 Hi everyone, thanks for joining us today. I'm so excited to be joined. My name is Lillian Corell, and I'm excited to be joined by Chris Thompson, my colleague at Knight Foundation who heads up a Knight's strategy in the city of San Jose. Hi Chris. Hello Lillian, how you doing? I'm good, I'm good. So in the coast to coast tradition, I'm on the west coast, what coast are you in? Even though you're San Jose, where are you? Well I'm on the coast of the Great Lakes today in Upper Ontario, Canada, heading home today. Perfect. Well thanks for joining me today. I'm really excited by the conversation. The title of today's show is Data Driven, it's driving decisions with local data. And as you Chris know, I love data. I've been working with data and technology to try to drive government decision making for a while. And I think what's particularly exciting, so it's not a new topic, but what's particularly exciting about today's show is we're gonna see a great example emerging out of your hometown, the city of San Jose, that's really about trying to both connect the data to the decision making, but also to equity and equitable outcomes. And that's really more an art than a science. And it's not something that any city has really mastered. And so I'm really excited to hear the lessons that are being learned in San Jose and how we can all take note. And we're gonna be joined today by two awesome women. First, Christine Cain from the city of San Jose, the chief data officer in the city of San Jose. And Panthea Lee, the executive director of Reboot, a social impact organization that's developing strategies to advance equity and justice and also really looking at the intersection of innovation and intersectional solutions. So I'm pretty excited about what these two women can tell us. And also, one thing that we wanna do in this show is really drive the conversation around this past year. Cause the context of doing, this work is hard anytime, but this last year has been particularly difficult, right? Communities are really struggling with all kinds of issues. And they're doing it and they're trying to respond in very different ways, ways that are authentic to where they are, their demographics, their needs and even the way, their public perception about this pandemic. So I'm hoping that Panthea can give us also a really kind of high level sense of what's going on across communities and how we should all kind of also take stock and think about the future. So with that, Chris, tell us more about your colleague in San Jose and how the work of equity and data has emerged over the last year. Well, I started working together when she joined the technology innovation at the City of San Jose. How do you, it's hard to believe because we've come so far in that time. I've been around smart cities since about 2007, which is kind of crazy when I think about it. And what was the biggest thing for me was when we tried to talk to people, the opportunities in front of her, she was taking a very different approach to solving the problem of bringing data into decision-making. She was looking differently at the types of data she was going to use. And more importantly, she was driving towards a model that wasn't top-down. All the other smart cities stop out and around. And very top-down, the city department or tech industry department. Instead, Christine was building them up. And for me, that was the time that I'd like her to describe how she came to think about the projects this way. Oh yeah, go ahead. Hey there, so I think your connection, we're having a little bit of issue with your internet connection. I wonder if maybe we could restart that. And then while you're doing that, let me just sort of recap I think for folks what I believe you just said, which is a really important point about this sort of top-down, bottom-up approach. And sort of as an intro to Christine. If I'm right, Christine, I think what Chris was talking about is a lot of these efforts when we talk about smart cities, we think about tech visions driven a lot by the technology and the companies that are really driving it. It's a solution oftentimes in search of a problem. And we think about that with data too, data-driven decision-making. Sometimes it's like, how am I gonna make a decision at the top? It sounds like you flipped the switch a little bit and that's what's bringing about some interesting results. So why don't you tell us a bit more and we'll wait for our colleague, Chris, to come back on. Sounds great, thanks so much, Lilian, for the intro. And Lilian and Chris, Chris, I really appreciate the mentorship over the past year. So like Chris mentioned, I am kind of non-traditional in terms of my background. I joined the city through a fellowship from Harvard Business School and this is actually my first full-time public sector job. I had only worked in organizations that kind of use data in cutting edge ways, which, and I think I brought that perspective from working in high-growth technology companies and hedge funds to the public sector at least when it comes to rigor and transparency. And so I thought one of the most interesting parts of serving in a data capacity in the public sector and especially during the global pandemic is you're kind of in this situation where I think the pandemic overnight kind of transformed the city into one of the largest platforms for service delivery overnight, right? So, I mean, City Hall shut down March of last year and we were responsible for everything from food delivery to making sure that hotspots were being delivered for folks who were either unconnected or under connected to the internet, making sure that kind of the core services that folks lean on the government to provide continues to get provided in a digital format. And so there was a huge service delivery component to it and there's also a huge opportunity to kind of make sure that as we're serving and doing our jobs throughout this pandemic that we're doing it in a way that is driving equitable outcomes, right? That we're not just sort of meeting the bare minimum in terms of need, but that we're actually making it significantly better. And so I joined the city, gosh, I can't believe it's been a year. It's really just, this time has really gone by. And I kind of, my first couple of weeks on the job was really just getting to know my counterparts, my counterparts in the mayor's office, my counterparts on the city manager's office. And I had to sort of joined right after another night foundation equity initiative called the social progress imperative that kind of just took a very different approach from sort of how our team ended up doing it. So social progress imperative use census data. And so this was an organization that kind of came in from the outside and used a much more top down targeted approach in terms of understanding the performance of various city departments. And I think the other thing I wanted to mention is the fact that social progress imperative was a program that was prioritized by the mayor and city council, but didn't necessarily have the same resonance with folks who are kind of the frontline operators in government. And I think this whole survey was happening at the height of the pandemic. And so it was really interesting as I kind of joined my first few weeks, I was talking about equity and folks were telling me, oh, we just did that. We just wrapped up like an eight month long survey with the social progress imperative. And I actually got a lot of really valuable insights out of SPI, but I think one of my biggest takeaways from that program was that the outcomes of that survey wasn't resonating from frontline operators. I think folks wanted to feel empowered from what they learned in data. And there was a gap when it came to using census data versus department specific data. That's great. It sounds like you're, so you entered the city at the height of the situation where data is more valuable than ever. It looks like Chris is back. So maybe I'll transition back to him and you can just start telling us. So how this bottoms up approach actually really changed the dynamic around decision-making. Maybe you could talk more specifically about that. And Chris, I don't know if you want to from the question differently, but go ahead. No, I'd go specifically to the projects you looked at. Again, for me, what was so attractive about them is that there were very small decisions that were being made relatively deep in the city. And I think you brought a different framework to really drive equity by making lots of small decisions broadly. So maybe you talk about the PRNS scholarships, the 311 program and how you came to those projects. Yeah, so our very first data project was with the Parks and Recreation Youth Scholarships. I mean, this is one of the longest running programs in the city. It's been around for over 10 years and has gone through multiple iterations reform. And I think one of the really interesting things about working with Parks and Recreation was folks who work at community centers, they were very much on the front lines of the pandemic, right? They were thinking about the families and the young people that they were used the same day-to-day that they weren't able to kind of reach out to in the same way. And so it was a high priority program. And I was really grateful for the leadership of that department who kind of knew that the census wasn't really a good starting point for understanding how to address the need, especially in San Jose. So Parks and Recreation scholarships rely on the federal free reduced lunch metric to qualify folks. But at least in San Jose, the lowest income or the council district with the lowest household income, it's $78,000, right? And so there's a really huge gap between kind of using a federal standard for need and what's realistic at the local level. And so the department came to us and honestly just started with a really open-ended question, are we doing a good enough job meeting the need in San Jose? And I think what I really appreciated about the fact that, first of all, it was really helpful. I think we were able to do some things that outside organizations couldn't, which is literally just going to a San Jose Community Center, right? So I have a team that wasn't just staying in the data set. So yes, we use the data set. We looked at registration data. We actually looked at the proximity of people who are able to benefit from the program and how far they've lived from a community center. And we realized that, wow, 96% of folks who benefited from the program over the last 10 years live within a mile and a half from the nearest community center. That was interesting, right? But I think what we also did was the fact that we actually shadowed the front desk. We, I actually, this was actually last Friday, one of my team members dropped off like 20, like 2,000 flyers at the local community center and just sat there and kind of like helped pass out the flyers and just helped talk through folks who are starting to kind of go back to these community centers. And so there is this opportunity to kind of, that kind of married like the rigor that comes with data, but with also the humility to recognize that data is only just, it only shows you part of the picture, right? And that you kind of have to be able to do both. The interesting part, I think in our conversation, and so you're talking about the use of production data. So data that was widely available in the city, not necessarily codified to be ingested and analyzed, but you also paid particular attention to future collection, to the reliability of that data, to the continuous availability of that data. Do you wanna talk about that and some of the work that you did inside the divisions to ensure that data would be available in the future and reliable? Yeah, so Chris, when you're saying production data, I would say this looks different for every single department we work with. With Parks and Recreation, production data was the equivalent of registration data. So instead of looking at kind of, very high level demographic information from the census, we honestly just kind of went straight into kind of the city database to understand, over the last 10 years, who these programs were serving. That was actually a really helpful starting point, I think, because it allowed us to build in the context of reform, right? So again, this is one of the oldest programs, I think most folks in San Jose who have families, they know about these programs. This is a form of childcare, but there's been a lot of policy changes, right? There has been changes in terms of scholarship caps. There has been changes around eligibility. And so I think whenever we kind of start a new data project, we always wanna embed that local context because you can see it in the registration data. You can look at, so things that we paid attention to, we're really interested in the distribution of folks who benefited across the city. We looked at proximity to community center, but we also paid attention to the differences between folks who have never benefited in the past and folks who we were able to retain, right? This is a very kind of private sector way of looking at it, but I think if we think about government as a service delivery platform, I think bringing some of that thinking and marrying that with the goal of equity is one of the ways that we've been able to drive equitable outcomes. The other thing I think that was interesting for me is we talk a lot about data and we sometimes forget that there's always people, people either that we're trying to understand or people making decisions. You're proposing some work in the city to actually bring, not really create data scientists within divisions and departments, but really to bring expertise so that people can understand the data. It's available to them, but also the implications of the context that the data provides. Do you wanna talk about that a little bit? Yeah, absolutely. So we have a phenomenal HR leader on the city manager side and she is so passionate about just sort of building, building comfort with numbers, right? And really kind of integrating data and using data to kind of make decisions and generate insights into kind of part, into people's daily, into people's kind of daily, they're into people's day to day. And so we are in the process of launching a data science data analysis boot camp for folks in the city. It's going to be part of the learning and development program. And I think the reason why the timing on this is so important is because right now I'm actually leading a team of 20. I have a team of data scientists, data storytellers and folks who are using data for community engagement in the mayor's office. But as we are embedded across seven departments and seven programs, it's really important for us to also have counterparts in those departments who can continue to sustain the work and who actually have, quite frankly, more of that context, more of that program management context than my team. And so that's actually kind of where 10 months into this work, that's where we're at. We have a really robust and diverse talent on the mayor's office and we're really excited to now build those skills inside the city manager's office. Yeah, it's really interesting to hear you talk, Christine, because it just goes to show how every city is really going to do this in a very different way. And for a lot of reasons, it kind of has to do that. Part of it is the governance structure, part of it is the demographic, as you talked about the income levels, like in San Jose, 78,000 is actually a need level that you wouldn't see in other parts of the country. So for all these reasons, cities really have to go about this in very unique ways. I'd love to turn to Panthea, especially kind of tying it back to a point that you brought up a couple minutes ago about equity. And that we really have to define equity in very fluid ways in some ways because every city is different. Panthea, why don't we start just by one, hearing more about you reboot and the kind of role that you typically play in the civic innovation space. And then maybe let's talk about this question of equity and how cities are really trying to address equity, yes, with data and in other ways. Yeah, sure, thank you. That was really fascinating. Thank you, Christine. So my background is in ethnography and design and service design and in facilitation. And I think the role that I tend to play in this space is I often act as an organizer, a bridger, a mediator across diverse communities that often don't talk to each other or might have quite negative stereotypes around one another. So activists and government, community groups and international institutions, and trying to bring everyone to the table to address these historical differences and co-create together. And so, you know, been doing this work globally in the open data and open government space, helped organize the Open City Summit in Argentina, done a lot of global South work. And then also here in New York City where I'm based, we've done a lot of work with the city around driving more equitable, accessible approaches to using open data with Kelly Jin, who was a chief analytics officer before night stole her. And, you know, most recently on the 10-year roadmap here. And so that's kind of the perspective that I'm bringing to all this. And I think just to the point around, you know, questions around equity in this point in history, in the sort of point in time that we're at now, I think it is such a necessary conversation and such a fraught one as well. I think what we've seen in the last year is I see a lot of folks freezing up right now, you know, for lots of reasons. We've all had our personal things to attend to. It's been a difficult year in so many ways. And I think over the course of the crisis, we saw politics getting more intense. Folks were throwing out regular protocols. And I think, you know, and then, you know, we were engaging in what do we do now in ways that are not the norm. And I think that, and then I think with the murder of George Floyd and the racial justice uprisings and then many rightful critiques of biases of blind spots in data. I think I saw a lot of folks not then really knowing how to engage around these conversations. What does data-driven decision making mean? If we can all agree that there are historical blind spots, there are biases in the data that we have. And you saw, I think, a lot of groups, either form, such as Stop AAPI Hate, who said, you're not collecting data on our communities, to folks that have been doing this work for a long time, data for Black Lives, the IWB Wells Just Data Lab, you know, AI for the people, others sort of coming together and trying to say, well, these are other sources that we need to be looking at. And I think we haven't really found, as we're trying to deal with a pandemic, we've found how to then have all of these conversations all at once. And I think as a result, I think there's been a lot of frustration with government, rightly and wrongly. I think the national level narrative, when the states are playing the hunger games with PPE, you know, I think sometimes outside folks tend to treat government as a monolith. And so at a local level, you started seeing folks setting up their own initiatives, mutual aid initiatives, whatnot. They were saying, this is a more equitable way to deal immediately with the injustices, the blind spots that I'm seeing in my own communities. Government is not stepping up. And I think there's, you know, I've been involved in a bunch of these efforts. I think there's merit to them. And I think that narrative that it perpetuates that government will never do the right thing. That is also not helpful for us either. So anyway, I'll sort of, yeah, I see we're having a tough time having these conversations right now and finding trusted spaces where we can engage in an honest dialogue. Do you think if we've learned anything over the past year about the importance of moving, the pandemic, for example, didn't offer us an opportunity to sit back and freeze. And arguably the unrest and the trauma we've had over the last two years didn't offer that opportunity either. Do you think that helps us see a way forward with more direct involvement, more direct engagement as part of this build back better phase and recovery? Yeah, I hope so. I have very mixed, I am flip flop on this question almost daily or hourly. I think at the beginning of the pandemic, I think we saw a lot of, I think many of us were cheering. We saw suddenly a bunch of progressive policies being passed seemingly overnight. We were treating, you know, refugees undocumented folks with dignity, if we were housing the homeless, you had cities, you know, like Amsterdam and Copenhagen adopting doughnut economics. And, you know, and then suddenly it was like, we're all in this together, we're gonna help one another. And I think at a macro level right now, what we're seeing with the, you know, I keep going back to the big pharma fight with WTO IP waivers and, you know, like literally blocking ways for folks to live now that, you know, we in the US have bought ourselves out of the pandemic. Like there are things around sort of human nature and capitalist incentive that do not give me a lot of hope. And yet at the same time, I think you also see folks that are, that have found new agency, you know, that have, you know, I think a lot of the emergency distribution of PPEs, a lot of mutual aid efforts, I think that has given folks new hope around where they want to go. I see a lot of people leaving jobs and institutions that they don't think aligns with their values and their politics anymore. And I think that, I think there's a helpful shuffling going on. And at the same time, there's a lot of, I think institutional task forces, working groups, commissions right now that are being formed to address these new challenges and new lenses that have been there for a long time, but there's now just broader cultural awareness. And I'm mixed on where those are gonna go. I think most of them for the large parts actually follow pretty traditional ways of how we're going to solve problems in New York state, for example, Governor Cuomo appointed our, one of our top surveillance state lobbyists, you know, Eric Schmidt to lead a commission to reimagine New York. And the things that have come out of that are really around affordable broadband, telehealth, whatnot, very important things to invest in. But if we're going to reimagine New York entirely, who should be at the table? What are the things that are really gonna structurally change? Because, you know, the folks that got us into this mess are not gonna get us out. And until we can try and, you know, really reframe these efforts, bring different people to the table, I worry that we're saying the right things and not necessarily going to deliver on them. Yeah. I wanna pick up on one of these points and maybe get more specificity around what's happening in communities, Panthea, especially around mutual aid work. But let me just prompt our audience, if you're out there and you have a question, please feel free to put it in the comments, in the chat. If you're on Facebook or Twitter, you can always ask a question on Twitter. You can just use the night live hashtag. But, so Panthea, I've heard a lot about, obviously the mutual aid work that's happening in communities, but some of our audience may not know. Can you just describe exactly what emerged over the last year when we talk about these mutual aid networks? What does that really look like? And then maybe start to tee up a little bit, I think, to tie it back to Christine's work. You're talking about mutual aid work that happens in community, and then there's efforts like Christine's that are happening within these institutions. At what point do these things come together to, as you describe, maybe really re-envision a more equitable, inclusive, dynamic future that's also resilient, because we also have to be better prepared for any kind of future pandemic, emergency, natural disaster, whatever. Right, right, absolutely. I mean, I can share a little bit of what I've seen, and would love Christine's thoughts on this too. I think that, I mean, mutual aid, I think, is not new. It's been happening all around the world. I think it is human nature, even though sort of modern political theory tells us otherwise. And I think that what we saw during the pandemic was really people banding together to help neighbors in need, you know? And this is certainly not unique to Brooklyn where I am, but I think what is unique about the mutual aid group that I'm part of is, I mean, seemingly overnight, I think within like three weeks, it was a more sophisticated, you know, ticket tracking, you know, issue resolution system and sort of network than I've seen on many, frankly, like public sector, social sector programs. And I think that is, I think there's larger challenges with that because, you know, these were effectively a lot of engineers, data scientists, designers that the public sector often can't afford. So suddenly we're sort of, you know, channeling these people into doing sort of this voluntary work, which tends to paint government as a negative, you know, you come and do a tour of duty or you kind of avoid it at all costs and then you set up a separate system. That's a separate. And, you know, here in Bed-Stuy, this group, I think collected about over $1 million delivered groceries, essential supplies, medicines to about, I think, 10 or 15% of the population here. And I think it was a really good stop gap in a point because frankly, folks criticize government for not being able to be nimble and I get it. Like having worked with government, government's good at some things, it's not great at others, you know? And so I think it was coming into fill in the gap and I think there's really beautiful, heartwarming work. At the same time, how these intersect, I think I heard a lot of folks at City Hall within the mayor's office wanting to connect with these, thinking about, okay, how can we leverage these as information distribution channels, as last mile delivery sort of, you know, channels leverage the infrastructure, the civic infrastructure that has been built. At the same time, I worry that, I think a lot of those don't end up moving forward and we end up designing our own separate systems because we don't necessarily trust one another on both sides, you know, on the mutual aid side, I think, and with a lot of organizers I know, I think there's almost like an instinctive, you know, you're from a big institution, we can't trust you because of the big narratives that we have. And then I think in a lot of governments and international agencies and whatnot, I think folks are also nervous to reach out because you don't necessarily have incentive for sticking your neck out. There's procurement, legal structures, you know, all sorts of battles that we have to face in terms of actually integrating with these more informal networks that don't have formal registration. There's a lot of like logistical challenges. But I really think that now that we're out of immediate firefighting mode, I think there are real opportunities to sit down and learn from one another. What are you good at that we are not? And then, you know, on the government side, you have mandate, you have resources in a way that these groups are quite vulnerable, they're quite precarious. They're not necessarily sustainable or resilient. And how do we leverage the reach and the resources of government to help them be sustainable and continue delivering for communities in the long run. And I think that's a really interesting opportunity. Something that emerged early in San Jose during the pandemic was the Silicon Valley strong model. And it really brought together organizations from nonprofit, for-profit, government, religious organizations to help soothe and care for the city during the pandemic. And as we look forward, we've seen a lot of positive work there, but then I pivot into the work that Christine's leading right now. And what I'm seeing is the mayor's office coming together with the Office of Economic Development with the Downtown Association and an expanding group of other nonprofits to start to pivot into the future. And that's not something we've seen in the past. Do you just wanna talk about the work you're doing, Christine, with the Downtown Association? What's being proposed there? Yeah, this is a very new model where a... So today, before we finalized a partnership with the San Jose Downtown Association, a lot of our work has really just been kind of internal change management, right? We've completely embedded ourselves in IT and Parks and Recreation and Public Works, even honestly working with the fire department right now. And we have this really great opportunity where the San Jose Downtown Association came to us. They were really, I think they've just... It was all word of mouth. Honestly, our team is busy enough that I don't do any business development. And they actually just came to us and asked if we would be willing to help them kind of think help them set an equity objective as they're thinking about small business recovery in the city and then help them establish a set of metrics to hold them accountable. And I just thought this was such a great opportunity to kind of introduce the community stakeholder into our work. And I think just because the relationship with San Jose Downtown Association has gone so well, it really inspired us actually for how to bring a lot of the data work we're now doing about their departments into the community. And so to date, my team has reached out to 300 community organizations in San Jose. And when I say community organizations, it is everybody from, we work with legal youth advocates to faith-based organizations. We have had calls with 60 of them. We actually took a lot of the data work. We've made it publicly available and we've condensed them into 15-minute presentations. No, sorry, five-minute presentations for 15-minute calls. And every, and we had to have an internal metric where the folks are working on the data. For every single data analysis you do, you have a conversation with a community organization. And what that's actually translating to is at the end of July, we're actually going to be hosting roundtables, not just about the data work, but about the programs that the data, you know, that the data is providing insights on. And we're really hoping that by bringing, you know, city department leaders in and also community organizations, that can actually lead to the meaningful reforms. So it doesn't just feel like an internal change management. It's change management with input from key stakeholders. I'd love to pick up on that. It sounds like, you know, Panthea was talking about this issue of trust. And what's ironic is a lot of the, I feel like a lot of the push for more data-driven government was this belief that if we relied on more data, we could have more equitable decision-making. But the honest truth for all the reasons we've talked, bias, et cetera, data doesn't actually lead to equity. It, you know, it doesn't actually give us the right answer, whatever that is. And a lot of this is about the work of building trust. So it sounds like, Christine, what you just described is at least, I'm editorializing, but it sounds like an attempt to try to bring in the community and perhaps connect it to that data work and start to build some of that trust. Is that what you're talking about? And what other advice can you give, you know, the folks in the audience about how, how do we start to build that trust and still do the data work? Because I don't think we just give up on data altogether, but we clearly it's not the answer. So what do we pair it with? How do we really advance trust in this digital world? Yeah, I think data can build trust if it's done in a way, like humility kind of has to be at the center of our work. Like, again, I feel, I keep referencing my team, right? But I gotta emphasize, like I have a wonderful team where the programs we study aren't intellectual exercises for us. Like even for me, you know, I know what it's like to sign up for food stamps. These aren't, yes, we have the technical skills to now make a difference, but there's a lot of empathy and humility to our work. And so I think when data is studied or presented in a way where you could actually create choices, that's, I think that's when people don't feel immobilized for, you know, by the data. But I think there's also, you know, I think the fact that we even changed the data source, right? So we're not working with survey data, right? Which tends to be biased and, you know, there's a lot of underreporting with survey data, but we're actually just working with, we're looking at kind of who we were able to help. I think at points, I think it's, I think we've kind of, I think we're changing the conversations we have with the community because it's not just about, you know, what the program has been lacking, but I think it's been helping us understand where the areas of opportunity is, right? So, you know, I keep going back to Parks and Recreation, but if you go to our blog, we actually have a lot of other projects going on. I wanna give you one tangible point of decision that we're going to be having with community organizations and Parks and Recreation at the end of July, which is around, which is actually around zip codes, right? So we have this, we have six zip codes that we pay a lot of attention to the city. And right now, we were able to actually use the data to understand that over the last 10 years, 50% of scholarships given out are concentrated in those six zip codes. And we had the most interesting community or like conversations where, you know, there are some folks who feel like they should just have their own scholarship, right? Or it should be much more than 50%. And then I actually have also had really interesting conversations with folks who tell me that it should be better distributed across the city because there's also hidden needs in cities or hidden needs in communities with higher median incomes, right? I'm talking to parents who are telling me, one of them quit their job just so they didn't, so just so they didn't increase the threshold to qualify for subsidized scholarships. And today these scholarships are only subsidized at the 75% level, right? And so this is kind of just an example of like, these are the real conversations we're having. It's not really about the data, but the data has been a really great starting point. And Kristina, I just really love what you're saying there. A, bringing folks in to have conversations around the data. The data doesn't matter. We know there's problems there, but how do you open up and bring people in? And I think I just love the example that you just gave because I think I've done civic engagement work for so long and I am very tired of most of it, you know? Because I think so often we tell people, but so often I think we tell people, your voices matter, we want to hear what you have to say, give us your ideas, and we mean well, you know? I've been there, you mean well, you kind of take that information and then afterwards what happens is, you know, one of two things. I think one is you go upstream and you realize you actually can't do this. There are sort of institutional barriers. There's red tape, there's whatnot. And so, you know, then you mean, you really want to take that sort of, you know, voice process and sort of feed it in somewhere, where you struggle or you get a lot of different competing ideas, you know? There's a lot of different stakeholders. Community doesn't all think the same thing. So you get a lot of different ideas and then you as the person that collected all of them have to synthesize that into a cohesive policy or cohesive design and that's really difficult too because then everyone's angry at you, you know? You're like trying your best but everyone is frustrated with something that you did not do. And so I think a lot about, yeah, what does it mean to bring everyone together to work with humility as you're saying and say, I don't know all the answers. I'm going to do my damnedest. But you know, I think bringing people along the journey with you, helping folks see where your battles are going to be as well helps, I think build a lot of trust and understanding and you know, we're in this together because I think so often, you know, we end up saying I'm on this side, you're on this side, we can only touch at these specific points. So I love that. What really impressed me about the work that Christine was leading was that it helps get away from that model where everybody has a role. The very next decision you need to make is one that you can make to build equity. And I loved the way that Christina was approaching, Christina was approaching large scale transformation by giving everybody a role. Everybody an opportunity to move something forward and make it better. Yeah, and this note about choice. I mean, we're always trying to use data to like get an answer, but what if we're just using data to give people, like to reduce the number of choices or options and kind of help just, maybe that's the helping and decision-making. It's not telling you that you do A or B, but it's just telling you, hey, in a world of ABCD, pick one or the, pick A or B. I think that this is really interesting exploration and I'd be curious to see Christine in like a year how you're tracking perhaps the way that people are making decisions. Makes me think about the work you do, Panthea around ethnography, right? Like a lot of that is just really studying in some ways human behavior and the way that people consume information, make decisions, things like that. Really powerful. We have a quick question in, well, actually not a quick question, but it's a pretty powerful question from the audience about government's ability to really serve all and yet it has this mandate to serve all. So I'm just gonna ask, so in the common section, government is constrained by the politicization of public dollars and collectively, we want the social safety net that the government provides to benefit everyone, but what is the appetite for true innovation delivering public social services that impacts the community we live in? It sounds like writ large and not just directed at eliminating poverty, but perhaps strengthening the middle class, increasing public health education. And the thing that this question makes me think about is are we missing kind of a broader picture, perhaps in not strengthening all of, like a broader set of pillars that will actually help people really like step up from poverty if we're just so focused on that individual. It's a trade-off, right? We can focus on just eliminating poverty or we can focus on maybe strengthening a lot of these other systems that either prevent people from falling into poverty or when you kind of get them better positioned that can help them stay in the middle class and moving. I'm hoping I understood and capture that question well, but I don't know if you guys have reactions to that. Yeah. Please. I can jump in here. So I had mentioned that we are now embedded across seven departments and I think what's been really, I think what's been just such a great experience through working with the data is understanding what equity means to each department. I haven't really worked with a single department or honestly individual who says equity doesn't matter. I do think that folks come into this job, public servants want to serve all and they want to serve all of their residents to the best of their ability and for them to kind of experience that service the same way, that consistency is really important. And so it's been really interesting to even have conversations with the San Jose 311 team which is it's spread out across IT and public works and there are the folks that you call for garbage disposal and to report graffiti and sometimes the legal fireworks to San Jose youth scholarships, right? Which is for families who qualify for this program, right? And it's been really interesting to kind of realize that I don't think it's about equalizing service delivery at all, right? But it is about basically understanding the department specific context, their unique challenges and how to make sure that as they're doing their jobs day to day, there is that kind of consistency of experience across the city, right? I think certain 311 is a really interesting example where there are geographical differences, right? In terms of population densities and transportation access that makes service delivery for something like 311 different, right? And so if you go in and you try to have a mandate around trying to equalize service delivery times for every single type of service in every single council district it might not be realistic, right? And so maybe a better way to think about it is just more from the resident perspective, right? And making sure that maybe people like satisfaction is consistent across the district but also if you're gonna go ahead and track satisfaction making sure that we're doing as good of a job as possible and trying to measure that, right? So this is kind of an example where even 311 is one, you know the approach around equity and even the types of analysis the dashboards we're building for them is very, very different from a targeted program around youth scholarships. Just jumping in on that too I'm not sure if I totally understood the question but one way that I think about these questions around equity, what does it mean to serve all is you and I have been in the E government, open government sort of seeing that evolution of the space and I think so often what we have talked about I think the language of success in this space is about for a long time has been about efficiency and we try to de-politicize it we don't talk about equity, we don't talk about justice and so it's so exciting, you know from the conversations I've seen and Christine sounds like, you know with your teams and everyone that you're working with we're having these conversations like front and center now and I think what's challenging too though is in this space, I think we tend to take an a historical approach to how we move forward we tend to look at the data at this point in time and I think what we're having now in this country is we are having a reckoning with history I think, you know, conversations that were fringe or we weren't talking about before you know, suddenly whether it's, you know reparations, critical rights theory, transformative justice all of these I think we're having sort of conversations about now and I think that says to me, you know we have to look at equity not just at this point in time now and how do we serve everyone equally but how have we gotten to this state of play now this state of precarity for, you know black and brown communities, communities of color like what does that mean? And I think, and I think that's hard I think we don't necessarily know how to have these conversations in the workplace right now and I think some folks like deal, you know want to deal with this stuff personally sort of professionally, it's all and I think we're right now trying to figure out how to have these conversations but I think something that I will say is when I'm in these debates with folks I think they tend to think, do we do this or that? Do we have a heavily equity oriented approach or not do we not but you know like it's either this or that and I think that what we need to recognize is we're in a moment of experimentation I think we have to be as brave, courageous and you know, like reckon with history as much as possible but also we can one take portfolio approaches to our work, you know because I think also there is a lot of fear there's a lot of fear right now around sense of loss for different communities so I think A, we need to learn how to deal with that what does a portfolio approach mean and then also what does transition design mean I think this is something that we're not talking about a lot you know, for folks that are saying reform doesn't work, we need abolition you know, like I can see how both sides that conversation is very polarized right now and I get both camps I mean I do, I get this camp a bit more but in between how do we, how do we design you know, and how do we use data to bring everyone to the table this is where we are, this is historically where we've been this is where we have to get to but how do we set sort of different metrics for ourselves so that we get there because right now it's either one or zero and I don't think that's getting us very far in this debate well we have to wrap up but I think to your point though Panthea just the last thing I'll say is and this is why I applaud my colleague Chris and Christine in this work is you know, it sounds like the San Jose work really started from a place of something that didn't go quite as planned and maybe not as quote unquote successfully or as equitable as planned and then they were comfortable a bit with that and didn't just give up on it altogether but it sounds like you pivoted and you built on those lessons and you've now developed and you've really developed now a model that you're feeling has a lot more potential and is moving decision making forward so that's exactly what we're talking about don't be afraid of experimentation alright well this is an amazing conversation we're going to wrap up thank you ladies for joining us and for the audience this is really part of just the beginning of a conversation we're having at night at what we call our smart cities lab this year the smart cities lab 2021 is happening at the end of the month it's really a place where night brings together it's grantees around the smart cities space and thought leaders to talk about what's happening in communities what's working what's not working but also like where should we be pushing the bounds and so we're going to have conversations around data and digital innovation around broadband all of the opportunity that is available out there with broadband what do we do with that funding it's not just about ensuring that there's fiber connectivity out in every community but really it's like what happens after that we're going to talk about autonomy and the continuing levels of autonomy we see in our cities and the impact that has on equity and also what is equitable recovery really mean and what's the role of technology and helping spur that on so if you've joined us today and you love this conversation as much as we did please join us on the 29th and the 30th for some of the open sessions we'll have there Chris any last parting thoughts or no thank you this is a great conversation I appreciate being here today thank you all right thanks everyone thanks so much for joining us