Q&A with Rick Klau, an ex-Google product manager and California's new CTIO responsible for building apps and services for various departments across the state
Biz Carson / Protocol : Tweets: @bizcarson , @protocol , @bwjones , @rsquared , @rklau , and @protocol Tweets: Biz Carson / @bizcarson : I asked @rklau what shocked him about joining the government after 13+ years at Google. His answer shocked me: “I think the shock is the pace at which we execute; it's at least as blistering as anything I've ever experienced at Google.” https://www.protocol.com/... @protocol : When Rick Klau joined the California government, he expected a culture shock after 13 years at Google. Instead, he found a shock at the pace of work: “it's at least as blistering as anything I've ever experienced at Google.” https://www.protocol.com/... Bryan William Jones / @bwjones : 1) This is a great article. 2) @rklau is looking to hire a chief product officer for California. (Contact him if you are interested in the job) 3) I captured that photo of Rick. ;-) https://twitter.com/... Rebecca Reeve Henderson / @rsquared : Love seeing these moves. Job alert: Rick is looking for a chief product officer for the state of California. https://twitter.com/... Rick Klau / @rklau : Really enjoyed talking with @bizcarson about why I'm so fired up about my new job at @CADeptTech. If this sounds like a mission you want to be a part of, I really want to hear from you. DMs are open. https://twitter.com/... @protocol : “It's absolutely not my job to Googlify the state of California. I think it is my job to understand how tech teams work and how they can work at scale.” https://www.protocol.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Rick Klau's move from 13 years as a Google product manager to California's Chief Technology Innovation Officer lands mid-wave of big-tech operators crossing into public-sector leadership — the same season Protocol also sat down with Google SVP Prabhakar Raghavan to probe how the company itself was changing. His headline claim inverts the usual bureaucracy narrative: he calls the state's pace of execution "at least as blistering" as Google's.
First-order effects
- Klau is staffing the office like a product org rather than an IT shop — the relationship notes show him recruiting a chief product officer for the state, meaning department heads get roadmap-style prioritization instead of procurement tickets.
- The appointment gives California a single executive accountable for apps and services across all departments, consolidating what had been fragmented per-agency technology decisions.
Second-order effects
- The execution-speed thesis got an early proof point months later: California released the front end and middle tier of its Digital Vaccine Record on GitHub, letting other states stand up SMART Health Card systems without building their own — turning one state's internal tooling into free civic infrastructure.
- State IT contractors and health-records vendors now compete against code the state itself publishes openly, pressuring the custom-build procurement model that has historically dominated government software.
Third-order effects
- If the Klau pattern holds — ex-platform product leaders running state technology offices and open-sourcing the output — states begin acting as first-party software publishers whose releases set de facto standards for neighboring governments, shifting leverage away from legacy integrators.
- The career pipeline runs both ways: profiles like those of Google hardware chief Rick Osterloh show how these companies groom operator talent, and government is now a credible destination for it, tightening the talent overlap between Big Tech and public administration.
The trend: State governments are importing big-tech product management wholesale — hiring ex-Google operators as CTOs and shipping their work as open source other states can reuse.