transit: http://www.actransit.org
Audio File
Featured Hashtags
#CIO #Leadership #CEO #DigitalTransformation #CIOitk
Podcast Transcript
Tim Crawford 0:00
The companies are looking for new ways to transform their business to remain relevant and differentiated within their industry. Technology now plays a central role in this transformation. Hello, and welcome to the CIO in the Know podcast, where I take a provocative but pragmatic look at the intersection of business and technology. I’m your host, Tim Crawford, a CIO and strategic advisor at AVOA. This week, I’m joined by Ahsan Baig, the Chief Information Officer of AC Transit. In our discussion, we cover Ahsan’s perspective on how the pandemic has created a silver lining for his organization and stakeholders. We talk about the importance of innovation and how he navigates bringing new technology into a government entity. In addition, he shares his view on what it means to be pragmatic when it comes to innovation. Lastly, we get personal and discuss how the pandemic has changed his perspective, and how he’s preparing for the post-pandemic period. Ahsan, welcome to the program. Oh, thank you very much, Tim. It’s just honor for me to be on your program. Well, it’s an honor for me to have you on the program. You and I have had a number of conversations over time in different forums, so just kind of set the foundation for our audience, you’re the Chief Information Officer for AC Transit, so maybe to get us started, talk to us a little bit about who you are and your role as CIO.
Ahsan Baig 1:34
So, again, thank you very much for the opportunity, Tim. So, I started with AC Transit about three years ago, about 2017 when this opportunity came up, I said, “Well, this looks pretty interesting. Transit industry is at the crossroad of new business models, new technologies, a lot of automation, fairly specific about solving, you know, a problem, which is the mobility. And then I said, well, this sounds pretty good and very interesting. So I said, let me avail this opportunity. So I’ve been in it industry for almost 27 years, born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan. You know, came to United States for my higher education, and thinking that, yeah, I’m going to get my master’s done, and then probably go back to Pakistan and continue working there, but that never happened. So I’m here, you know, with my own family, you know, five and then two sons, and you know, we live in the San Francisco Bay Area. So this is my country, this is my hometown. Now
Tim Crawford 2:33
that’s great,
Ahsan Baig 2:34
but yeah, I’m really lucky that you know I have the opportunity to work both in the private sector and in the public sector, and before joining AC Transit, I did work about 15 years for City of Oakland in a similar role. It’s a great, I guess, you know, experience from my perspective, seeing, you know, what things could be done in the private sector, and now trying to get things done in the public sector. CIA role, I think, is very critical at AC Transit, and not only, you know, within public sector, but also in private sector, because now the CIOs are becoming sort of a business leaders and trusted partners to grow and to help expand business, and you know, we see also at AC Transit, this role is emerging, and it’s becoming fairly almost like overlapping between technology and the business, so a lot of business initiatives are actually relying on technology and the right choices of technology and the right decision making when it comes to helping the business, so I’m really lucky that I’m here. I’m helping my customer base, about 1.5 million customers and users who are living or living in the East Bay area, rely on AC Transit for their day-to-day mobility needs, you know. We, we help about 200,000 people on a daily basis. It’s almost like a town, a city of 200,000 population moving on a daily basis. I mean, it’s a monumental task. So, really, kudos to our operators and our mechanics, you know, who are providing these kind of services, and of course, during Covid 19, it is a bit of a challenge. A lot of underserved communities and essential workers who may not have their own private cars or vehicles, they are relying heavily on public transit. So, I’m really proud and very passionate about, you know, what we do and how we do on a daily basis.
Tim Crawford 4:22
No, that’s great. And we’re grateful to have you both here in the country, as well as in the community, amongst fellow CIOs and IT leaders. So, welcome. You talked about how COVID 19 has really kind of brought that whirlwind of challenges to each of our companies. I mean, we’re all facing that we’re living that. How did this impact you in the public sector, and considering the services that you provide?
Ahsan Baig 4:47
Yeah, I mean, that’s a great question, Tim. I think definitely COVID 19 is kind of a, you know, once in a lifetime, you know, experience, you know, we haven’t, of course, seen in almost like in a century, so it is something. Which is very, you know, devastating, and then had its impact on community and people globally, but you know, from the silver lining perspective and an opportunity perspective, you know, definitely it sort of brought technology and it into the front line, into the front end spotlight. There was a lot of concern and a lot of challenges about technology and adoption, and how technology can help, but because of the COVID 19 and change in, you know, working conditions, it definitely helped me pushing the agenda of the digital transformation. You know, what we have been trying to do, and it’s kind of interesting that, you know, some people talk about that, you know, who are the main, you know, players when it comes to digital transformation and adoption, is it really the CEO, the CIO, or the Chief Data Officer? Well, it’s really in this case COVID 19. You and I both have experience, you know, whenever we try to, you know, deploy or roll out new technology, and you know, we see the benefit, you know, after going through quite a bit of focus group kind of a feedback work is still, you have, you find resistance, and you find some challenges, but from the adoption perspective, but I can tell you, you know, in this, during this whole crisis, and this work from home, and you know, remote working conditions, the adoption has been, you know, amazing, people have been more forthcoming and demanding technologies for collaboration, whether it’s a video, it’s a conference call, it’s a chatting, it’s, you know, whatever technology, or it’s an e-signature.
Tim Crawford 6:30
Yeah,
Ahsan Baig 6:30
yeah, lot of those things, they have been on my to-do list for a long time. I’m just amazed at how many things, you know, I was able to accomplish in last one year, despite of the challenges of working from home, my team was able to get it done. I mean, in our, our help desk tickets numbers, you know, got up to gosh, like a 37 39% from the regular, you know, help desk tickets coming in, and yet we were able to take care of a lot of those, you know, issues and lot of those challenges. It has been fairly helpful from that perspective, but at the same time, I think it also taught us how resilient human beings are, despite of these challenges and these issues. You know, we were able to do the challenge, and we were able to get it done with the new case.
Tim Crawford 7:18
Yeah. No, that’s great to hear, and it’s nice to hear that you’re kind of looking at that silver lining. I think too often you know we kind of get into that cocoon of, oh my gosh, the world is crumbling around us. What do we do? What do we do? And there’s so much opportunity for technology, so let’s kind of shift the conversation a little bit around that. You work for a government organization, you know, in the public sector, but and technology is moving really quickly, and you’ve had some great successes. How does someone that’s listening to this kind of reconcile those two? Because typically you, the perception would be that a government organization in the public sector wouldn’t necessarily move quickly enough to be able to adapt and adopt a number of these new technologies. How do you reconcile that, and how did you kind of navigate those landmines in some ways?
Ahsan Baig 8:10
Yeah, and I think that’s a very big challenge, Tim. You 100% right, and that is part of the job, I guess, when you’re working for a government organization, and you know, as I said earlier, that I’m sort of lucky that you know, I had the flavor of working in the private sector, and now you know, for almost 18, 2019, years, I’ve been in the public sector, government by default, you know, it’s an entity, you know, we don’t take risks, there is no question about it, we try our best to avoid those risks, and that’s the reason why, you know, we have sometimes people complain that you know we have this, you know, huge red tape that you know everything has to go through all these different reviews and approvals. I mean, that is true because you know we are dealing with public money, you know, so taxpayers’ money, so we have to be extremely, extremely careful before we take any kind of initiative. And technology, you know, it’s really, there’s a lot of risk when it comes to technology deployment and technology adoption, yes, technology is moving, you know, very fast. One of the challenges is the pace of technology. I would say that even consumers, you know, have better connectivity and better compute devices, you know, at their homes, as compared to sometimes, you know, when people come to work with a shared internet and connection, and the devices, and the workstations, you know, we get because the whole enterprise, you know, architecture and framework and standards, you know, we have to go through,
Tim Crawford 9:30
but I guess one of the things I was driving at is I’m curious, how how you take that and apply it to a government organization that might have to go through those hoops, like what changes did you have to make in order to have those successes that you articulated just a couple minutes ago. I mean, that’s not a trivial piece, and I want to make sure that comes out for the audience. You know, how you had that success?
Ahsan Baig 9:55
Honestly, I would attribute that success to our customers, our riders, that is my. My answer, really, a lot of these things, you know, what you’re seeing in government and what you’re observing and experience, they are really coming over, riders, for my customers, they are demanding better technology. I mean, you know, 510, years ago, Tim, you know, when we used to take public transit, I mean, I went to school, you know, all my life, you know, when I was in New York and New Jersey, I used to take NGO Transit, and I used to, sure, you know, New York City Transit, the subway system, when I was going to City College, and I used to have the time on the paper and schedule and everything. Well, the world has changed now, you know, people need real-time bus information, they need to know when my bus is going to come, they need to know what’s going to be the capacity, they need to know how many people going to be there. They need to know if there are any seats available, and they need to pay ahead of time, and they need to have the ticket and everything, even if they’re taking multiple transit, like in San Francisco Bay Area. If I’m traveling from Fremont to San Francisco, the likelihood is I’m probably going to be relying on two, three different transit.
Tim Crawford 10:59
So
Ahsan Baig 11:00
technology is the glue, and that glue is very well understood by by our writers, so they are demanding because there are alternatives. If you don’t have time, but you do have money, well, you know the likelihood that you may be taking, you know, right here. Well, everyone, you know, may not have that luxury, so that’s the reason why it’s my job and our job in public sector to leverage technology, enable our users, empower our employees, and offer those services. So I think at the governance level, our board of directors, they are very forward looking, they recognize that, and I’m really glad that whenever it comes to technology and implementation, you know, I get the support from my board, and that support really means the proper funding, the proper resources.
Tim Crawford 11:47
That’s spectacular. I mean, that’s great to hear. It’s frankly refreshing to hear how an organization has kind of changed, and how you are getting that support from your leadership. When you think about how you’re leveraging new technology, you know, automation and artificial intelligence quite often get brought up in these conversations. Where does that fit in for you? You know, new technology, but maybe these specifically.
Ahsan Baig 12:14
Yeah, I mean, I think the fun part of, I guess, of being a CIO is that, you know, you have access to a lot of these new technologies, but I think you definitely want to be very careful before you put a lot of your trust into any of those technology. I think the automation definitely is one of the key components of AC Transit IT Strategic Plan, because that’s where we see a lot of benefits, you know, whether we are talking about providing the information to our riders or getting the real-time maintenance diagnostic alert to our maintenance workers, that’s where I’m seeing, you know, a lot of automation being deployed. I think it has to really bring the business value, Tim. I’m not a believer of just deploying technology for the sake of technology, because it just looks, you know, so jazzy and sexy, and you know, we’re going to go and adopt it? It has to really solve a business problem. So, whether you’re talking about automation, you’re talking about AI, I think AI has definitely a very much big promise, but I think the underlying core technology, which is the data that needs to be done fairly methodically and carefully, so we are spending a lot of our time in putting the proper data governance in place. We need to make sure that we have the proper architecture, proper infrastructure before we enable anything to do with machine learning on AI or decision making. The models need to be built based on, you know, highly qualified, you know, data, high-quality data, you cannot just have AI enabled, and you don’t have the proper data set available. So, a lot of those things need to be done. There’s a lot of education needs to be done, and again, I’m really a firm believer in enabling these technologies to make sure that my business truly understands the value of these new services, and they can leverage it.
Tim Crawford 14:04
No, I think that’s really important. You know, I often talk about this paradigm between being provocative but pragmatic, and what you’re really talking about is kind of how you balance that between those two. When we’ve spoken before, you talk about being pragmatic when it comes to innovation, specifically, maybe you could talk a little bit about what you mean by that.
Ahsan Baig 14:27
Yeah, so I think it’s kind of an interesting phenomenon, I guess happening in the public sector. I think you may start seeing Tim, you know, more sort of a chief innovation officer types of roles are emerging in public sector. I would say that five years ago, or seven years ago, really pretty much everything was, you know, Chief Information Officer. Well, I think now is the time for us to start thinking about really introducing innovation and adopting innovation, but at the same time, you know, we have to be very pragmatic. I guess I’m lucky that I’m in Silicon Valley, I. Have access to a lot of these, you know, innovative companies and these entities, these startups I worked with UC Berkeley and Stanford, and their students, and some of their, you know, VC program, and a lot of time they have some great ideas, and then great solutions, and sometimes they just need to work with someone like, you know, ourselves, public agency, where we do have a real business problem, we also have data, we also have knowledge, and sometimes we just need to put those two things together with someone who is, you know, innovative and trying to create a completely new solution. When you put these two things together, and I think that really, you know, helps a lot, but at the end of the day, Tim, you know, my job is to make sure that you know our services is up and running, our busses are on the road, we are picking up our passengers, we are safe, we are reliable, and we are sustainable. Am I going to be measured based on how many innovations I have done in public sector? You know, probably not. So really, the focus, you know, my job focus is to make sure that you know my 24 by seven operation is safe, is secure, and it’s reliable. Innovation, absolutely, it comes. I do spend quite a bit of time in looking for those solutions and working with those partners, whether it’s academia or it’s commercial or it’s a private. Absolutely, there’s a big opportunity for me, or for, like, you know, myself to continue working on those options.
Tim Crawford 16:26
That’s great. And, as you said, you know, in your own way, you’ve got to keep the trains on time, right? It just happens to be that they’re on wheels and on roads instead of on rails.
Ahsan Baig 16:36
Yeah,
Tim Crawford 16:37
so you know, as you kind of fast forward through this pandemic period, and you think about the post-pandemic period. What does that look like for you, and are there things that you’re trying to put in place today that kind of set you up for success in that post-pandemic period?
Ahsan Baig 16:53
Yeah, I think definitely the things you know we have been doing this pandemic, and work from home, and you know remote workforce conditions, I think these practices, or these, I guess, activities, they are going to continue post pandemic, and I’ll give you, you know, a couple of examples. Business continuity, for example, you know, it’s a great concept, you know, yeah, it may be, you know, very well adopted in private sector, but public sector, you know, we do have a lot of challenges, because there’s a cost associated with it. There’s no question about it.
Tim Crawford 17:25
I think you give them a lot of credit, quite frankly. Let’s be honest,
Ahsan Baig 17:33
I think maybe they have some more money and more funding. I guess maybe that’s the reason why, but I think, you know, we on the business continuity side, I think you know we always think that, yeah, yeah, we, you know, we have a plan, you know, somewhere to sit in, you know, on a shelf, and you know, whenever the thing happened, you know, or something, we’re going to be able to continue working on it, but during this Covid 19 situation, I can tell you that, you know, when I, when I approach, you know, my leadership, my general manager, and board, that you know, I have to invest some money into business continuity, into resiliency, and you know, making sure that you know we continue our operation, no matter what happens to whether our data center or our network operation center or our operation control center, which is, you know, a 24 by seven operation. There was no resistance, so I think that’s something I would say that that is going to help you know us tremendously in long and long term, and then in general, just working conditions and work from home. The whole, you know, this concept was very.. was not very well, I guess, adopted or accepted in public sector, because again, you know, we are.. we are transit agent company, we’re transit agency, you know, we.. our job is to make sure we have busses on the street, so we are physically present to get our job done, and when it comes to, you know, it or other admin staff, it’s very hard, I guess. Before Covid 19 to sell that, no, I still have my DBAs, my software developers working from home, and they will be able to get the job done. Well, now we are still operating the same way we were operating before Covid 19, you know. Really, even I would say I would even, you know, argue that maybe some of the staff, you know, are performing far better because they have much more flexibility. So I think this whole experience is a great learning experience, not only just from the business perspective, but also from the working conditions and also work-life balance situation, we are latching on to some new tools and new technologies, and I think these things are going to stay with us for long term.
Tim Crawford 19:32
Now that’s great. I do agree with you. I think a lot has changed, and you know, I think someone else had mentioned this before. This great experiment that we’re all living in has really kind of accelerated some of the movements that were long coming, but also in flight prior to the pandemic, they just maybe accelerated some of those moves, like working from home and changing that work-life balance. But let’s talk a little bit about you for a minute, because I think this is an important. An aspect to this, you know, it’s easy to talk about things in a third person, but I think it’s really important to understand the person themselves too. And from a personal perspective, how has this pandemic changed you, your leadership style, the role that you play, the way you think? How has it changed you as a person,
Ahsan Baig 20:21
well, I think on a personal level, Tim, definitely it has brought me closer to some of my staff members. I guess we are more connected as compared to what we used to be. I think now, because you know, if I’m on Teams or email, you know, my presence, you know, it’s almost there, and I think that sort of a hesitation that used to be when I was in my office, and you know, people sitting on my floor or other floors, it used to require some effort on their part to just, you know, schedule something and come and see me and talk to me and sit down. I think that barrier is sort of a gone because now they just see me in a green, you know, dark sign is available, they just ping me, and start, you know, chatting and talking and sharing their work, or their experience, or their challenges, whatever they’re going through. So, I think it definitely, this experience of working from home has brought me closer to my own staff, because I think I’m seeing, in fact, you know, a bit more openness, even, you know, sharing personal stories and personal challenges, you know, of course, working from home, so I’m thinking I found myself to be more engaged and definitely have more empathy, and some of the people, you know, how challenging it is, you know, when schools are remote, especially, you know, younger parents, you know, working and at the same time having kids, and then schooling, and homework, and all those challenges, so I think it definitely just brings a completely different perspective for me, and I think I’m seeing that people, my staff, have been extremely, extremely responsive, responsible, long hours, weekends, I think, just phenomenal. So I think I’m seeing a significant uptick in productivity and in responsiveness,
Tim Crawford 22:04
and do you think that’ll go beyond the pandemic? So, once we go into post-pandemic and the next normal, if you will, do you think some of these cultural shifts will stick?
Ahsan Baig 22:15
I think personally that, you know, we will if we continue with this flexibility, Tim. I think you know, I don’t know, five days per week, working from home now, maybe one year from today, you know, hopefully we’ll have all vaccinated and all, you know, safe, we’ll be able to mingle again, and probably we’ll be having two days or three days, you know, work from home, depending on the organization, I think this trend, I think, is going to continue, how flexible people have been, I think, people going to find much more openness and more connectivity. I think that’s going to help us.
Tim Crawford 22:46
No, that’s great. So, as we kind of wrap on the episode, you know, one of the questions I always ask, and I think it’s a great way to kind of wrap on this particular conversation, is if you think about where you go from here and you think about the role of the CIO, what excites you most?
Ahsan Baig 23:02
I think that just the role itself and leadership role, I think to me it’s very, very exciting. I mean, that really just gives me energy every day, Tim, that you know, because of my role and because of my organization, that public service passion that just gets me going on a daily basis, that how critical the technology has become in our daily lives, and you know I am in that role in CIA role, helping my peers, my executive team, and my boss, in the general manager, and the board in making the right choices and the right decisions, and inspiring my own team and motivating my own team and providing them a very important direction and a vision that is going to help and that is going to transform the industry public transit and is going to eventually help our riders with a better service. So I think that is very, very exciting role. I say all the time that I have really never seen in my 27 years that it is playing and becoming so pivoted into any organization, so it’s a really good time for it and for technology and people in the role of CIOs.
Tim Crawford 24:11
No, that’s great, Ahsan. We’re gonna have to leave it right there. Hey, thanks so much for taking part in the program today.
Ahsan Baig 24:17
Thank you very much, and thanks for having me on your on your program. Appreciate it.
Tim Crawford 24:21
For more information on the CIO in the Know podcast. Visit us online at CIO in the know.com You can also find us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Please subscribe, and thank you for listening.
Unknown Speaker 24:34
Thank.
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