Session with Nigel Jacob, Co-Director of the Mayor's Office of New Urban Mechanics in Boston (and 2011 CfA city partner), on how cities can best take advantage of their Code for America Fellowship year.

1. Getting Ready for Code For America
Collaborative Innovation in the Local Gov

2. Who are we ?
Chris Osgood Jeff Friedman
Co-Chair, Boston Co-Chair, Philadelphia
Chris.Osgood@boston.gov Jeff.Friedman@phila.gov
@newurbanmechs @urbanmechanics
Nigel Jacob Story Bellows
Co-Chair, Boston Co-Chair, Philadelphia
Nigel.Jacob@boston.gov Story.Bellows@phila.gov
@nsjacob @urbanmechanics

3. What are we going to talk about ?
Our thoughts and approach to….
1 Enabling innovation in local government
2 Partnering effectively with CFA

4. Cutting to the Chase
1 Create a Space for Innovation
2 Focus on People’s Needs
3 Engage Partners to Manage Risk and Increase Resources
4 Pilot quickly
5 Manage like a Product

5. What is the point of innovation?
“Cities have the capability of providing something
for everybody, only because, and only when, they
are created by everybody”
- Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great
American Cities

6. Innovation requires risk
1 Increasingly, local government officials are being tasked
with innovating
2 They are also being tasked with being fiscally
conservative with tax dollars
3 This isn’t a good recipe for sustainable innovation

7. Managing risk in local government
1 The standard local gov approach to managing risk is
bureaucracy
2 Managing risk requires understanding where people
think the risk is as well as understanding where it
actually is
3 Risk is often understood from the perspective of failure:
what happens if we fail?
4 Thus, we need a model to manage risk that takes these
issues into account

8. Our approach: Lean Startup adapted to local gov
SOURCE SUPPORT & SCALE &
IDEAS Study SHARE
PROJECTS
Goal: Identify Goal: Pilot high potential Goal: Scale most
entrepreneurs inside and ideas with maximum effective pilots and share
outside government with public impact and findings and projects
original ideas for City minimal public cost with other cities
service delivery

9. There are two sides to this equation…
1 Internal: encouraging a Culture of Innovation
- adopting a Human Centered approach to developing tools and
technology
- developing a methodology that works for your organization: the
NUM funnel
- resourcing innovation: allocating people with the right skills,
perspectives and/or authority to support innovation
- exploration vs integration
- The importance of leadership
2 External: Creating a front-door for Civic Innovators
- Partnerships are critical to developing new approaches: CFA,
startups, universities, community groups, non profits,
foundations, etc
- Create a safe place to innovate
- Sharing risk (and leveraging opportunities) across cities can be
powerful

10. Pause
Questions?

11. The Five Challenges
1 Finding a partnership model that works
2 Deciding what to build
3 Managing Team Dynamics
4 Collaborating Remotely
5 Delivering the products

12. Finding a partnership model that works
1 Work-for-hire
Contractor-client model. Perhaps non-intuitively, this can be bad. It means that
you’re being held at arm’s length and probably have limited access to people and
systems.
2 R&D Lab
A protected space where interesting projects/products are developed. A problem
here can be in rolling out the work products to production/operations.
3 The A-team
A “special team” with “special abilities”. This can certainly work, but can also
alienate city operations staff without such “special powers”. Not really sustainable as
a model of system-change.
4 Collaborators
A true partnership in which the CFA team and the City team are working together to
set direction, resolve problems, etc.

13. Deciding what to build
1 The Problem is not always The Problem
It’s important to keep a open mind when going into the projects and to really listen
to what the issues are. Sometimes where we start is not the real problem. In order
to solve a high value problem, the fellows will need time/space to explore. It’s useful
to think in terms of the problem as a design brief.
2 Show and Tell
An important aspect to the project will be how well and quickly the ideas can be
mocked up or prototyped. This is often the only real way to make sure that everyone
is on-board with the proposed solutions. Rapid prototyping is also fairly uncommon
to local government so finding a.
3 Find the Product Manager and not just the Project Manager
Find the person on the City side who will be able to think critically about the
products and advocate on behalf of the users of the system. This can be tough.

14. Managing Team Dynamics
1 Leadership Matters
Finding a key person from the team who can be the main point of contact and/or
face of the team can be important in facilitating communication and building
credibility.
2 Adapt to your partner
Local gov often don’t have much experience with agile project management, so it’s
important to take a hybrid approach that makes both partners comfortable. For
example, this could mean having two schedules, one for the CFA team (internal) and
one for the city partners.
3 Find Group-hug moments
Developing and nurturing a partnership of this sort can be tricky, so finding ways
that the CFA-City team can bond is important. These projects have a high chance of
culture clash, so finding ways to speak the same language or to have shared
experiences is a good idea. For example, the Boston CFA fellows spent a day fielding
constituent calls in the Mayor’s 24-Hr Call Center.

15. Collaborating Remotely
1 Regular Updates to your partners
This might seem obvious, but making sure to give your partners regular updates will
avoid an out-sight-out-of-mind scenario.
2 Responsiveness is a (the?!) virtue
Making sure to respond quickly to any questions, requests, etc from your partners
will build their confidence in you.
3 Team building can be tough
Either side of the CFA-City team may encounter inter-personal issues. It’s important
try and work through issues together. The City folk may often have lots of
experience and can help the fellows as an “outsider”.

16. Delivering the products
1 Talking points are key deliverables!
The ability for your City partners to speak intelligently about what you’re working on
to the Mayor (or pick your municipal executive) is critical for maintaining political
support for the project, so make sure you have good, punch talking point ready for
each new milestone.
2 Hand-off of the projects can be tricky
You need to be thinking about how to help your partners think through how to pick
up the projects once CFA leaves.
3 Figure out sustainability together
Figuring out how to keep each project/product going will be critical, but it’s not
enough to say “how will you manage this service after we leave”, you’ll need to
engage in a dialogue with your partners, something like, ”we have some thoughts as
to how to keep the projects going after we leave, can we talk?”
4 Culture Change is the ultimate deliverable
More than any particular technology you deploy or product you develop with your
partners, the ultimate goal should be changing the way that municipal agencies
think about innovation and technology, so try to find ways to make lasting cultural
tweaks

17. We want to help!
Chris Osgood Jeff Friedman
Co-Chair, Boston Co-Chair, Philadelphia
Chris.Osgood@boston.gov Jeff.Friedman@phila.gov
@newurbanmechs @urbanmechs
Nigel Jacob Story Bellows
Co-Chair, Boston Co-Chair, Philadelphia
Nigel.Jacob@boston.gov Story.Bellows@phila.gov
@nsjacob @urbanmechs