 Why are we here today? We're here today because 50 million Americans are living in poverty and we're spending $1 trillion not including Medicare and Medicaid on Government safety net that's almost 20% of our GDP. That's in line with other developed countries, but our outcomes For poverty alleviation are not stellar And that's a problem. That's a problem for us as progressives because as progressives We all believe that government is part of the solution that government has a really important role in helping those in need that it's The biggest non-profit of them all is Ashley is fond of saying Government we believe as progressives that government can be effective in Solving the problems that we face together and can be good stewards of our tax dollars We believe all this as progressives, but Unfortunately, we have often been wrong Do you remember the day that healthcare gov came out and it didn't work the president's signature policy to Fix a piece of the health care system and 800 million dollars later the government couldn't build a functioning website There's like a punch in the gut as a progressive Because your your cousin at Thanksgiving who tells you we should shrink government and drown it in the bathtub Because government can't do anything right That day it felt like it felt like he had a point. I remember it wasn't doing things, right? Of course, we know that the end of the day it got fixed and The folks who went in to fix that are Folks like the people on the stage here today just designers and geeks and product people many of them from here in Silicon Valley Because of their work because of their ability to bring in the tools and processes of Silicon Valley that That we use to design and build great products because they went and served their country 20 million people have health insurance today and a progressive policy was able to be implemented There's still a lot of work to do. I'll start at gov is a great story Show you a couple examples of things that still really aren't working right with technology This first example is what it looks like to sign up for food stamps in, California It's gonna go fast here. It's on warp speed. So watch with me But even though it's going fast, you'll see it takes a really really long time There are a lot of steps 50 screen over 50 screens. This is really hard You have to work with housing a counselor to do this you have to do it over and over again to get it right That's not how it should be. That's not how government should provide services. Here's an example of something much simpler a few screens built on a mobile interface Based on talking to real users about how they use the system the ability to just sign right there on your screen and Boom you're signed up. That's how government can provide services. That's efficient That's effective and it's it it serves those who need it Another example, this is what happens when your food stamps are about to be canceled in San Francisco. You get this What are you? What are you supposed to do? and You know here's just just a prototype of something that might work a little better How about we just send a text message in your language of choice says hey your your benefits are about to expire Give us a call if you have any questions That's how government should work. That's how government can work And Why why would we address if we were looking at the food stamp system? Why would we address the the last step when people are losing food stamps? Because the folks who approached this problem talked to hundreds of food stamp recipients Before they started to solve a problem they found out what was their pain point and a huge pain point for folks is you're at the front of the line you brought all your groceries your Your ebt card gets run and it gets denied and it's a moment of shame It's a moment where you know your family is not going to eat tonight and This was this was really bad for people and it was because they were getting dropped off and they didn't understand how to renew their benefits So simple solutions solve big problems when we spend time talking to our users and understanding what their real needs are So who's doing this work? Lots of different folks some of the folks on the stage today from 18f From the mayor's office in San Francisco out of the healthcare gov Rescue 18f and the US Digital services agency were born They're doing amazing work at the federal level Along with Code for America and other folks doing tons of work locally across the country from Boston to Mesa and and internationally the government of the UK Folks all over Africa are doing amazing work Bringing the tools design and agile development to government to make effective product So as progressives we can all help we can all help make government work So I'm gonna talk a little bit about a little bit today about the These tools and processes of Silicon Valley that are being used in government to make effective change Here with me today are Ashley minor from the city and county of San Francisco mayor's office of civic innovation Jesse Taggart director of product strategy Product strategy and design consulting consulting group. Yeah, and 18f is part of GSA Stephanie Rivera is also from 18f GSA and is a director of business strategy so Thank you all for joining me today and I was hoping we could just have a Conversation about some of the things you guys are working on so Maybe just to start with some framing We start with 18f Can you guys talk a little bit about the the methods that you use and the projects that you're working on? Yeah, sure I can assume that everybody is somewhat familiar with 18f. Is that true a little a little background? No. Yeah. Okay. Good. Thanks So 18f we are we are we're like a year and a half old We officially launched March 2014. We had 15 people as of last week, I think we have 144 people currently on staff kind of Throughout the United States Our main headquarters or the government we belong to the general services administration is in Washington, DC And then we have a good a good number of people out here as well, but We started for a couple of different reasons Healthcare.gov did not go so well. You may have heard about it For anybody who says that this is a reason that government should be small. I would counter that with The reason we had healthcare.gov is because we outsourced so much of our knowledge Because we were trying to make government so small We outsourced our knowledge and we outsourced our technical capabilities And because we did that we became very very bad clients For vendors that we were bringing in and with healthcare.gov. We did not know how to Assess products correctly. We were being briefed in PowerPoint and accepting it. We weren't looking at prototypes So what we needed to do is Bring back that expertise bring back that knowledge into the federal government so that we could be good Stewards of our own digital strategy going forward. We can start asking the right questions We can start building things for ourselves We can start being the trusted advisors that other agencies need to know is this gonna work What do you mean this has to go on a mobile platform? How do how do I make that happen? Came out of healthcare.gov also came out of The PIF program, which is the presidential presidential innovation fellows program was started as a Six months six months to a year you can come out take a tour of service within the federal government Kind of like dive-bomb into an agency and help them out a Lot of people did not want didn't feel like they had enough time six months Just wasn't enough time to get some of these projects off the ground. They tried to stay a little bit longer We were fortunate enough. They were part of the White House at the time White House is pretty limited by the number of people it can have within it We were brought over to GSA So that the General Services Administration and given given an administrative home really so that we could we could build up We could flourish to 144 that we have now And so that we could start taking on larger longer-term projects We can get into more of those and we can get definitely into procurement because that's one of the things that We saw as a big flag that needed to be changed, but you can really think of 18f as a A consultancy within the government for the federal government And we have designers and engineers and we have fantastic people who Here to four have not been able to get into the federal government So that was another bureaucratic hack that we can talk about definitely I could speak to that a little bit Yeah, if you want and really just you're doing some of this work. Yeah, I was just gonna say yeah So like my background is an experienced designer. I'm leading a team within the consulting group We are doing like design and research design and build as well as different consultancies things and it's amazing I think we're like at a hundred and twenty a hundred and forty folks now Yeah, and their product designers which are user researchers user experienced designers interface designers visual designers content strategists very important product managers engineers obviously dev ops obviously and The methods we're bringing it's fascinating to be doing it from inside the government instead of like the the contracted vendor relationship there are some things and and and Progress that we're making in that one We're bringing like human centered agile methods the topic of this of this talk here into the government and working with our partners one of our principles is like meet them where they are and You know start educating that way some folks have been are very knowledgeable and just need a little you know Support from the outside or validation from what we're trying to do and some folks It's very new to them and we're teaching these methods and how to like think differently Within projects that they work directly with us and then also how they work with different The word agency in the government is used like ten different ways here But with private, you know agencies or vendors that we work with as well Because like both both sides of this of the relationship need the freedom to do the best work They can so anything from like practices to policy like we're doing we're doing a lot of Hopefully work in that area and making progress And Ashley you're doing a lot of this work in the local level You talk a little bit about What human-centered design and agile have meant to the city of San Francisco? Yeah, so I'm part of a team in the mayor's office called the mayor's office of civic innovation Which mayor Lee created when he took office. We've been around for about close to three years now and for four years, I suppose and I joined this year. I'm doing a one-year Fellowship, so it's the mayor's innovation fellows modeled on presidential innovation fellowship program and the Code for America Fellowship program designed to bring external folks into city government for a year and Mokey the office of civic innovation does not explicitly focus on technology But my background was that code for America a nonprofit that does government technology work and so that's kind of the perspective I brought to the role and a Lot of the work I've been doing this year and seeing my colleagues and around the city Do is around human-centered design and agile development It is they're emerging concepts. I think in the city of San Francisco But we're seeing some small successes and wins here and there when it comes to Like our assessors office last year redesigned their entire website and rewrote all the content from scratch Testing it with real users as they went and really bringing in both subject matter experts and content strategists to do that Are the new homeless navigation center in San Francisco a designer and a developer from our Department of Technology built in about six weeks the intake application that the counselors use for the clients there and Kicked the whole thing off with a design sprint and then really used agile methods to build it really quickly and only Give the counselors really what they need when they're doing those client interviews And so we're kind of seeing in these small pieces in departments this idea of service design this idea user-centered design emerging and I think Now we're thinking about how to institutionalize that and really support all the people throughout the city who want to bring that approach to their work And Jesse maybe for the audience You could just define for us for you. What are what are these words service design human-centered design? Sure definitions and why those are important sure Yeah, I can give like a quick definition and there's a lot more like eloquently articulated than them than what I'm about to do But I say this what I'm about to say I say in a very calculated sense in that I feel like human-centered design or user-centered design And I use those terms interchangeably is common sense And I say that because I'm often dealing or working with partners and clients and they feel like it needs to be a special Designer only knows this and it's basically just you know people are motivated by goals Needs attitudes and in the simple. I'm really boiling the sound like in the simplest sense Understand what those goals needs and attitudes and build to that, you know working with whatever your business or organizational objectives are So many times and well meaningly so And there's a bunch of tools and methods from social sociology sociology backgrounds ethnographic techniques Design to and there's a whole you know an opticon of methods to do this but So often, you know people to start thinking in terms of systems Well, the system will do this, you know and like and someone like I've built it to meet all the requirements And then it's like well the human can't use this system now like you know, you have checked off all those boxes So I think like human-centered design I was just talking to someone about this this morning actually is and using those methods can like often help The people or the organizations inside government or the client or the partner achieve their stated goal Easier than they think Right and that gets people attention because that means you're going to save time and you're going to save money and be more effective So I mean I can talk about the methods used but just like from a high level. That's that's great I love calling it common sense. I think that kind of really speaks to the idea that But there's there's definitely a process to bring to teach But that really everyone can be a designer right and that it's it's about asking the right questions and Uncovering those needs first and then deciding what we're going to build to meet those needs rather than going in the other direction Yeah, I feel like like like capital D design like Anyone Ken or it's like a literacy to be learned and then I'm gonna I used to be a visual designer And so lowercase D designed I'm gonna get myself in trouble by just having done that You know when you slide down and you're in like the details of the UI or complicated workflows anyone folks that like have experience But like from the product strategy designing of experiences everyone should feel empowered and we're and we're doing that this You know when I'm doing user research and interviews like I want to I involve the partner with me like pair with me and do the interview Bring a developer when you're doing, you know usability testing. It's not separated silos of that Teach a man to fish. Yeah Yeah Actually, maybe you can talk a little bit about How agile development compliments the human-centered design process and I think it just began to speak to that Speaking about this with the rapidness of delivery and the ability to deliver small things Yeah, so I don't know how many people in the room are technologists or not But agile development is a way of building software that has become best practice in the private sector over the last to attend to 20 years, but There's still parts of the private sector that are moving to that model and the public sector for the most part has not and The the benefits of agile which basically breaks the development of a piece of software or a website or a web product down into tiny little pieces Something like about two to three weeks long. Usually they're called sprints It means that you are not trying to plan for all the features You'll need and everything you'll do in two plus years of development or months and months of development but instead saying what's the most important next piece to build and let's build it let's build that very quickly and At the end of that two weeks or three weeks It's done enough that you can test it right away with new users So that means that throughout the whole development process You're putting something in front of new users in front of your users and seeing how they respond to it and that's very different from an older models where you might build for six or eight months before ever showing something to a Real person and seeing how they respond to it and you can get pretty far off track in six to eight months and so Agile and humans in our design go really hand-in-hand I was actually having lunch at 18 up yesterday They have a weekly potluck and we were talking about this that like it's almost unnecessary to separate the two because part of testing with users as you go is so closely part of agile and that is also really fundamental to user-centered design and so It's very easy to introduce the two of them as almost one concept that you want to Really think about your user needs first and then the whole time as you go every time you add a new feature You test it with a user so You're building a web product and you want to be able to email people for example, and you build that feature Okay, now we can send people emails right away You then take a bunch of test users send them the email and see like did it go did it work like did they open it? Did they understood what they read that sort of thing? Yeah, and I would just add on to this is it's been really fascinating in like this the large Fed space Because like I keep finding opportunities were like agile development methods and tools and drinking the agile kool-aid sort of speak It's really useful with like project organization as well And I'm realizing there's so many like layers like in some of these large projects And I'll give an example for the like data act we've been doing consulting work And we helped we did a pilot small business administration We did a pilot with them to help them implement it so like long long story short, you know Congress passes this law and then every agency is to implement it by a certain time You know thou shalt do this, you know, it's a good law. It has good intentions and great benefits that will come as it as it's realized and But it's this overwhelming thing in a sense that that gets passed down as like, you know That's what you should accomplish and we worked with them to be like You know the users at that point of the law is actually kind of themselves and like all the data structures and the Independencies are like you just can't map it all out and like we can help you start, you know And by starting this you actually will learn more to answer the questions that are stopping you from starting in the first place If you can follow that So that's been a really good experience of bringing agile development to kind of like the product strategy And then the actual development of in that case was a prototype to a learning thing because it's so complex You need to know that and move forward and we've been doing workshops with other Agencies and we'll be doing more in the fall to help them use that use that method to respond to this law That was passed that they need to like build Yeah, and Stephanie I think you know Ashley and Jesse have spoken a bit to sort of the benefits of agile human-centered designers and developers working together Building things quickly getting them in front of users testing them off and having better product built more efficiently more effectively getting it out sooner That's not typically how government has done business government has written large sets of requirements and Dictated the project plan The designers come yeah, we like we like our developers come second and you're gonna sign on the dotted line and tell me this is how long It's gonna take yeah, yeah, and when it takes you longer or costs you more. I'm gonna crack the whip and We assume that we understand everything about our problem before we start solving any of it because we've written the RFP Yeah, those are my people is the Bible So that's what folks are used to you have a lot of experience in that world I think yeah, how does human-centered design and agile map to that world of the government has been working well You know, it's funny because I think a lot of people So coming from DC to here people just like assume you should be building with agile, but a lot of you know I would say that The typical you know federal worker it's equivalent to they've always been walking around with a flip phone, right? They have a flip phone and then you come in with agile human-centered design and it's like it's a beautiful smartphone And they're like whoa Whoa, I didn't know about that. I didn't know you could do that But for years and years I've been so super happy with my flip phone because before that I had a rotary dial You know so they they they think that they are Progressing but they didn't realize that there was so much further to go So that's to say that they're not doing waterfall RFPs, you know all of these writing up They're not doing it because it's a nefarious purpose or because they're stupid They they're doing it because they don't know another way to do it and I really think that that's where 18f and Human-centered design comes in so we can be a trusted partner and say look you trust me I'm in this game with you Let's let's Test it out and with the sprints you can just test it out for two weeks You can say let's this isn't gonna cost you anything. We're gonna test it out. I'm gonna talk to some users I'm gonna validate what you say You think you need X. I'm gonna validate that your users need X And if I come back and say actually your users need X and Y that starts another conversation and what we've seen is that You know our clients in the federal government, they're hungry for that kind of trusted advisory ship They they got into civil service because they want to do right by people And they want things to be better, but they really need somebody to come in and say it'll be okay This is a new way of doing it. You're not breaking the law this is I Swear to you I have done this before and I really think that that's what 18f can provide and Jesse's one of the people that You know we send in for for these groups that are like mmm. I don't I don't know about you guys You guys and you're wearing your jeans and all all of that nonsense. Yeah, exactly And she goes in and she maps out okay. Well, what is your problem? What is what are you trying to solve for and then she takes that and she does a beautiful design workshop? And then Goes back and says okay What I'm gonna do with this is I'm gonna verify this with your actual users and you have to give me the users and if The client then comes back to us and says no no no we do this by committee. We know what our users want You're like, we're not your people we have these principles and And we want to talk to your users. So why don't you talk to your users with us? Yeah, can I hop hop in here because there's two things one is like sometimes you get resistance and there's lots of different ways to Approach the resistance and that could be a whole workshop in itself But the other thing I wanted to like hop on to something you said earlier because I feel this really strongly It's like so I've been in government for a year a very long time ago as a museum exhibit designer And I worked for like we design exhibits for like the Navy or the Smithsonian. I had that I had that but not like directly as a Fed right oh My gosh, I'm losing my point wait. Oh is like so coming into government I've been in government for a year and I feel like it's two things I'm seeing one is like we're coming in as you mentioned like the trusted advisor showing methods That people have not been exposed before getting them to be comfortable with them seeing the value etc Etc. But there is also and I feel very strongly about this there are people inside of the government It's so huge and there's so much bureaucracy right there's so much that they do and they know about all this and on their own Private time or their own philosophies. They they are they want to practice idol agile They want to practice human-centered design and there's such like a cluster of Bureaucracy the way projects are organized. You're not sure who the clear ownership is That's like number one recommendation for like everything that I touch like have a clear owner And then the procurement process, you know like you have there's so much Accumulation of well-meaning policy and rules that it's hard to even hire the people you want to work with if you don't happen To have them in as well. So I just want to say like it's in it can't happen This last of my stick here But like it can't happen without a mix of like folks coming from private industry, but it's not that's not the solution It's mixing with the folks already Who have been working in government trying to do this for years? Yeah, they're they're very accepting We don't get a lot of we don't get a lot of pushback. Yeah, once we come in And say, you know, this is this is how we work. It's new. It's different But yeah, we've had a lot of success before, you know Let's let's try this for a little bit and and usually people are pretty hooked actually You use this word Stephanie that people are hungry for yes advice and advisers. Absolutely. That's absolutely true I think they're also hungry for the results like yeah, nobody knows better than the people who run those programs How bad that customer experience is like the one you showed for enrolling in food stamps There's a reason why a consortium of counties spent millions of dollars to build that because they wanted to invest a lot of resources In fixing the user experience of rolling enrolling in food stamp So like clearly something went wrong along the way and we ended up with this like 50 screen process And there's a lot of there's a lot of things that went wrong But the intention I bet you that I haven't seen the RP that like probably 15 times in the RFP that built that It said like must be an easy user experience must be a beautiful user experience there. They have that value It's just that The folks inside government don't necessarily know how to get there Yeah, and they don't know how to get the right vendors to work with they don't want to ask of those vendors They don't know how to work with vendors once they're there Yeah, and but they want to learn they're eager for new solutions and new ways of working because they they have the same hunger that We do for beautiful simple easy to use public services and they really feel the pain when their customers don't have that user experience Yeah, I mean yeah, I was gonna say you know there for the food stamps They're there to help the people get the food stamps there There's no malice in building 50 screens. Maybe they won't be able to get to the food stamps I don't know maybe they only get to screen 49 They want people to be able to get the food stamps and they they desperately want these services to work They just don't know how to do it yet So you guys have a really important role I think all three of you are playing a role inside of government helping to teach process to bring tools to get buy-in To push people past their comfort zone and have them see successes But you touched on vendors as well, and I think that you know the government is the largest purchasing agent in the world And and so vendors have a role to play here How does one be my my company is a vendor? How do we? Be a good vendor. How do we partner in a way that supports? Effective tools being built me Okay, so one I think it's I Think that we on the government side need to be able to help Vendors who traditionally have not worked with the federal government before I think there's there's quite a high barrier to entry Which is it's pretty unfortunate and the government and the taxpayers and the American people everyone is is really feeling that right? I Can tell you one of the successes that we've had with 18f Is that we've set up something called the agile BPA? It's a blanket purchase agreement And we set it up completely completely differently it was quite a political battle, but What we said was we don't want the RFP like you've always written the RFP We don't we are looking for people who work like us and so we are going to Test out people who work like us. We are gonna give you a data set. We are gonna give you a problem build it Turn it in you can write up your process and how you got to build but you're limited to five pages The end I know I saw your jaw drop right I mean yeah, you've probably written like pretty good RFPs I were like yeah, 50 pages right five pages and then oh and all but by the way It all has to be up on github and we're gonna test it all and we were able to get Companies small vendors large vendors people who've never worked in the government space before To answer this call to be on the agile BPA I don't know the exact numbers, but it's a lot. We got a lot and this was our first tronch Trying to get people in to see okay Can we start recommending because 18f we have way too much business coming in for us to handle We just we absolutely cannot handle the need that's out there but what we want to do is to be able to Verify that there are other vendors who work like us who have human-centered design agile Methodologies, this is what they do and we want to be able to refer them over to say we can't handle This challenge that you have at the moment, but this is a trusted partner with us You could come in and work with them and that's one of the ways we're working on it Yeah, and I pause when you ask that question because I've been my mind space My headspace has been so much thinking about what we can do to work better with vendors like and so the flip is like Had to pause there like good question and Just briefly like I mean 18f is doing a lot of work I feel like we're doing a lot of work one for help us work better with it within the agencies I mean there's so many different agencies and opportunities But through that work because everything we're doing is open and open source and released and you know follow our blog We have a lot going on 18f.gsa.gov But like we just recently the design team just recently released like a first pass of you know a v1 of like the words Design standards like here's here's a UI kit that you can use that we know is 508 compliant like out of box You can trust it. You know your agency partner will trust it Method cards sharing helping educate like how we do the design process that sort of thing and there's a lot of other things Going on but to your question of like how you can work better There are a lot of like contractual and you know the agile BPA and things that you know like you know Participate in but I on a tactical level I'm still forming this but like on a tactical level like when say you have a client and I'm thinking maybe in the Fed space but It's like framing it and it's hard not to because there's such a pressure of Requirements and policy and the governments in the risk aversion business. So like you're dealing in fear, you know And some level or another fear and aspiration like you have to figure it out And it's like how to frame your relationship with them So it's more of a partnership Keep it focused on the on the what and not the how that you're delivering because once you're in the how then everyone's like It's just like was that the right thing or not versus like like the benefit of that And there's a third point that I'm gonna remember later. I think the what's pretty important. Yeah, actually You know the how and yeah governments got the how they've got like 22 steps Right yeah, but if you keep focused on the what yeah, and if you're like if it's just a like Like it's not like oh, you're just there to crank out code and solve something or maybe that that that I mean That's a whole different discussion of maybe those instances But when it has to do with like the user experience and it's focused around a goal You're in a partnership. You're helping depending on your client You're helping educate them on how to make decisions about that like as a teaching process to I Think that I go a couple things the first one is maybe a little obvious But like come be a government vendor like there's a lot of really amazing design development firms who don't consider government contracts and Government has a lot of work to do to make And then not our solicitations easier to read and easier to find But there are a lot of really important meaningful interesting problems If you want to be working on like hunger homelessness public art housing Veterans it's at the federal level veteran services immigration College access like government is the place to do all that stuff like yes, you can go Take on nonprofits as clients who work on those issues, but government is going to be way bigger and have way more scale and way more reach so If you if your firm is interested in working on clients that work on social issues government is potentially the biggest and most impactful one And I would say that's probably one of the best ways to be a good vendor is to be a good shop and then be a vendor and then two other things one is Teach the teacher man the fish thing which is like even if you don't normally do this invite your government to send some developers to pair program with You invite them to send they may not have any designers, but invite them to send some people to design with you Maybe you don't normally do this but teach them what you're doing as you do it Don't let it be like your special private sector wizard magic like give them a workshop on agile Give them a workshop on user-centered design like stop for an hour or two to tell them what you're doing so that they Don't just like see a better product at the end But understand why the product is better this time as compared to other vendor relationships they've had and then I Would also say like extreme transparency like let them in using JIRA or pivotal tracker like let them in like show them Your user stories let them approve user stories Let them help you write acceptance criteria like really partner with them even more than you might normally because they need to learn how this works and the last one is like Help government like it released itself from the cycle of maintenance contracts and always relying on external vendors like let them learn the Codebase provide them with really good documentation At the end of your contract help them figure out how they're gonna maintain it in a way that's sustainable don't make them Dependent on a proprietary solution so whatever you can do to help them sort of be better customers I think yeah sort of a noble ask, but I would hope that it's your government to like you're the shareholders yourself so You'll have that sort of self-interest as a citizen So this there's clearly a role for the private sector to play here a big role and I think you know we're all here in part because we'd like to help Make government an effective lever for change right and I think we're here at SoCAP where a lot of the conversation is about how Capital can be a lever for change. How do we bring these conversations together? How can capital be a part of making government more efficient or effective at at making progressive change? Yeah, do you wanna? Invest in startups that are building tech for government don't write off the government industry is too hard to break into because Mikey Dickerson who's the head of the US Digital Service has this quote that the line right now between public and private sector tech is porous It's like permeable we can cross it and I think that's true also for capital and true for startups And so we're working on the demand side, but we need your help to meet us in the middle and support the supply side Yeah, I would say like every every day at least a handful of times a week You know is like what is there anything off private off the shelf that we can use? Is there something open source off the shelf that we can use as well? We did what what what should we be building ourselves and what is obviously been solved out there? And how do we interact with that in an open way? I would say one of the One of the best ways that capital could probably help out with the federal government and really understand the The the challenges from inside is We have people that come in for you know a couple months rotations If you have if you have you know Engineers if you have designers if you have people that you know have been working really hard and you know that they're super civic-minded Release them for a little bit, you know send send them over and and let them know that they that they can come back We fang that people You know as as government is is hungry for learning new methods and they honest to God They want it to be better for everyone. I've seen out here that people are also really hungry for some civic engagement No, I can't tell you how many people come to me and say I Want to make a change. I've spent my entire career. I've spent the last 16 years I make a great video game and I need to do something that's feeding my soul and so I you know, I would say if you have the means and and you want to be able to do that to Allow some people to take a you know a spin at City federal state government Go back teach what they know. It'll make you a better Vendor, it'll probably make them a better citizen And I really think that the the solution to getting ahead of this is that We work together in like the most open porous way possible Yeah One more thing you can do the mayor has a startups and residents program that brings a cohort of startups into City government to embed themselves for four months and work with departments and it's a very mutually beneficial Partnership because the startup gets like unprecedented Opportunity to work with real users and the government gets to see how start up build the product We had the first cohort last year and we'll be doing another one in the spring So if you know of any civic-minded companies who are working on a product that might benefit from Partnering with government. We'd I'd love to talk to you and we'd love to have them apply And Ashley in a way, you know, you're a fellow, right? Yeah, so you're kind of doing what Thank you for your work. Yeah, I think in the last year you've seen a lot of wins from the mayor's office You guys have the programs that you just mentioned They're ending the challenges. What's the most challenging thing you've done this year? My job is challenging every day as all good jobs are I think I Would say the biggest challenges that there's so much to do government is the city of San Francisco is so big and we're working on so many things for the residents of San Francisco and with them and Sometimes it's hard to know where to start or which pieces to try to bite off first As he worked with a number of different agencies Challenges and yeah I was gonna say like I actually was just thinking like I want to share like a challenge that actually ended up being a win I'm not just like that's like the interview question technique of all times But which was like I did a three-day workshop with the Department of Labor Couple weeks ago and the challenge was that it was just we tried to achieve a lot in three days So like is the hardest thing was like I realized we'd bit like bit off a huge very aggressive optimistic agenda and pull together a team last minute like you know with some planning and then last minute additions that Helped us achieve that because we were trying to deal with like a specific workflow of a product within all this stuff I want to like respect that and not talk about it yet But like we worked on this specific workflow that had ever been like updated or looked at And there's so many like it's like a big ball of yarn because it's not just oh, yes Of course, you know the online you know the form should be online and not like a handwritten You know filled up form and of course this and of course that but there's also like this collection of like policy Concerns and process concerns and people the teams that like realize this mission for this one part of the DOL Like is distributed all over the team And so we quickly got in there and we had like this like we did a lot of like kind like vision big picture Like exercises and at the end we did two two prototyping tracks And one was the expected like let's do like spin up like a what would happen if your form is digital And how might that work and and that was great and we got like model How that works actually in the conversation we had a policy person in the room and the person who processes these applications like talking together and that was a huge win You know and then the other track was like how might you improve this workflow without any technical solution? You know what are the like what are the workflow and we use like some agile methods like to kind of break that down Which is that's what I talked about like agile with project management and well as well So it's kind of a win in that like after the workshop ended They're talking they're still talking to each other now and they're still realizing like this phrase of like what can any of you in this room? Do differently next week, you know or the next two weeks that you don't need the 18-month procurement process To wait for it to start like one of the things you can do so it ended up being a win But like the challenge was like we we tried to do a lot just in three days Speaking of procurement, I imagine you've had a few challenges in your time Yeah, I do a lot of I Do a lot of reinterpretation of You know The rules and some of the the laws and some of the legislature I work very closely with our office of general counsel To see what we can and can't do some of the things that you hear people Often I will suggest something and we'll be hit with that's illegal You can't do it. It's completely illegal for the following reasons. I was like, yeah Where is it illegal? Like where what's saying? I can't actually do that thing. I want to do And a lot of times it's just an interpretation of a law, right? So we can reinterpret laws. We can reinterpret statute. We can go back to Congress and ask them to Better explain what they had intended when they wrote this that is perfectly a legitimate thing to do and we do it a lot Also, sometimes it's just the way it's always been and that's just not a really good answer, you know, so We we fight pretty hard against that that sentiment and we do a lot of bureaucratic hacking I think to Come in to say that things can be changed just a little bit different and no one's going to jail No, this is not gonna happen. You have to get the attorneys on your side Which thank God we got some good ones But that that is the biggest challenge to I think procurement at the at the moment But I'm thankful that we have people that are coming in that can see How things could be different and how things could be better because I think that we have been lacking that new blood and that new Knowledge and that new enthusiasm for a while. I Love that term Yeah, whenever I introduce myself, you know, so Jesse's a design. Yeah, everybody's got a thing that they do, right? Except for me and I just tell people that I'm a full-stack bureaucrat I'm your memo writer. I'm your congressional liaison. I'm your press secretary Solidarity solidarity With a few minutes we have left Any questions that? If you over here, I think there's a microphone testing So I'm an I'm an organization development specialist and we've done a bunch of projects and culture change with government and The struggle we've had is trying to meet their waterfall RFP Because we don't know where we can get in a culture change within government and So we're about to do a new one We're having conversations with the very large county government agency And it's a culture change they've gone from 300 employees to 1700 employees in a year and a half and obviously they swamp their culture So the struggle I have is in responding to the RFP Requirements and meeting that and saying I can meet these outcomes, but I don't know any advice Um, well, I could speak to you further about how you're What department you're going after because so there's there's two sides to it, right? Like there's one side is the vendor community wanting to come in wanting to be able to take on some of these challenges The other side is that you also have to have a willing participant And you have to have somebody who who understands Why this could be or should be different? If an RFP is asking for waterfall and you really want to answer it I would I would answer it and let them know Probably why this other method could be a better method. I would take a chance on that You have to remember that the people that are Reviewing these these RFPs that they come in They're just they're just normal people Some of them are looking to check the boxes, you know, do they have this? Yes Do they have this? Yes, do they have this? Yes, but more often than not There are people that are from within the office who do want to see the problem solved So, you know, we've taken that approach before yeah, okay I know you you've written the RFP this way, but we'd like to suggest this methodology would you like to consider it and putting that in the response and We found that to be successful But it does come with challenges once you start doing the work. Yep, because They're not sure exactly what you're talking about and So it's read what's really helpful is have relationships with folks like these who can be a trusted partner, right? You as a vendor there is this experience that every agency is every person in government has had with a vendor before They've they've had at least one bad relationship and they don't want to get burned again And so when you have folks who can say no really I'm on your side. I'm on this side of the curtain Trust us Especially when they can get in before the RFP is written. Yeah, really. I'm gonna really help bring that change But having those partners to help build that culture is really important Yeah, I'm not I'm not sure if this helps specifically within like the org consulting domain because I'm kind of intrigued by that But I know like with the stuff we're doing with like, you know Software procurement and projects like that. We're we're encouraging people to do modular agile contracts Small bits not huge like change to boil the ocean like let's do this for this amount of time It protects both sides in the relationship and we're framing it We're like you're not buying a bunch of requirements being met. You're buying you're buying brains Honestly brains in time You know with some sense of outcome But not like that detailed list because I've also talked to people who have been like well-meaning vendors I'm gonna go tech a little bit here, but like well-meaning vendors trying to accomplish something saying like oh I could do this one user story that would improve the blah blah blah system and their supervisors like it's not on the requirements list You actually can't do that. Mm-hmm, which is insane I love that idea of sort of hiring hiring brains though I think when you have great folks on your team Yeah, lead with them and and have the reason that you're selected as a partner me Because those are the folks that they want to work with and that then helps establish that trust They know that these are the right folks to do the work because of who they are not because they've checked the bunks or boxes on the RFP response. Yeah. Yeah Cool hey, um, my name is Kieran. I work for CAST we basically make tech for good happen in the UK. So I'm clearly from London And we work a lot with GDS that kind of area in fact my girlfriend works for GDS So I can't get away from it and one of the problems in the UK is this kind of government is awesome The whole kind of agile processes. This is amazing one of the problems. We've had in the UK with three years on There's a kind of impasse Because we can work around the edges of improving access to government services through these great digital approaches The problem is that where we've got to is that you're blocked by a wider transformational change in the way the government operates and It's it's it's trying to bring agile into the heart of government. That's the block. We've got to right And I want to kind of put that forward to the thing to kind of get your your thoughts and interest on that You can tinker with the edges, but actually getting into the heart of it is the barrier. We're now facing I'm so sorry. Is an acoustic perfect storm here. What what was the question? It's just there's background Yeah On the edges working in the heart you guys are yeah, well, yeah, so I also think that you know GDS and us USDS the US digital service and 18f we sort of have like a little love affair with each other, right? Because GDS came first and they got they got all this parliamentary support and they've got they got a cabinet office and they were able to actually like Literally bring all of the technology in together into one spot And that's you know, that's sort of like our dream, right that we would have one office, but I also think that What that allows is for you to have one really great office, but you're kind of insular, right? So our approach is a little bit different. I you know, I've said this before but I'm hoping that digital strategy Good technology within the federal government spreads like a virus like I wanted everywhere I don't want it just an 18f. I don't want it just in GSA. I want it in education. I want it in veterans affairs I want the little digital service teams to be everywhere and I want there to be a legitimate career path for a technologist a designer in Federal government to go from agency to agency throughout their career like that is that's my dream and I think that that is You can see that how the US approach is just a little bit different than GDS Although that was our dream in the beginning was to be the US side of of GDS But I do think that in order for GDS right now. It's so Protected it's gonna have to go out and find other pockets and Try to start infecting. Yeah other other parts of the government if I can hop on here I don't know Right. It's like I mean that's it and I Mean I'm going back to like the agile process. Sometimes you just have to start So yeah, sometimes you just have to start your learning stuff and in a way This is such a non-prioritized thing of saying like all the things all the time And with enough people in actions happening from us DS from the different type of things that we're experimenting with inside 18f all different levels like there's something there There's definitely top-down like you need like the CIO level sweet Like the folks running agencies to get them on board on the right way to having like prime Strategic examples that demonstrate something so if there's like a critical thing or something that happens to an agency How we can show how like modern best practices can respond to that goes a long way for building like Currency and support inside other agencies as well Keep asking that question And we're keep we're keep we're still learning because I don't have a good answer either But I would say like the first thing that comes to mind is that like we're talking about this like iterative Agile human-centered approach when it comes to like the very bottom of what is a waterfall process I'm hoping the non-technologists and the audience are following these software development terms, but um Like really governance starts when we elect people and they sit somewhere in a legislative body and make policy And then that like flows down to a department head and then to a program manager who then wants to build a digital tool And so we're talking about using agile down here where we're like in human-centered design to real build a really beautiful service experience like for example for food stamps, but What I think it becomes really transformative is when you get to the that involving that whole cycle So how does the agile human-centered design work on that food stamp enrollment experience affect the policymakers decisions about how many people to include in eligibility requirements for food stamps and so That's a long way away, but I think you start to see when you plug in this allows you to collect more data and open that data and see that data faster when you when you digitize a service and so Then policymakers have more data to work with and have that data more quickly and they can test their policy ideas more quickly And so what I my vision, you know would be that It really gets to the heart of governance when you start involving the full Policy-making cycle in the service design process and so that you can be like Testing and tweaking a policy as you go Whereas right now that part all still happens 18 months earlier even even if you're super iterative and human-centered when you implement it All that can I add on to that? Yeah another thing that I would do from just like a purely political perspective is if you wanted to get out and get into those other pockets, you know not tinker around the edge Find somebody who needs a win. I mean there are a lot of politicians that need wins out there, right? And there's a lot of elected officials and they don't have so much time on their hands Find those champions because often they can take the bigger risks They're incentivized to take the bigger risk and they're incentivized to have the bigger reward So that's been one of the things that you know We look for is finding those champions at the upper echelons who have a lot to gain from the wins So I work in government and I totally resonate with the bureaucracy you're talking about And one of the things in terms of the work that you're doing is I think of improved morale Better efficiency increased productivity, which is something we all want so I'm as you know in government We measure everything so I wondered if Whether at the local or at the federal level they're measuring this improved productivity morale and efficiencies that you're working on I don't know if we're Morale we are not trust me. You're improving morale. Yeah, I mean I you know, I think I Don't know how we would measure it. You know, I don't know I've seen a lot of excitement for I think people are excited Yeah, people really like about the iterative process is that you get to see wins really fast Yeah, that's exciting. You get to feel like you're part of the process You're not throwing something over the fence and waiting for your vendor to come back You're part of the team and I think that that builds great culture and it It it can it can change people's career path It also connects people to the human impact of their work humans that are designed does that by default because you're talking to your users And see users and that feels really good Yeah, we are able to show like some You know like more bureaucratic wins like stuff with the The agile BPA, you know, we had 400 respondents. We went through it and got back to everybody in Three weeks was kind of unheard of So we have we have those sorts of things that show like when you do stuff with this methodology with this type of design thinking You are able to actually turn things around Quite a bit faster. What's the question about measure sign? Yeah, so I don't think we have time for any more questions, but thank you all thank you the Panelists awesome. Thank you to Jen polka for code for America for the slides Totally awesome. Thanks, Jen And yeah, thank you all to come in Thank you