As anyone who has spent time working in or around civic technology knows, there are certain debates that come up time and again. Are we most effective fighting fires or should we work toward changing the culture around design and technology in government? Should we function as consultants, or as specialized innovation teams, or can we make change from the inside as a one-man-band? And ultimately, what is the best way to get stuff done? As Public Interest Technology fellows at New America, we've interviewed more than 70 people in and around government over the last ten months, many working on innovation or digital-service teams, and we’ve got answers. In this session we’ll share what the most effective teams in this space are doing, what works and what doesn’t, and more broadly how the field is thinking and feeling about the hard work we do.
The Diversity Dilemma - Supporting our Sisters in STEMDiUS
The document discusses improving gender diversity in STEM fields. It describes an intervention program that led to more girls scoring in the top 15 on standardized science tests. It profiles historic female pioneers in STEM and notes the underrepresentation of women today. Barriers to diversity discussed include unconscious bias, lack of role models, and girls opting out of STEM careers early. Suggestions are provided for improving diversity, such as internal initiatives, awareness raising, emphasizing connections between STEM and real-world problems, and serving as role models.
The document discusses how as designers of the world through our decisions, we make ethical choices that impact others. It argues we should question norms and rules to understand whose voices are amplified and diminished. It also addresses issues like wrongful convictions, rehabilitation, and forgiveness, asking what tolerance for failure society has and who is accountable. Throughout, it emphasizes the need to rethink problems and issues from multiple perspectives.
Amphora & Clean is a software company that focuses on record keeping software. They have implemented Clean Questioning, neuroprofiling, and life coaching practices to improve their sales, technical work, organizational culture, and relationships. Clean Questioning was initially used to develop their product concept and now helps their soft sales approach. Neuroprofiling provides insights into individual cognitive styles and how to communicate effectively. Regular life coaching for all employees helps resolve issues. These practices have led to increased productivity, innovation, and harmony within the company.
The document discusses trends in human attitudes and behaviors related to technology and the internet. It covers four key trends: 1) identity is online, 2) the importance of social networks, 3) people see themselves as part of the internet, and 4) most people do not care deeply about technology itself. It also provides five action points for businesses: focus on conversation not just content, size matters for reach and influence, consider both dedicated and diversified players, invest in developing expertise, and lead by example in adopting new approaches. Finally, it outlines several emerging directions for the internet including the shift to real-time and augmented experiences and the growing importance of collaborative and ubiquitous connections.
While Beyoncé may answer this question with a loud, enthusiastic “GIRLS”, let’s be real: the people in technology are making this world go around. And in STEM careers and STEM majors, the gender gap is still clearly in effect. In this talk, a recent high school graduate and Girls in Tech leader will offer a fresh perspective about the disconnect between girls and careers in technology, despite the ongoing efforts by many to close this gap. We'll get real about why we still aren’t seeing enough girls pursue these careers, why it’s still important to change this, and how we can all become better allies (or “STEMinists”) to help fix the issue.
The Diversity Dilemma - Supporting our Sisters in STEMDiUS
The document discusses improving gender diversity in STEM fields. It describes an intervention program that led to more girls scoring in the top 15 on standardized science tests. It profiles historic female pioneers in STEM and notes the underrepresentation of women today. Barriers to diversity discussed include unconscious bias, lack of role models, and girls opting out of STEM careers early. Suggestions are provided for improving diversity, such as internal initiatives, awareness raising, emphasizing connections between STEM and real-world problems, and serving as role models.
The document discusses how as designers of the world through our decisions, we make ethical choices that impact others. It argues we should question norms and rules to understand whose voices are amplified and diminished. It also addresses issues like wrongful convictions, rehabilitation, and forgiveness, asking what tolerance for failure society has and who is accountable. Throughout, it emphasizes the need to rethink problems and issues from multiple perspectives.
Amphora & Clean is a software company that focuses on record keeping software. They have implemented Clean Questioning, neuroprofiling, and life coaching practices to improve their sales, technical work, organizational culture, and relationships. Clean Questioning was initially used to develop their product concept and now helps their soft sales approach. Neuroprofiling provides insights into individual cognitive styles and how to communicate effectively. Regular life coaching for all employees helps resolve issues. These practices have led to increased productivity, innovation, and harmony within the company.
The document discusses trends in human attitudes and behaviors related to technology and the internet. It covers four key trends: 1) identity is online, 2) the importance of social networks, 3) people see themselves as part of the internet, and 4) most people do not care deeply about technology itself. It also provides five action points for businesses: focus on conversation not just content, size matters for reach and influence, consider both dedicated and diversified players, invest in developing expertise, and lead by example in adopting new approaches. Finally, it outlines several emerging directions for the internet including the shift to real-time and augmented experiences and the growing importance of collaborative and ubiquitous connections.
While Beyoncé may answer this question with a loud, enthusiastic “GIRLS”, let’s be real: the people in technology are making this world go around. And in STEM careers and STEM majors, the gender gap is still clearly in effect. In this talk, a recent high school graduate and Girls in Tech leader will offer a fresh perspective about the disconnect between girls and careers in technology, despite the ongoing efforts by many to close this gap. We'll get real about why we still aren’t seeing enough girls pursue these careers, why it’s still important to change this, and how we can all become better allies (or “STEMinists”) to help fix the issue.
Peopleware is a popular book about project management. in order to summarize i divided this book in 6 parts. This slide deck describes all chapters briefly.
Parent's Guide: Get Jobs for Youth with DisabilitiesJoe Chiappetta
Seeking Jobs: A Parent's Guide to Getting Jobs for Youth with Disabilities is designed for parents who have students with disabilities who are soon to enter the workforce. NETWORKING in the community to find jobs and conducting a GAP ANALYSIS with employers are covered in this workshop. The slides from this training are available. By Joe Chiappetta
The document summarizes Ben Judy and Sara Russell's experiences at SXSW Interactive 2015. It describes some of the speaker sessions they attended, including themes around business/entrepreneurism, cognitive psychology, and framing problems. Key sessions discussed virtual reality, robotics, behavioral design approaches, and how designers can approach problems ambitiously. The document also notes various technology demos, events, and trends showcased at the SXSW trade show.
Eight steps to leading a successful SharePoint project. Based on the article 'Leading Change' by John P Kotter with examples based on experiences with SharePoint projects over the past decade. Focused on business value, not technical fe
The document provides an overview of key trends and directions for the future of the web. It discusses four main trends: 1) identity will be defined online, 2) networks and connections between people will be increasingly important, 3) people will be constantly connected to the internet, and 4) most people will not think deeply about technology and will use it seamlessly. It also outlines five action points for businesses: focus on conversation, size will matter, specialized "pure players" will be important, technology and algorithms will be crucial, and ideas will be most important. Finally, it discusses semantic web, real-time content, augmented reality, collaboration, and ubiquitous access as directions for the future development of the web.
Lost in the Job Hunt Wilderness: Advice from Still Serving VeteransStill Serving Veterans
This presentation describes the challenges the military-civilian transition faced by Veterans. It is also useful for any Veteran struggling to find meaningful work.
The document provides an overview of key trends and opportunities for businesses regarding the future of the web over the next 5,000 days. It identifies four main trends: 1) identity will be defined by online profiles and networks, 2) networks of people and shared content will become increasingly important, 3) the line between personal and public information will continue to blur, and 4) most people will interact with technology without understanding the underlying complexities. It recommends five action points for businesses: focus on conversation over content, leverage network effects through size and connections, learn from "pure players" like Google and Facebook, invest in developing new solutions through "gray matter" or innovation, and embrace an experimental approach to the changing digital landscape.
The document discusses several themes related to information architecture (IA), including:
1. It introduces IA as the art and science of organizing and labeling websites, intranets, and online communities to support usability and findability.
2. It describes IA as an emerging community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape.
3. It discusses moving from data to information to knowledge through design that supports usability, findability, and understandability.
All Things Open 2014 - Day 2
Thursday, October 23rd, 2014
Ben Balter
Government Evangelist with GitHub
Open Government/Open Data
Software Development as a Civic Service
Find more by Ben here: https://speakerdeck.com/benbalter
Steve Levy is an engineer and recruiter with 26 years of experience recruiting in tech sectors. He is the founder and organizer of tech user groups and blogs about recruiting on his website. Some of his advice includes assessing candidates by having them work with broken or obfuscated code, asking about their experience with legacy code, and focusing on both technical and soft skills during the interview process. He emphasizes understanding candidates' interests and building relationships within the developer community.
Ethical by Design: How to Build Good TechnologyAtlassian
From gender-biased resume scanning bots to the dissemination of fake news to apps that send our every smartphone action back to the mothership, the ethics of technology is now under a 10,000-watt spotlight. How can your company avoid becoming the center of the scandal? By putting ethics at the heart of your technical design process.
Join Dr. Matt Beard from the Ethics Center for a primer on embedding ethics into your development process. You'll learn how to prevent costly re-designs, how to become an advocate within your organization, and the philosophies underpinning it all.
Beyond the Rockstar Paradigm: Practical Tools for Visionary, Collaborative Leadership
Although western culture has canonized the hero archetype of the individual leader, many who study leadership recognize that successful organizations, networks, and movements are characterized by a distributive, collective, complementary form of leadership.
How do we practice a leadership that moves us beyond the Rockstar Paradigm?
EPIP webinar with Pia Infante of Rockwood Leadership Institute about practical tools for everyday leadership.
planning, creativity & planning for creative campaignsHeidi Hackemer
This document provides advice and reflections from a planner on creativity, planning, and culture. Some key points:
1) Divergent thinking from outside perspectives fuels exceptional creativity, but planners can lose this through institutionalization. Taking time for exploration and space for ideas to incubate is important.
2) Living a "dot life" of varied experiences, rather than a linear career path, allows for more creativity. Planners should question if they are bringing divergent perspectives to problems.
3) When setting processes and tones for projects, planners should respect the space others need for creation and focus on building ideas through positive, iterative discussions rather than "winning" sessions.
Eyeo 2014: And Then There Were Twelve. How to (keep) running a successful dat...Eric Rodenbeck
Official Title: And then there were Twelve
Museum Title: When Data Visualization Grows Up
Vernacular Title: Lessons from 14 years in the salt mines: What I’ve learned going bankrupt twice, losing my daughter, and firing half my staff.
How to Bridge the Generational Gap For a More Productive Workplace - Vaness...SocialHRCamp
People are discussing the impact that millenials (a.k.a. digital natives) are having on the world of work. Some
say digital natives are lazy, entitled and lack focus. Others comment on the clash between digital natives and
their colleagues not born into the digital era (digital immigrants).
In her documentary film "Beyond the Digital Divide: Bridging the generational gap for a more productive workplace", Vanessa will explore these issues.
In this workshop, participants will:
- Watch the documentary
- Learn how digital natives are impacting the world of work
- Understand what organizations need to do to bridge the gap between digital natives and digital immigrants at work
- Know what digital natives value and why their input is critical to the future of work
- Develop their own action plan to bridge the digital divide
Subhashish Acharya, the founder of Project Starfish, recommends Sravya Patakota for admission to Purdue University. He describes how Sravya worked with Project Starfish for 3 months, studying over 200 technology companies and arranging discussions between their CEOs and people with disabilities. This resulted in two recorded talks on the future of robotics and big data that created opportunities for those with disabilities. Acharya praises Sravya's work ethic, grasp of technology, ability to handle tight deadlines and rejection, and commitment to creating jobs and opportunities through engagement with top startups. He strongly recommends Sravya, believing she will be an asset to any university and make a positive impact through
Code for America is a nonprofit that brings startup culture and technology to city governments. They have fellows working in 8 cities on 262 open source projects. The agenda includes an overview of Code for America, explaining a civic engagement design challenge, breaking into small teams to work on solutions, and a group discussion. The challenge is to develop tactics to improve civic engagement by encouraging people to take responsibility for maintaining pieces of city infrastructure long-term through incentives, fun elements, social proof, reminders and recognition.
Costas Markides, Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, presented on how the technologies of social era are changing the way we do business, at London Business School's flagship event, the Global Leadership Summit.
Learn more about what happened at #2014GLS: http://bit.ly/1tI2kNn
Learn more about the Global Leadership Summit: http://gls.london.edu
Startup Keys for Global Expansion (Colin Hodge @ MEET Startups TW by BNext Me...Colin Hodge
Sharing my 2 keys for expanding your startup to other regions, within the "Organic Growth, Global Mindset" theme. Also covers the SMILE Framework for growing your startup.
Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and ManagersEli Holder
Slides from my talk to other product managers / designers.
"Most people say great products start with great ideas. But Eli sees it differently. Instead, great products start with asking the right questions. This talk looks at the early stages of the product lifecycle through the lens of those important and often overlooked questions."
These early stages include:
• Strategy & Introspection, where we ask "Who are we? What's our purpose?" to better understand a product team's culture and the types of products that will resonate internally
• User Research, where we ask "Who's our audience? What do they really want in a product?" to develop user empathy and discover potential product directions
• Product Direction, where we ask: "What problem should we solve? Why is it worth solving?" to define and justify scope based on the value they create, rather than the features they include
The talk covers the high-level questions, why they're important, and breaks them down into relevant component questions. Plus a few hacks / exercises to help you ask them most effectively.
Peopleware is a popular book about project management. in order to summarize i divided this book in 6 parts. This slide deck describes all chapters briefly.
Parent's Guide: Get Jobs for Youth with DisabilitiesJoe Chiappetta
Seeking Jobs: A Parent's Guide to Getting Jobs for Youth with Disabilities is designed for parents who have students with disabilities who are soon to enter the workforce. NETWORKING in the community to find jobs and conducting a GAP ANALYSIS with employers are covered in this workshop. The slides from this training are available. By Joe Chiappetta
The document summarizes Ben Judy and Sara Russell's experiences at SXSW Interactive 2015. It describes some of the speaker sessions they attended, including themes around business/entrepreneurism, cognitive psychology, and framing problems. Key sessions discussed virtual reality, robotics, behavioral design approaches, and how designers can approach problems ambitiously. The document also notes various technology demos, events, and trends showcased at the SXSW trade show.
Eight steps to leading a successful SharePoint project. Based on the article 'Leading Change' by John P Kotter with examples based on experiences with SharePoint projects over the past decade. Focused on business value, not technical fe
The document provides an overview of key trends and directions for the future of the web. It discusses four main trends: 1) identity will be defined online, 2) networks and connections between people will be increasingly important, 3) people will be constantly connected to the internet, and 4) most people will not think deeply about technology and will use it seamlessly. It also outlines five action points for businesses: focus on conversation, size will matter, specialized "pure players" will be important, technology and algorithms will be crucial, and ideas will be most important. Finally, it discusses semantic web, real-time content, augmented reality, collaboration, and ubiquitous access as directions for the future development of the web.
Lost in the Job Hunt Wilderness: Advice from Still Serving VeteransStill Serving Veterans
This presentation describes the challenges the military-civilian transition faced by Veterans. It is also useful for any Veteran struggling to find meaningful work.
The document provides an overview of key trends and opportunities for businesses regarding the future of the web over the next 5,000 days. It identifies four main trends: 1) identity will be defined by online profiles and networks, 2) networks of people and shared content will become increasingly important, 3) the line between personal and public information will continue to blur, and 4) most people will interact with technology without understanding the underlying complexities. It recommends five action points for businesses: focus on conversation over content, leverage network effects through size and connections, learn from "pure players" like Google and Facebook, invest in developing new solutions through "gray matter" or innovation, and embrace an experimental approach to the changing digital landscape.
The document discusses several themes related to information architecture (IA), including:
1. It introduces IA as the art and science of organizing and labeling websites, intranets, and online communities to support usability and findability.
2. It describes IA as an emerging community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape.
3. It discusses moving from data to information to knowledge through design that supports usability, findability, and understandability.
All Things Open 2014 - Day 2
Thursday, October 23rd, 2014
Ben Balter
Government Evangelist with GitHub
Open Government/Open Data
Software Development as a Civic Service
Find more by Ben here: https://speakerdeck.com/benbalter
Steve Levy is an engineer and recruiter with 26 years of experience recruiting in tech sectors. He is the founder and organizer of tech user groups and blogs about recruiting on his website. Some of his advice includes assessing candidates by having them work with broken or obfuscated code, asking about their experience with legacy code, and focusing on both technical and soft skills during the interview process. He emphasizes understanding candidates' interests and building relationships within the developer community.
Ethical by Design: How to Build Good TechnologyAtlassian
From gender-biased resume scanning bots to the dissemination of fake news to apps that send our every smartphone action back to the mothership, the ethics of technology is now under a 10,000-watt spotlight. How can your company avoid becoming the center of the scandal? By putting ethics at the heart of your technical design process.
Join Dr. Matt Beard from the Ethics Center for a primer on embedding ethics into your development process. You'll learn how to prevent costly re-designs, how to become an advocate within your organization, and the philosophies underpinning it all.
Beyond the Rockstar Paradigm: Practical Tools for Visionary, Collaborative Leadership
Although western culture has canonized the hero archetype of the individual leader, many who study leadership recognize that successful organizations, networks, and movements are characterized by a distributive, collective, complementary form of leadership.
How do we practice a leadership that moves us beyond the Rockstar Paradigm?
EPIP webinar with Pia Infante of Rockwood Leadership Institute about practical tools for everyday leadership.
planning, creativity & planning for creative campaignsHeidi Hackemer
This document provides advice and reflections from a planner on creativity, planning, and culture. Some key points:
1) Divergent thinking from outside perspectives fuels exceptional creativity, but planners can lose this through institutionalization. Taking time for exploration and space for ideas to incubate is important.
2) Living a "dot life" of varied experiences, rather than a linear career path, allows for more creativity. Planners should question if they are bringing divergent perspectives to problems.
3) When setting processes and tones for projects, planners should respect the space others need for creation and focus on building ideas through positive, iterative discussions rather than "winning" sessions.
Eyeo 2014: And Then There Were Twelve. How to (keep) running a successful dat...Eric Rodenbeck
Official Title: And then there were Twelve
Museum Title: When Data Visualization Grows Up
Vernacular Title: Lessons from 14 years in the salt mines: What I’ve learned going bankrupt twice, losing my daughter, and firing half my staff.
How to Bridge the Generational Gap For a More Productive Workplace - Vaness...SocialHRCamp
People are discussing the impact that millenials (a.k.a. digital natives) are having on the world of work. Some
say digital natives are lazy, entitled and lack focus. Others comment on the clash between digital natives and
their colleagues not born into the digital era (digital immigrants).
In her documentary film "Beyond the Digital Divide: Bridging the generational gap for a more productive workplace", Vanessa will explore these issues.
In this workshop, participants will:
- Watch the documentary
- Learn how digital natives are impacting the world of work
- Understand what organizations need to do to bridge the gap between digital natives and digital immigrants at work
- Know what digital natives value and why their input is critical to the future of work
- Develop their own action plan to bridge the digital divide
Subhashish Acharya, the founder of Project Starfish, recommends Sravya Patakota for admission to Purdue University. He describes how Sravya worked with Project Starfish for 3 months, studying over 200 technology companies and arranging discussions between their CEOs and people with disabilities. This resulted in two recorded talks on the future of robotics and big data that created opportunities for those with disabilities. Acharya praises Sravya's work ethic, grasp of technology, ability to handle tight deadlines and rejection, and commitment to creating jobs and opportunities through engagement with top startups. He strongly recommends Sravya, believing she will be an asset to any university and make a positive impact through
Code for America is a nonprofit that brings startup culture and technology to city governments. They have fellows working in 8 cities on 262 open source projects. The agenda includes an overview of Code for America, explaining a civic engagement design challenge, breaking into small teams to work on solutions, and a group discussion. The challenge is to develop tactics to improve civic engagement by encouraging people to take responsibility for maintaining pieces of city infrastructure long-term through incentives, fun elements, social proof, reminders and recognition.
Costas Markides, Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, presented on how the technologies of social era are changing the way we do business, at London Business School's flagship event, the Global Leadership Summit.
Learn more about what happened at #2014GLS: http://bit.ly/1tI2kNn
Learn more about the Global Leadership Summit: http://gls.london.edu
Startup Keys for Global Expansion (Colin Hodge @ MEET Startups TW by BNext Me...Colin Hodge
Sharing my 2 keys for expanding your startup to other regions, within the "Organic Growth, Global Mindset" theme. Also covers the SMILE Framework for growing your startup.
Good Questions, Good Products: 31+ Questions for Product Makers and ManagersEli Holder
Slides from my talk to other product managers / designers.
"Most people say great products start with great ideas. But Eli sees it differently. Instead, great products start with asking the right questions. This talk looks at the early stages of the product lifecycle through the lens of those important and often overlooked questions."
These early stages include:
• Strategy & Introspection, where we ask "Who are we? What's our purpose?" to better understand a product team's culture and the types of products that will resonate internally
• User Research, where we ask "Who's our audience? What do they really want in a product?" to develop user empathy and discover potential product directions
• Product Direction, where we ask: "What problem should we solve? Why is it worth solving?" to define and justify scope based on the value they create, rather than the features they include
The talk covers the high-level questions, why they're important, and breaks them down into relevant component questions. Plus a few hacks / exercises to help you ask them most effectively.
The purpose for developers to join the communityKunihisa Abukawa
DevRel/Community vol.03.
As a participant in the DevelopReleations (DevRel) community on the theme of "people from the business community and participants expect each other"
Why are companies focusing on DevRel?
The purpose for developers to join the community is
Doing well, feeling the gap
We talked about etc.
Storytelling with Data (Global Engagement Summit at Northwestern University 2...Sara Hooker
The document provides guidance on effective storytelling with data in 3 key areas: answering important questions early, focusing on good data collection, and understanding your audience. It emphasizes answering why the audience should care, why you are best positioned to address the problem, and what the desired outcome is. Good data collection requires defining core metrics and sustainability. Understanding your audience involves considering their relationship to you and how to communicate to them. The document encourages borrowing from other effective examples and focusing on telling a compelling story with data rather than just presenting charts.
The document contains various suggestions from different individuals for questions to include in next year's planning survey. Suggestions include questions about budget responsibilities, work-life balance, career progression, agency structures, and industry trends. Several respondents say they enjoy the survey and find the results valuable.
This document discusses strategies for addressing challenges in the future of work. It provides examples of programs that have been successful in helping different populations, including workers in transition, deeply disadvantaged individuals, and youth. Specific strategies that are highlighted as effective include short-term training focused on transferable skills, integrated social services, mentorship programs, and increasing access to opportunities like internships. The document also discusses what has worked for communities, such as developing shared visions and leveraging state policies.
Learning from the Book - Zero to One by Peter Thiel with Blake MastersRajnish Shirsat
The document summarizes key concepts from the book "Zero to One" about creating new companies and products. It discusses the importance of vertical progress through creating new technologies rather than just scaling existing businesses horizontally. It emphasizes focusing on a strong mission and attracting talented employees who are inspired by an important problem being solved. Superior sales and distribution alone can create monopolies even without product differentiation. Technology can empower professionals like lawyers and doctors to do more.
From Seven-Figure Loss to Industry Leader: This Century-Old NPO Prioritized i...Sachin Doshi
The key to employee-driven impact is an employee-first culture – the mantra is echoed by the likes of Richard Branson and Kip Tindell but is often (falsely) regarded as a significant financial burden or implemented as a list of superficial fringe benefits. A truly integrated employee-first philosophy promises significant ROI in the form of decreased turnover, increased engagement and productivity, improved mission outcomes – and in the case of Mental Health America, a seven-figure turnaround and industry-leading impact.
This presentation highlights the myriad benefits of assimilating an employee-first approach into the heart of an organization. How did MHA’s leadership and culture shift transform the “impact-ability" of its employees and enable it to lead its field? How does great culture drive great ideas?
The Politics of Designing a Large University Websitetamuwww
This document discusses the politics involved in designing large university websites. It explains that politics is a framework of competition between parties for their own advantage or goals. Politics matters because even if we try to avoid it, others will play politics around us. The document advises that those in IT should understand politics is happening even if they are not aware, and that decisions are often made from non-technical perspectives. It provides tips for coping with politics, such as understanding one's limited control, identifying sensitive issues early, and picking battles wisely while still advocating for appropriate solutions. Politics exists both at higher levels and within local project teams where individual agendas can influence outcomes. The ultimate goal is to balance all perspectives and serve the intended audience
Philanthropitch Austin Application Q&A SessionRoyal Kelly
Interested in Applying to Philanthropitch Austin? Find Out How Your Nonprofit Can Apply
This presentation provides a Application Q&A for Austin nonprofits interested in applying to Philanthropitch, the social impact fast pitch competition helping nonprofits scale sustainable models.
In this video we talk about what US is and how to gather information to make a good one with the help of two case studies.
You can find the video that goes with this here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK9LHXa8x7A
I explore 4 moments in the last decade of my career in Design and Strategy. This is an exploration of IMPACT not INTENT. And these thoughts are my own, not those of my employer, past employers or others.
Similar to Getting the Work Done [Code for America Summit 2018 Breakout Session] (20)
Jennifer Schaus and Associates hosts a complimentary webinar series on The FAR in 2024. Join the webinars on Wednesdays and Fridays at noon, eastern.
Recordings are on YouTube and the company website.
https://www.youtube.com/@jenniferschaus/videos
karnataka housing board schemes . all schemesnarinav14
The Karnataka government, along with the central government’s Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), offers various housing schemes to cater to the diverse needs of citizens across the state. This article provides a comprehensive overview of the major housing schemes available in the Karnataka housing board for both urban and rural areas in 2024.
This report explores the significance of border towns and spaces for strengthening responses to young people on the move. In particular it explores the linkages of young people to local service centres with the aim of further developing service, protection, and support strategies for migrant children in border areas across the region. The report is based on a small-scale fieldwork study in the border towns of Chipata and Katete in Zambia conducted in July 2023. Border towns and spaces provide a rich source of information about issues related to the informal or irregular movement of young people across borders, including smuggling and trafficking. They can help build a picture of the nature and scope of the type of movement young migrants undertake and also the forms of protection available to them. Border towns and spaces also provide a lens through which we can better understand the vulnerabilities of young people on the move and, critically, the strategies they use to navigate challenges and access support.
The findings in this report highlight some of the key factors shaping the experiences and vulnerabilities of young people on the move – particularly their proximity to border spaces and how this affects the risks that they face. The report describes strategies that young people on the move employ to remain below the radar of visibility to state and non-state actors due to fear of arrest, detention, and deportation while also trying to keep themselves safe and access support in border towns. These strategies of (in)visibility provide a way to protect themselves yet at the same time also heighten some of the risks young people face as their vulnerabilities are not always recognised by those who could offer support.
In this report we show that the realities and challenges of life and migration in this region and in Zambia need to be better understood for support to be strengthened and tuned to meet the specific needs of young people on the move. This includes understanding the role of state and non-state stakeholders, the impact of laws and policies and, critically, the experiences of the young people themselves. We provide recommendations for immediate action, recommendations for programming to support young people on the move in the two towns that would reduce risk for young people in this area, and recommendations for longer term policy advocacy.
Jennifer Schaus and Associates hosts a complimentary webinar series on The FAR in 2024. Join the webinars on Wednesdays and Fridays at noon, eastern.
Recordings are on YouTube and the company website.
https://www.youtube.com/@jenniferschaus/videos
Presentation by Rebecca Sachs and Joshua Varcie, analysts in CBO’s Health Analysis Division, at the 13th Annual Conference of the American Society of Health Economists.
Contributi dei parlamentari del PD - Contributi L. 3/2019Partito democratico
DI SEGUITO SONO PUBBLICATI, AI SENSI DELL'ART. 11 DELLA LEGGE N. 3/2019, GLI IMPORTI RICEVUTI DALL'ENTRATA IN VIGORE DELLA SUDDETTA NORMA (31/01/2019) E FINO AL MESE SOLARE ANTECEDENTE QUELLO DELLA PUBBLICAZIONE SUL PRESENTE SITO
Presentation by Julie Topoleski, CBO’s Director of Labor, Income Security, and Long-Term Analysis, at the 16th Annual Meeting of the OECD Working Party of Parliamentary Budget Officials and Independent Fiscal Institutions.
How To Cultivate Community Affinity Throughout The Generosity JourneyAggregage
This session will dive into how to create rich generosity experiences that foster long-lasting relationships. You’ll walk away with actionable insights to redefine how you engage with your supporters — emphasizing trust, engagement, and community!
Indira awas yojana housing scheme renamed as PMAYnarinav14
Indira Awas Yojana (IAY) played a significant role in addressing rural housing needs in India. It emerged as a comprehensive program for affordable housing solutions in rural areas, predating the government’s broader focus on mass housing initiatives.
2. SO MANY QUESTIONS
- Did I even do anything useful?
- What are other people doing in other
places?
- Is there some definitive playbook for
really making change in government?
- And also, um, I need a job. But what do I
do next? What am I even qualified to do?
- This work was really exhausting and
maybe I need a nap but the world is
crazy right now and I want to do more
and also can’t stop won’t stop.
Leaving USDS … what now?
3.
4. The Original Plan:
Interview people in the field. Not quite sure who.
Find great success stories.
Distill lessons learned.
Maybe make a playbook or something? Help people somehow?
Write some pieces for national publications because this work spreads
through exposure. Like a good virus!
5. ● Aneesh Chopra: former CTO US, former CTO Virginia
● Lamar Gardere: former CIO New Orleans
● Garren Givens: former PIF Exec. Director, former 18F Deputy
Director
● Vivian Graubard: founding member USDS
● Nigel Jacob: co-Director Boston New Urban Mechanics
● Deepa Kunapuli: Director of Marketing & Comms, Wellstone;
former Comms Director USDS
● Brian Lefler: founding member USDS
● Marina Martin: former CTO VA, former Director VA Digital
Service
● Ashley Meyers: Product Manager, San Francisco Digital Services
● Jen Palkha: Founder, Code for America
● Ariel Kennan: Director, Design and Product, NYC Mayor’s Office
for Economic Opportunity
● Dana Chisnell: former USDS, Center for Civic Design
● Mollie Ruskin: former USDS
● Emily Tavoulareas: former USDS
● Anne Marie Slaughter: President and CEO, New America
● Ben Scott: Senior Adviser, New America
● Cecilia Muñoz: Vice President of Policy and Technology and
Director of the National Network
● Alan Davidson: Public Interest Technology Fellow, New
America
● Brooke Hunter and Georgia Bullen: Chief of Staff and Director
of Strategic Initiatives, Director of Technology Projects, Open
Technology Institute at New America
● Sonia Sarkar: Public Interest Technology Fellow, New America
● Lauren Greenawalt: Public Interest Technology Fellow, New
America
● Andrew Lovett-Barron: Public Interest Technology Fellow,
New America
● Denice Ross: Public Interest Technology Fellow, New America
● Kristina Peters: Public Interest Technology Fellow, New
America
How should we find the work?
Initial Interviews
7. How should we find the work?
More Interviews
○ Expanded sherpas
■ Bloomberg i-team director
■ CFA
■ What Works Cities / HKS
■ NYU Gov Lab
○ Big city practitioners
■ San Francisco
■ Austin
■ NYC
■ Boston
○ Smaller city practitioners
■ Gainesville
■ Memphis
■ Mobile
■ Syracuse
○ State-wide initiatives
■ MA Digital Service
■ CA Digital Service
■ CACW Digital Service
■ Puerto Rico
○ Dug deep in three areas
■ Opioid
■ Procurement
■ Foster Care
○ Conversations with practitioners across the
country at convenings:
○ CFA Brigade Unconference
○ Union of Concerned Citizens
9. How should we find the work?
Even More Interviews
○ Follow-ups
■ For specific general publication articles
■ For specific practitioner articles
■ For specific conferences
■ On PIT projects
○ City Leadership (Mayors, City
Managers, “Non Tech” City Officials)
■ Austin Design Summit
■ SXSW Mayors Convening
■ CA Design + Innovation Summit
○ Smaller city + non-lead practitioners
■ Designers
■ HR staff
■ Procurement staff
■ Other programs (FUSE, etc)
○ SME
■ Building teams
■ Procurement reformers
■ Common problems across cities
○ Communications + Outreach
■ Editors and Publishers
■ NA leadership
■ Brand specialists + Designers
11. We wanted tactics on how to get the work
done from people who had everything
figured out.
12. We wanted tactics on how to get the work
done from people who had everything
figured out.
Turns out no one has it all figured out.
13. • Is this even a field?
What do we call ourselves and this work?
We’re fragmented: Why should I go to Summit? What’s an iTeam?
People are hopeful that what they’re doing is working, but many are interested in
tweaking the model.
They want to take something they did in one place and try it somewhere else. (i.e.
always be iterating)
People are still working out a lot of the basics.People are still getting down the basics
14. So we rethought the kinds of questions we
were asking. Here are the big four.
15. #1
What do you call this work?
How do you find this work?
24. #2
What kind of team structure works best?
What kinds of team structures are people
experimenting with?
25. 1. A team that works to change the culture across government, or works across
agencies on a specific issue (Gainesville, Asheville, New Orleans, Bloomberg
iTeams)
2. An innovation team that works across agencies or acts as consultants. (USDS, 18F,
Boston, Austin)
3. Embed within an agency (eg: CA Child Welfare Digital Service)
4. Open up the doors to the entire city for small-hit help
5. Hire one really smart fancy person and let them figure it out.
6. Accidentally hire one person who really gets it and let them do their best.
We found a few different models.
26. 1. A team that works to change the culture across government, or works across
agencies on a specific issue (Gainesville, Asheville, New Orleans, Bloomberg
iTeams)
2. An innovation team that works across agencies or acts as consultants. (USDS, 18F,
Boston, Austin)
3. Embed within an agency (eg: CA Child Welfare Digital Service)
4. Open up the doors to the entire city for small-hit help
5. Hire one really smart fancy person and let them figure it out.
6. Accidentally hire one person who really gets it and let them do their best.
A great way to drive everyone crazy
and lead people to rage quit!
We found a few different models.
27. “I want one of these.”
Citizen-Centered Gainesville
Department of Doing
Working to change the culture in
government:
Gainesville
28. Bloomberg i-team model
Durham, Anchorage, Mobile,
Memphis, Syracuse
- Grant funds for a small team
- Aligned with a single mayoral initiative,
such as reducing blight, improving
economic outcomes for people returning
from jail, reducing the murder rate.
- Teams work to “unpeel the onion” across
entire city government (reorganize a dept,
redesign forms, change how repair trucks
are stacked, rewrite call center scripts)
- Externally imposed innovation. You’re not
invited in, which can create tension. But
support from the mayor helps.
29. - Boston New Urban Mechanics:
incubator for new ideas.
- Have grown to assist multiple
departments with specific problems,
especially DOT.
- Austin: started with fellowship model,
work with multiple city agencies on
specific initiatives.
- Constant hunt for work, but ultimately
are invited in. May not always have
strong leadership support.
Consulting model
18F, Boston, Austin
30. - Launched in October to offer service
design support to the entire city
government
- “What’s something lightweight we can
do every week, rather than running
workshops?”
- Created office hours for anyone in any
city agency.
- Way to open doors to the entire city.
- I went to the launch and was like,
“This will never work!”
Office Hours
Service Design Studio, NYC
31. - 89 office hours
- Scheduled out through July
- 187 people have come in
- 29 unique city agencies
- Also, people from other cities have
scheduled calls
- Still new so don’t yet have success
metrics, but are tracking repeat
visitors, projects, and how questions
evolve
Actually, they’ve been
overwhelmed.
“We had no idea what we
were getting into!”
- Mari Nakano, NYC
Service Design Studio
32. - Procurement questions, RFP help,
fair housing policy, animal bites,
what’s next?
- The people who come in generally
have some understanding of
service design but need guidance.
- They’re invited in. It’s a catalyst for
others to make change.
- But, the people who come don’t
always have support from their
agency’s leadership.
Who comes through the door?
35. The most successful teams have one single
thing in common: support from the top.
36. The Mayor, City Manager, CTO or CIO feels
that things must change, and gives people
permission to operate differently.
What that looks like...
37. #3
Tell us about a successful project.
How do we define success?
38. Sometimes you get to
change the law.
A team in Mobile
working to reduce blight
ended up changing a
property law from 1901.
Sometimes it is really BIG and BOLD and DRAMATIC.
40. Other things that are successes
● Getting multiple city agencies to use the same Google Sheets doc. (Syracuse)
● Getting people from two agencies who don’t like each other into the same room at the
same time. (Everyone)
● Adding one sentence to an envelope. (UK, Anchorage)
● Getting someone who isn’t really into this whole thing you’re trying to do to return your
calls. (Also everyone)
When we people told us those stories with big splashy endings, we saw that those successes
were built on a million smaller steps.
It is important that we recognize those smaller successes too.
49. We (the collective we) are
still figuring out what we
need to do the work, and
also to leave the work.
50. So we did what good “technologists” do.
We asked people about their problems.
We prototyped some first step steps forward to address them.
We shipped some beta products.
We’re now testing, tweaking, talking to people, and iterating.
51. The Commons
CfA New America
Track
Industry publications
What we started doing.
53. New-America/Code for America “Birds of a
Feather” workshops at the Summit!
● Group Therapy: This is What Success Looks Like
● So You’re Working on: Design Literacy
● Group Therapy: Haters Gonna Hate, or, Overcoming
Human Obstacles
● So You’re Working On: Recruiting and Hiring Outside the
Usual Suspects
● So You’re Working On: Innovating in a Smaller Locale
● So You’re Working On: Turning IT into Civic Leaders
● Group Therapy: For CIO Leadership
54. Surfacing the stories to
general audiences: industry
publications
- Series in Fast Company (“The Government
Fix”)
- Reported stories (Fast Company, Slate)
- Op-eds
- Weekly Column in GovLoop ( “In
Something We Trust,” highlighting stories
of small successes and people doing the
hard work)
- More coming!
55. We are the first people to say “these are small interventions.”
But if nothing else became clear over this last year, what was
clear was that people want this work to work.
They want it to stick.
They want to keep doing it.
So what are the right questions to be asking?
There’s not one answer for what is “right.”
But we need to ask/make space for questions.
56. Just because you don’t have all
the answers isn’t a reason to
not do the work. Or to leave it
when it’s not working--for
YOU.
57. <insert> Some final exciting concluding slide,
TBD, because the work is never done. </insert>
Stand up if you work in government please stand up.
Stand up if you work in some government adjacent thing.
If you feel like you have a pretty good handle on what you’re doing please stand up.
I’m Hana Schank, here with Sara Hudson. We are both Public Interest Technology fellows at New America. We’ve spent the past year(ish) interviewing people all across the country working to improve government services at the state and local level. We are going to talk today about what we’ve learned from those interviews about Getting the Work Done, but first I want to explain how we ended up researching this topic.
Both coming out of USDS and USDS-adjacent.
I was finishing up a year at USDS, with DHS, trying to figure out what to do next. USDS had been an incredible experience, but it left me with lots of questions.
So I knew that whatever I did next I wanted to spend time finding answers to these questions so that down the road I could be more effective. So I did what you do when you need a job, which is I asked the people I knew what they were doing next, and I was lucky enough to land at New America, with funding to research all of these questions.
So we did a bunch of interviews.
Then we did more interviews
And more interviews.
And then that great thing that happens with research happened, which is that you realize you’ve totally been asking all of the wrong questions.
So we backed up a bit and started thinking more broadly about what we had learned from our interviews.
What are the big questions that people are solving for.
And we rethought the kinds of questions we were asking.
SARA: When we started, the one question we asked everyone was, “What do you call yourself? What do we call the work?” In many ways, this made sense. We are words people. We were interested in connections between a type of people. But we didn’t know what that type of people was called, or called itself. We just knew what it looked like when we saw it. Think about looking for a scorpion in Spain. You may not know the local word for it, but you know it immediately for what it is.
We are words people, so are many of you. The difference? We weren’t looking for the work right now to do it. We were studying it. When we talked to you, the doers, we realized the first question you all needed answered was, “How do I find this work? How do I recognize it for what it is (nameless though it may be)?”
So. Thus prompted, we started asking “How do you find this work?”
Hint: flames in the sky are a good signal.
We saw two big ways government donned the “We are going to innovate” hoodie. The first was the worst: reactive. There was a crisis. Something broke. All of a sudden...
We care about technologists.
Also, user design.
The other most common things we saw? The exact opposite end of the spectrum to reactive scramble: proactive leadership. As many or more times than we saw people adopt “civic tech” or whatever you’d like to call it, we saw proactive leadership as the signpost pointing the way to the work.
The place we most commonly saw this was at the local/city level, and with mayors. Leadership from the top has its advantages and disadvantages. For finding the work, one of the advantages is that it makes it a lot easier to spot when the mayor herself has said, “Yes, please and thank you” in a public way. For one thing, they put out press releases, so you can sometimes follow the media trail.
Meanwhile, for practitioners, it seemed like it often boiled down to attitude: having a mayor or sherpa who said, “ ‘It’s the way things have always been done’ is no longer the acceptable answer for ‘Why do we do it this way?’”
Another trend we found? Whether talking about reactive crises or proactive leadership, when in doubt where the work is, follow the money trail.
Both after a crisis and with proactive leaders, funding is one of the most common ways government get the carrot they need to try something different. Programs like Bloomberg’s What Works Cities teams, Innovation or “iTeams,” FUSE Corps, Benchmark Cities, Smart Cities, Built for Zero, Alliance for Innovation, and many other national programs of all sizes have created funding and support opportunities for government to try to iterate, innovate, and improve. In turn, the places they work and the people they connect became great resources for finding innovation across America.
Exploring this first question of “where do you find the work” led us down a second common path: “what should teams look like once a government latches onto the the desire to do the work?”
[HANA]
The last two are most effective for driving people crazy.
There have also been a few high profile instances of cities hiring super fancy people and just assuming they can figure it all out, without providing them the support they need. That has not worked out well.
We talked to a few people who ended up in government because they genuinely wanted to work in government, who also knew best practices, and they seemed pretty beaten down.
HANA
Gainesville city manager, Anthony Lyons, he told us about how the mayor became interested in innovation. He had heard another mayor talking about a thing called a Blue Ribbon Report and he came back to Gainesville and said, "I want one of these."
So Gainesville brought in IDEO to help them rethink the design of their entire city government, and decided they wanted absolutely everything to be *citizen-centered*.
HANA
Teams work across city agencies, unpeeling the onion
HANA
Teams work across city agencies, unpeeling the onion
HANA (should be around 20 min in here)
HANA
So great, there are different models with pros and cons.
But here’s the dirty little secret, and what we learned through our interviews.
As we asked people to tell us about their successful projects, we heard a really big range and came to understand that success can look a lot of different ways.
HANA
Prior to coming to New America I was with the United States Digital Service, working with Customs and Border Protection on their Trusted Traveler programs, the most common of which is Global Entry, which if you travel internationally you’ve probably heard of.
-huge backlog
- some people were waiting up to a year to get into the program
- all kinds of bad press about it.
So when they came to us for help we were like AWESOME
we want to fix the backlog
workflow analysis
change the policy so that people dont have to come in to a Global Entry center to do their biometrics
we want you to appoint a product manager for your Global Entry program who can be monitoring the wait time metrics and
WE WANT TO FIX ALL THE THINGS.
And CBP was like, actually, we just want you to help make the application form look a little nicer and not be 500 pages and not take 3 years to fill out. So we said, “OK< we’ll do that, but first we want to do some research just to understand the context around the programs.”.
There were multiple programs, not just Global Entry but also Pre Check and Nexus.
GE - travel internationally. Pre Check - just for getting through TSA checkpoints.
But this was the biggest point of confusion - which program can I travel on internationally?
So we watched people type in “can I use Pre Check to travel internationally” into google, and the first thing that came up was the TSA Pre Check FAQ which said, “YES, you can use it to travel on international flights.” and made no mention of GE.
went to TSA and said, hey, you have this really confusing thing on your site, can you change it. And like two months and 15 meetings later, they updated the FAQ.
Here is what success looks like...
[OVER TO SARA AFTER THIS SLIDE]
SARA: Like many research projects--or really, all of them--the work went directions we didn’t expect, sometimes wildly different directions. Some, we caught at the beginning. For example, procurement is a THING. It’s at the roots of why people can’t get the work done and that was clear after synthesis round *1.*
Other themes, were both more subtle and took time to see. One that we didn’t expect?
When should we quit?
People are leaving. A lot, actually. That includes multiple people we interviewed over the last year, who have left. Why? A lot of reasons. Why? And why aren’t we asking the question? Couple big reasons.
For starters, it’s hard. The work is hard, people are hard, management issues are hard, siloes are hard, the work is hard. We are running a workshop here specifically called “group therapy”--because the field so clearly needed it. I was startled, but not surprised, when I looked at the schedule and saw we weren’t the only ones who created a breakout workshop with that title. This work is HARD. And as Priya Sarkar said, It’s like the hard parts are hard. And so are the parts that should be easy...
Starting with the most basic: there’s not a “career path” for “problem-solving in government, often incorporating modern processes.” The fellowship model and/or temporary funding are common introductions for folks going from private industry into government. Particularly on the federal level, we see people hopping between temporary gigs, never really going up, but going around as they figure out angles into staying in and around government. Case in point: the two of us.
SO many feels. And they come in a lot of forms, and several common frameworks.
One is the open and acknowledged problem that sometimes when private sector folks come into government, they bungle the landing. There come in wearing capes and halos and Lycra jumpsuits, assuming they are saviors, and also that the work hasn’t been done because someone smart enough, technical enough, SME enough, whatever, hasn’t tried. This creates all the kinds of feels that you would expect from people on the ground, who have done the work, will continue doing the work, and don’t appreciate kids in self-made, probably 3D-designed jumpsuits. Ditto, from people also are coming from private industry or outside government who are diametrically opposed to the superhero narrative, who want to duck their heads and uplift hard-working civil servants and otherwise work hard and do the work because it’s interesting and it matters and believe exactly zero people should be kissing their feet just for showing up at 9am to City Hall instead of Silicon Valley.
Second, we are a high-EQ lot on the whole. That makes us sensitive both to the problems we are trying to solve--often some of the hardest in society--and also to team dynamics. The first part is another piece of “the work is hard” theme. Like teachers, social workers, public interest lawyers, we often work long hours in high-pressure situations, and we take the work home with us. It can be emotionally and mentally exhausting.
At the same time, we often work on small teams, in even smaller emails, we grow close, we become like family, and like family, sometimes we want to adopt out a sibling to another family, preferably in Australia, or take the initiative ourselves and run away from home. People are hard. And that’s not just the ones we meet outside our teams.
And it’s often self-imposed. We are, in general, a bunch of high EQ people, we who stick it out. And that means we feel the pressure acutely. That often can translate into the other side of both the savior condition and the ‘I want to serve’ compass: “I can’t leave” complex. No one is coming. It is up to us.
What we round was the first two ingredients sometimes combine like a fifth grade volcano experiment into an eruption of Judge-y McJudge-rson. All of the feels and pressures can create problems when it comes to making personal decisions about next steps. As we saw time and again, when you come into a team or on a team, and the team is part of a club, and the club has a secret handshake and a clubhouse and an official piece of clothing--the hoodie--it also often comes with a cafeteria. Not a real one, this is government, there’s no money for that. But it does come with what can sometimes look like the dynamics of a middle school cafeteria. Which means you also can get the things that come along with middle school cafeterias: judgement on your personal choices. And sometimes, like middle school, that loathing or judgement comes from your own self.
That judgement can sometimes look like this: if I leave, I am joining the dark side. Or, coming from others, the messaging of “If you leave, you are joining the dark side.“ There are amazing, and an amazing lot of people, who agonize about leaving when they want to stay but can’t. “It is up to us” as an open mantra also often translates to “and if you quit, you are giving up, going to the dark side, less than.”
This is NOT HELPFUL.
People have to be able to make personal choices based on what is or is not working for them. Right now, as a field, we often have a much stronger sense of self when it comes to, “No one should be kissing my feet because I’m here,” than we do “Nor judging me if, when, or why I choose to leave.”
So what does this all mean? We (the collective we) are still figuring out what we need to do the work, and also to leave the work. And that’s okay. But what did become clear was we needed to start iterating small solutions to address some of these questions, challenges, and opportunities in our field, just as our field is doing when it tries to solve problems for our communities. Part of that includes conversations like these, that connects people and creates spaces to talk about things like about why we quit that it’s okay.
So with that insight in hand,
At our core, we are writers and connectors, so we started with what we know. We decided to design three starts of solutions, based on sharing and connecting through stories and learnings, for each of three core audiences we identified: practitioners, city leadership, and community members.
First, we created a monthly newsletter for practitioners, The Commons. Each month, the newsletter focuses on a new topic that has come up across practitioners. The first issue was “Connecting the Field,” the next (which comes out next week!), is The Hiring Issue. It will include featured stories from local places tackling challenges, and also offer pieces by practitioners, interviews with sherpas, and practical information for getting the work done.
Second, we partnered with Code for America to deliver a series of opportunities right to your doorstep, at this very Summit. We heard over and over that people feel silo-ed, isolated, and that CfA Summit was a place to connect. We also knew there were specific topics that didn’t get as much surfacing that people really wanted to talk about. So together with CfA, we created “Birds of a Feather” workshops, which run this afternoon and tomorrow afternoon, and are led by practitioners, for practitioners. They include topics like doing the work in small cities, based on feedback we heard that staff there are often part of conversations where some of the solution-sharing doesn’t apply in the same way, or connecting CIOs, who have specific but also wide-ranging job descriptions. And of course, responding to the overwhelming research response we heard about needing a place to connect, and also share, and find people and not feel so alone, we have several “group therapy” sessions.
Second, we committed to surfacing local stories in national publications as a way to shine a light on this work. Time and time again, we found that local leadership was leading the way for national change in how government works, and doesn’t. For practitioners, we’ve gotten overwhelming feedback that seeing these kinds of stories helps people feel validated, and start to be able to connect, solve, see that it is a real field. At the same time, for city leadership, it’s a way to get inspiration, connect with other cities. And for residents, it’s a way to see not the government of pulpits or politicians, but of everyday hard work to improve services--and also to start to understand why it is so hard.
All of that said, the field is young and we’re all still figuring this out together. If someone pretends to have all the answers, BE VERY SUSPICIOUS. And that includes us. We know there isn’t one way to do this work. Part of what we wanted to do today was to show that there are a lot of different configurations, a lot of different ways of measuring success, and still a lot of unknowns in the field. And we also want to say, we are the first to recognize that these are small interventions.
Keep at it. Keep on doing you. Conversations like these are a place to pause and assess. And then keep driving forward, wherever that may take us.
This is still a work in progress. We want to keep the work going by opening the floor to ask questions here.