Couchella: Discussing The Promise of Public Interest Technology
Couchella: Discussing The Promise of Public Interest Technology: Video automatically transcribed by Sonix
Couchella: Discussing The Promise of Public Interest Technology: this mp4 video file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Maria De Fazio:
Excellent, welcome, welcome, everyone. We're going to give everyone a second to get all signed in and set up. And then we will kick things off.
Because I'm sorry.
Hana Schank:
Ok, cool.
Maria De Fazio:
All right, welcome to today's session discussing the promise of public interest technology. We are super excited to have two fantastic presenters here with us today; or one at the moment, another will be joining us shortly. So let me get started with today's stuff by just going through a couple of quick housekeeping things before I turn things over to my counterpart, Bill Brantley, to do the moderating for today. So I am Maria DeFazio. I am the executive director of the Presidential Management Alumni Association. PMAA is the formal nonprofit alumni association of the Presidential Management Fellows and Presidential Management Internship Program. We exist to help support the ongoing excellence of program alumni, as well as to support the current program. And so we put on a variety -- we offer a variety of services, including things like Coachellas, which we're going to be rebranding that name soon because the funny ha ha pandemic, it's a couch wore off a little bit, I think. But we are still going to be offering these brown bag lunch sessions because we think they're a great way to get connected with information and folks across our community and really find out about new and innovative things that are going on. So today's session, I will be handling any tech production issues. If you have a problem with on the technology side, you shoot me a message using the chat function. As a disclaimer., anybody participating in the event who is a federal employee is participating in their personal capacity as opposed to an official capacity from a federal agency.
Maria De Fazio:
We just like to remind folks of that. We are recording today's session and we will post the recording along with an interactive transcript of today's session on our training page on our website, and I'll give you more on that at the end. We are going to be opening up for questions. So if you're on your state--if you're on a standard Zoom function, you can use the Q&A option on the on the toolbar, and that'll help you send questions that we can then have Tara and Hana answer. So again, we are so excited to have both Hana Schank and Tara McGuinness. Hana was one of the early members of the U.S. Digital Service and a founding member of the Public Interest Technology Program at New America. Tara is part of the was part of the HealthCare.gov team in the White House, and she recently ran the domestic policy team for the Biden transition. She founded the new practice lab at New America. They have recently published a book called Power to the Public. It is a blueprint for how governments and nonprofits can harness the power of digital technology to solve problems. And so they are here with us today, and I'm going to turn things over to Bill Brantley, who is the chair of our Professional Development Committee. Bill is also currently at the U.S. Department of the Navy and the Inspector General's Office for his day job. So Bill, go ahead and take it away, and I will turn off my video and we can get started.
Bill Brantley:
Sure. And just a couple of brief comments because I want to spend most of the time with Tara and Hana here. But one thing is that we are sending out a survey. So if you like professional development opportunities like this and I knew when I read their book, we had to get these people to talk to us and talk to all of us about innovation adoption. This is how we get it there. So take our survey. Tell us what other professional development opportunities you'd like to see and what other speakers you'd like to see. And just real quick, The Power to the Public--great book really enjoyed it. And one of the things that PMFs are known for is innovation adoption. So we actually have an innovation adoption community just launched by GSA last month. And I know a lot of you are very interested in this, so I'm going to turn it over to Hana and Tara and let them take the rest of the time to speak.
Hana Schank:
Um, thanks, Bill. Thank you so much for having us. And we are super excited to talk to you today, and I, both fans of the PMAA, Tara can go on and on about about why we are fans, but I think we can just start probably by just introducing ourselves and why we wrote this book. And I also apologize for that. I see the color on my mind was really weird. I don't I don't know what's happening, but I'm having I'm a little tech issue. So just by way of introduction, so I'm Hana Schank. My background is I was in the private sector. I ran a user experience technology and user experience consultancy for about 15 years in the private sector and prior to HealthCare.gov, as the the sort of PR campaign was ramping up and there was a lot of talk about here's this is the big date we're the big launch is going to be. And as that was happening, I, as a technologist in the private sector, was watching that and thinking, that doesn't sound good, and I don't think that's going to go well and I feel like I should tell them, and I don't know how to do that. And so I was and I had also been kind of just hitting the end of my rope at the in the in the private sector and so looked for a way to bring my skills to government and was able a few years later to join the United States Digital Service, where I was a director with the Department of Homeland Security on working on the nation's immigration system and also with Customs and Border Protection.
Hana Schank:
And then after I stayed through the transition in 2017 and wanted to continue doing this work and knew I was not going to go back to the private sector. And so I was able to come to New America, where a group of people from USGS and from the Obama administration were looking to figure out a way to continue this work as well. And so from that, I just got really curious about who else was doing this kind of work and what it was, what it was called and the right way to do it. And I was lucky enough to meet Tara. And the results of that are both--are the results of our joint questioning and joint expertise is is this book that we wrote. Tara, do you want to turn it over to you?
Tara McGuinness:
Hello, and thank you guys for having us. I'm Tara McGuinness, and if Hana is kind of our private sector tech, we you know, she and I both bring really different perspectives, I'm more of a policy nerd and serial public servant. Healthcare.gov was a kind of forcing moment in both of our lives. But from two vastly different perspectives. I was in government and Hana was out and came in because of it. I maybe I'll talk a bit about, you know, what the book is about and why we wrote it. I left the federal government sort of thinking that the most important part of what is really making policy work and government work for the public wasn't the what. Like, hey, this policy was rolled out today with a press release, but the how of how we do bring serve the public and often we train people about the what, but that there wasn't necessarily a clear path where we train people about the how to use data and how to make change and how to really listen to constituents and feedback. And the book is basically about that. We went around and interviewed people around the globe who were having profound impact on things like addressing climate change or getting to zero homelessness. And we found that people who were really making a difference were doing a similar set of things. They were using data real time data to see what problems were and to guide problem solving.
Tara McGuinness:
They used design, as we call it, but really like human centered research, understanding what constituents need, customer feedback loops and that, like plenty of people, you know, it's easy to have data. A lot of people have a dashboard, but fewer people really act on what they see and have a culture in their office or their agency or their government that allows you to change when things are aren't working or working marginally well, better and having profound impacts. So these three elements--data, delivery, and design--aren't new on their own. But we did find that across the world, people were having profound impacts. They were using all three combinations. And I think for this crowd, especially Hana, and I should state plainly that we take a hard stance in the opening of our book that there is no resolving the world's hardest problems without governments that really work. And there are some people who, you know, who might think that a private company could fix this for us or we we believe deeply and in an active role for government and problem solving for the public. And we really see public interest technology, a term which we talk about--maybe Hana you want to talk through our definition of that--as as mission critical to allowing governments built in a different time to serve the time we live in.
Hana Schank:
Yeah so we in in the book and in life, we define public interest technology as the application of data, design, and delivery to advance the public interest and promote the public good in the digital age. And we want to make clear these these are elements aren't new on their own, but it's the combination of the three, as Tara said before. So public interest is not a make your own salad. You have to do. You can't just be like, I'll have some of this, and also some some cucumbers. You have to do all three together, data, design and, delivery to really unearth what people need and to understand how to meet those needs. And so part of the reason for writing this book was in part to just to give a name to this thing that we saw. Because when you name something that has a pretty powerful effect of saying, actually, this is a real thing that people are doing, it's not that everybody just happened upon the same approach at the same time. So. I think we probably want to get into--we can--so the book is full of stories, and so we're happy to tell some here. I...(unclear)
Tara McGuinness:
Yes, Tara, I wonder whether we should start with Lincoln. I think one piece that for a bunch of public servants here in the United States, it can be really easy. And coming into offices with fresh eyes, looking hard at a problem with your advanced degrees in the way that that the PMA Fellowship does. I think it can be easy for hardened battled government insiders to say, "Yeah, we tried that thing before." But that this practice of like acute listening like radical listening isn't like a new fangled Silicon Valley thing. This goes back to the history of U.S. government, and there's beautiful stories about President Lincoln in his time, obviously servicing as much profoundly smaller United States of America, really annoying his most senior advisers by opening the gates to the White House multiple days a week for multiple hours at a time, and just letting anyone bring their petitions in through. And many times those were elected officials, but sometimes they were not. They were just members of the public. And this practice for him was a really a practice of listening and someone who kind of come from a small town all the way up to be the president of United States, really understanding what it is that makes how the government is doing on serving the people.
Tara McGuinness:
And I think we're that was a country of thirty one million people, but that this isn't a new practice. This is in our in our kind of DNA of all the old kind of historic ways that this is who we are--a listening machine to the citizens and residents of the country--and that we need to bring that ethos and bring a new set of tools to be able to do that when we're a profoundly bigger country. And, you know, testified a bit about this yesterday in Congress. There are today more resources for doing this data and listening and kind of feedback loop in selling the Starbucks coffee than there are, for example, in the US Congress. I think in the federal government, we've really built out some of these capacities, but that this is core to public service is this ability to really be in service to all the people we serve. So we love that story because I think it brings this brings us back into a historical tradition, not just some something faddish that is about human centered design or new that this brings connects us to old ways. But maybe Hana we want to get into like what it looks like in the work?
Hana Schank:
Well, so I actually think maybe the maybe the child welfare story is the, is a good place to start because as Tara likes to say, we, our editor was very surprised when we turned in our book on technology, and he got to the chapter where we were like, actually, it's not about technology. Apparently, even though we had said, like, just so you know, yes, this is about technology, but it's also not about technology. And he, I think, was like, I don't really know what you mean until we turned in a manuscript that had an entire chapter called "It's Not About Technology." So we, um, this is a favorite story because it just illustrates that point so well. So in 2017, the state of Rhode Island had two-thirds of kids in foster care were going straight into group homes. Um, the, it's well known in the foster care and child welfare circles that group homes are an absolute last resort and the best outcomes are when children are placed with families. So two-thirds of kids were going straight into a group homes. It's the fourth-highest rate in the nation. At the same time, Rhode Island looked at the situation and said, "Oh, well, we don't have enough foster families. That's the problem." So they were doing heavy recruitment of foster of potential foster families. In the meantime, Marina Nitze, who had previously been the CTO of the VA, had long been very passionate about foster care, and she had been doing work with the foster care system since college days. And so she was looking into the problem in Rhode Island, and she met with the team and she learned that actually what was happening was that there were plenty of families who were waiting to be licensed.
Hana Schank:
The problem was that the state couldn't license them quickly enough. So there was this massive backlog. And so she said, you know, you want to hit pause on the recruitment because there's no point in recruiting people into this backlog until we figure out what's causing it. And she started to dig into some of the numbers, and she saw that this was a serious backlog. After a year and a half of applying, only 17 percent of applicants were licensed. So they went step-by-step-by-step and created this massive journey map to to diagram out what is the process of becoming, of getting a license and one of the places where they saw that there was always a slowdown was with the form to consent to contact an applicant's doctor. So the problem was that you had the application for becoming a foster parent and then on a separate page was an application to was just the consent form for contacting your doctor. So what happened was people lost the form or didn't remember to turn it in. On top of that, the form also had a place where you had to put your Social Security number because the state incorrectly thought that you couldn't ask for the Social Security number on the complete form, so they were asking for it and the consent form. And so this led to lots of confusion and lots of calls where people were like, "Yeah, I got a message from the state.
Hana Schank:
I didn't really know what it was." So there were a lot of things that were slowing this process down that were not technical. And so Marina Nitze took a look at this and said, "So how about what if we staple the paper to the rest of the form?" And so they began stapling the paper to the rest of the form and the rate of failure for returning the form went from 70 percent to zero. So this is a great story to illustrate that just illustrates so beautifully. An app is never going to solve homelessness or hunger. Technology is a tool, but it is rarely the solution. So, if I also think it's important for this audience to say that the end goal of this Rhode Island work was a procurement, it was a tech procurement. So they there was a very clear need for a database that would allow people to search for the right kind of foster parents instead of. They were always getting zero results. And so they. So actually, let me flip that so people were getting zero results for foster parents when they were looking for a match and sending people into group homes. And so this was part of this is part of the backlog issue was that they couldn't find the right parents. So there was a tech procurement at their procurement at the end of this. But the innovation in the middle was a staple. And I think, you know, great love that story, just as like, yeah, sometimes the innovation is a staple. Tara, you want to
Tara McGuinness:
Tell another story or we're happy to get into questions if folks want to pop some into the chat or Bill, if you wanted to ask them otherwise, I'm happy to jump into another story, but I know we did want to really make sure we occupy. This is an amazing group of people. We could probably learn as much from you and add another seven chapters to the book from your stories of what works. But we'd love to be guided by your questions. If not, we're happy to keep telling stories.
Bill Brantley:
And while we're waiting? Go ahead, folks. Put the questions into the chat, into the question and answer, I'm monitoring those. But one question I have, because that's one thing I really enjoyed about your book was all the stories. So how--can you give us some advice on how to tell good stories, especially as a PMF trying to change the government? Because I remember when I was trying to present ideas, and it wasn't until I learned how to tell a story that I got anyone's attention. So what are some good ways to tell a good story?
Hana Schank:
And I think I'm the I'm the story telling (unclear) the duo, so I'm happy to jump in here, I think. So one of the problems with how with when you're really, really in the work and you're really in the weeds, it's really hard to get the right level of abstraction in your brain to tell the story. So one thing that I so a conversation that I like to have with myself before telling a story is to ask, "What is it that I know that other people don't know that they should know?" So and like what is the most basic level for telling that story? Part of the problem--so that's one trick that I use. I will say that in with this work, you know, we're conditioned to tell success stories. We're conditioned to want to read success stories and we want to tell success stories. And because this work is really new and also, as we say in the book it, it's very time-intensive. It takes a long time to see progress. So these projects very often do not have a nice story wrapped up with a bow that you can just pluck and tell. It is...and some of that is some reframing that needs to go on and just in the press as to what a government story looks like.
Hana Schank:
But I think that in government we can also, you know, there's a lot of fear around storytelling in government and there's a lot of fear around, you know, being on the evening news. So some of the storytelling is like, we're not going to tell you the traditional success story. We're actually going to tell you some interesting things that happened along the way that are really important that we know are really important, but other people don't know that they're really important. So in this story, the staple is really important. I'm going to tell you why the staple is really important, because that's the thing you probably don't know about technology. You think the technology is going to solve all your problems, but actually, very often you can solve it with a staple. So I think that if there is...the other, the other trick that I look for in storytelling is like, where's this? Where's the twist? Where's the surprise? What's the thing that and that comes back to like, what is the thing that you don't that other people don't know that you could do it and you could explain to them in your sleep? Is that helpful?
Tara McGuinness:
I think this, I'll jump in on this if you're game Bill and unless folks have other questions, which is, I think there's storytelling about like when you have success in the work and there's also some of the people we interviewed who had some of the most interesting stories, and I'll talk a little bit about the state of Michigan used a different perspective. So it's really hard when you're an agency leader and you know all the things about the thing to make a fundamental shift unless you see something anew. And so in the state of Michigan, we tell a story in the book about the longest public benefit form in the country. It was...this is kind of--if you needed emergency assistance, if you needed emergency food, if you needed emergency housing in Michigan, you had to use the DHS-1171. This was a twelve-hundred-question form. It took over two hours to complete. And when there was data analysis about who made it through this process and who didn't, there was really no no evidence that the most needy or people who were eligible were making it through. It was somewhat random on the data side. The team was able to cut this form in half, bring it down to 20 minutes, make radical change, which involved everyone from general counsel to the actual contractors who programmed the form into the website. But the way that they did it was ostensibly they didn't do what we always do in policy spaces, right? Or an administration space.
Tara McGuinness:
They didn't do a deck or a memo and the team, but an outside nonprofit that worked with the Michigan Health and Human Services Department went around and did research, user research. They did data analysis like, I just described about how hard it was to actually make it through statistically--wait times. But they interviewed frontline state staff, as well as people using the system about what it was like, and they asked four senior officials to come to their office for a briefing. Instead of a deck or a memo, when the officials arrived at their office, they reenacted based on their data and user research the experience of walking into a public benefits office in Michigan. So it was noisy, it was cold, there were not enough chairs and they were like, "Welcome to the Tech Town public benefits office." And they handed these four senior officials the twelve-hundred-page...the twelve-hundred-question form and the and they just sat in silence, which is the kind of gutsy move, right? These are very senior people. They came for a briefing not to be in a reenactment of what it's like to be one of their customers. And then once they stopped that, they went and they walk them through what their front line workers said about the process and what people who were trying to get help said it was the worst nightmare of my life.
Tara McGuinness:
I was getting my home had been burnt down, but this was more painful. Why were they asking me about, you know, how many fathers my children have? Really dehumanizing questions that didn't lead anywhere? And I tell this story because I think if the officials hadn't felt what it was like to be the people they serve, you know, most of the officials had never actually seen this form before that they are...it's the front door to their office. I don't know that they would have gotten what they got, which was commitment on the spot to change the form. And so I do think thinking creatively about in your work, if you're going to try to make a big ask, do things that are hard, spend extra resources on something that you think will really matter to your service of the public? It might take having people walk in the shoes of the folks you serve just...because you can't unsee how hard it was, right? So I like that story. I think it gets--it's a little adjacent to what you were asking, though, but I think back to like in what you're doing, how might you present the words of the public as a reason for change? And how do you prove that they're not edge cases? That's nine out of 10 people are experiencing what this looks like.
Bill Brantley:
Perfect. Yeah, and we've got a question here, and it's actually kind of a follow up on that. It seems like real quick, though. It's kind of two parts they're talking about a Sammy award where someone won a Sammy award for the group, the work they did with the foster youth. So they have that link. So I am pretty sure you're familiar with the Sammy Awards and the wonderful stories come from that. And that leads into can you recommend powerful ways to convince our appropriators and our departmental CFOs to invest in tools and training for data analytics? And let's see here. Just pop off on me here. Data analytics, big data and storytelling. So how can we get those tools to help us make this case?
Tara McGuinness:
In a very personal attempt at this, I spent three hours yesterday with your appropriators in the House Committee on Modernization and making the case that I have to share my testimony through your network. If it's useful, it's public. Really making this case that we have, we passed some some laws, like the Evidence Act, that really encourage the use of data, but that myself and Dr. Nick Hart and others who testified really made the case that to some extent, some of this is like an, you know, an unfunded mandate that is wanting to mandate a set of tools and processes. It's another thing to provide the talent and resources and time to really make them available. And so, you know, a couple of the same moves that that the federal government has made everything from the Plain Language Act of 2010 to increasing the muscles through 18F and the U.S. digital services and senior leaders for delivery that are many agencies and increasing roles in data science. CDOs CTOs CIOs who are at the policymaking table that Congress actually doesn't have nearly as many muscles yet as the federal government does on some of these pieces, and so there may be easier for them to ask and understand how you require this talent. There was an analysis done that that of the 3,500 Hill staff who who are there today, it's it's less than 20 who have kind of data science, engineering and technical skills. So that partly, I think building their own muscle may help them to understand why you you will need the funds in appropriations to build yours. But I think it's incredibly important that we're in competition for some of the country's best talent on data science. And with Starbucks, there's five open data scientist jobs at Starbucks. They pay probably more than some of the ones might in the public sector. So really seeing this as a priority and providing it the resources that it needs. Hana, did you want to jump in?
Hana Schank:
Yeah, I mean, I think that we can't emphasize enough the "eat your own dog food" aspect of for policymakers of you know that most people go into this work because they want to help people and they want to make a difference and that showing them that actually what they're doing is not helpful or is not, you know, has many has a lot of barriers. And and you know, I think the (unclear) example speaks volumes there. We've seen other and what we've heard tell of a lot of other examples of people trying to just bring that front line that end user experience, what's actually happening to the people that, you know, you made this policy, you thought that this was what was going to happen and actually, here's how it played out. And so bringing just that's a pretty visceral thing to see. As I said, that's something that you can't unsee. So I think that. Closing that feedback loop and just really bringing bringing that experience to policymakers is a very is pretty impactful and we're actually in...I may have more information on this in a month or two because we're working on a project right now where we are looking at the ERAP, the emergency rental assistance program and seeing how it played out in the states, with the goal being to take it back to the policymakers on the Hill and say, "Well, when you wrote this, this was what you intended. And then actually, here's how this played out in the states." And that turns out people, people are very interested in seeing how their policies actually played out.
Maria De Fazio:
I'd actually I've I've got a question. I'll just pop on for a second. Can you guys talk just a little bit more about the the the sort of the how we do that because I think that's it's one thing for us to know that we have data and to sort of to get from the policy that's a good idea to data that the policy didn't do what we needed it to. How how do we sort of how do we gut check ourselves as we're using this technology? And then how do we how do we share that information?
Hana Schank:
I think that it is really important, and we stress this in the book, that data only gives you a piece of the story, data tells you what is happening, but it doesn't tell you why. And in order to...And the why is is the critical piece right like we can see? I just I'm thinking about the the conversation that we were all just involved in a couple of months ago around UI and the labor shortage and like, Oh, well, it's because, you know, and so half of the country is like, "Well, you've got to end the benefits," and the other half the country is like, "That's going to be terrible." So there are actual answers to to these questions. And if we if you talk to people and you interview them and you actually ask them, you can, the things that you find out are incredibly nuanced and incredibly interesting and give you all kinds of ways in that you might not have anticipated. So I think it's really, really important. And this is why we say it's not a make-your-own-salad. That to say that the data is a roadmap for who you should talk to and that it's those it's bringing those experiences to life, that is the real insight and also the real change maker, I think.
Bill Brantley:
Great, great, great. Oh, go ahead, Tara, are you going to say something?
Tara McGuinness:
I was going to say we...this isn't always like an exact science in that. And I can see another question coming in, so maybe I'll state the question-- As a current PMF, do you any recommendations for training or training resources that would make us both better data analysts, as well as more critical thinkers about how policies affect people in their day to day lives? And this is a great question. We we make a little cheat sheet to find some of these in the back of our book, but I think Hana and I could do live. There are a number of trainings, either through the Partnership for Public Service, even through the lab at OPM. There are even two hundred and fifty colleagues, a huge subset of whom are data scientists in the both at the agency level and in the the new effort to bring data, talent and analytics in and through the digital services. So there are colleagues who may be really happy to give you an informal walkthrough or review. There are also as as feds, you are able to do a ton of training. The PMAA itself does do engage in training. We'd be happy to bring some back. We attempt to gather from the Public Interest Technology Network some of the best practices on this, and we have a growing set of pit public interest technology cases, as well as training materials that I'm again happy to follow on with Bill.
Tara McGuinness:
But I do think some of this is upskilling yourself. Some of it is just like finding that there are someone who never gets invited to your meeting, who's a data scientist who works on your floor and they'd love to be there. And then afterwards, they can give you, you know, you don't have to become a data scientist to use data better. It might mean bringing people into the room who are in your building but never get thought of as being part of the conversation. And so I think those are a couple of different tips I would offer up. The other piece I want to say about this is that we need to be really careful about being overly technical about it, I mean, for all of you. You know, some of this is policy and process and political, and so I just want to kind of remind you that this takes real leadership. There is no--to have transformation when we talk about getting to zero homelessness is not a one person job, it's not even a one government job. When we saw this level of shift on a really hard, thorny social problem, it was teamwork from multiple places. And that meant the person who's been in the office for 20 years, as well as the person who is straight, you know, straight out of their graduate program and has kind of fresh legs.
Tara McGuinness:
And I think really being thoughtful, it was striking in our interviews with leaders. The biggest regret of some of the innovation leaders not here in the U.S., but elsewhere, was that in the charge to fix the broken thing and bring a new way and a new practice, they themselves said they didn't create space to change what they needed, which was the culture of the office, the team to recognize that someone had had this idea before they arrived and didn't succeed, and they might have really good advice that was relevant to the problem. So I think the extent to which, you know in your roles you constantly keep while I'm here, I can make some change. But you know, humility about no one person does that themselves. And looking around and asking people humbly about their experience and their opportunity, and often the combination of someone new and someone who's a long standing career official is the dynamo team that gets something across. You also need cover from the top of the agency or the office. But really, building at the type of partnership and collaboration that anyone can be part of is really mission critical.
Bill Brantley:
So I'm sorry, Hana, are you going to say something?
Hana Schank:
Yeah, I just won't let go that it's so many of these stories are about having the right people in the room. It's not necessarily like, Oh, now I have to go understand data analytics. I think it's more like, Oh, I should have a data scientist on my team and oh, I should have. And not only like on my team, but in the room when decisions get made. So in the Built for Zero Community Solutions story that Tara was just alluding to, where this team ended first ended veteran homelessness in Rockford, Illinois, and then ended homeless chronic homelessness in Rockford, Illinois, and had a level of functional zero. And a big piece of how they did that work was simply, they put everybody in the room at the right time. Together, they pulled together everybody who was going to, you know, had their fingers on in the in the homelessness ecosystem so that they could have so that they could have a holistic picture. And I think that, you know, in a past ten years ago, five years ago, two years ago, that team did not include a data scientist and maybe didn't include a technologist. And today those are essential elements to problem-solving. So part of this is again, like you don't have to. Doesn't mean you have to personally know how to do all of these things. But there is no project that's in the book where leadership didn't champion the project. That's not--it just doesn't work otherwise. So I think that there is a huge role for leadership to, to make this work happen,
Bill Brantley:
And I like the lessons you have about getting leadership involved, and I want to also focus on the other parts of the the triangle, I call it the triangle, that you guys use. We have data, design, and delivery. So could you talk a little bit more about design and delivery and how we could best use that and some tips for the, you know, the PMF out there? How can I work with getting the team, you know, the right people in the right place? But also, how do I get the right design and how do I help them deliver?
Tara McGuinness:
Happy to jump in Hana, pile on here, on here on design, and I say this with humility because Hana ran a design firm for a huge chunk of her career, but as a as the kind of government nerd in our team, the...By being a member of this association, you inherently just need to say this plainly, are no longer an average American. You have a graduate degree, you have specialties, to do--to be successful at your job, you have adapted a lexicon associated with your agency that almost allows you to speak in a language that is no longer English, right? Acronyms and shortcuts. I took a long time for me to kind of convert my fed speak back into plain language so that my colleagues now understand what I'm saying. And I say this, not because that is an important and great, but because, like your ability to predict how someone, you know, would would need written FAQ about your the policy you're working on is not as good as you think it is. And so the way that you counter this is you give your FAQ or your form to 10 humans who are the average users of this or, maybe the most vulnerable users of this policy. And you see where they get stuck and you watch them.
Tara McGuinness:
And you can do that by calling upon one of the design experts inside the federal government, of which now there are many, many, many of them through US digital services and beyond. Or you can do that by bringing, you know hosting an event in a way that you live-ask people these questions. There's like the highfalutin way. These are technical skills, user research, but also just getting out of the office and seeing how tricky it is when people are using a benefit program, for example, can do a world of good. And so I think there's dial-ble use to design. But if you are not doing this, this is not happening in your agency, it doesn't have to be on everything, but you're probably encountering question and answers or forms that millions of people touch, or a letter that millions of people will read, and the difference between them responding to it with information is they get health care or they get a tax, you know, bill. But the testing needs with 10 people before you send them to a million is just best practices. Hana, maybe I'll stop there and turn it over to you.
Hana Schank:
Well, I think a great story that we actually don't call out in the book necessarily as being a design and delivery story, but but is a secret to the time delivery story. So I tell it is the integrated benefits initiative. So this was a project to this was a a big idea project to build an equitable safety net for the digital age. And this was something that was conceived of by a team of people who had been working partially at USDS and partially at Centers for Medicaid, I think. And they didn't want that...they didn't want to lose the work that they had done. And so part of what they had learned from all of that work was that applications across the country need to be submitted for everything in person at a field office. And so they wanted to, which there was a theory that that was a that was a barrier because applications are...because field offices are open, you know, normal government hours and people who need support are people who need benefits, often are working and are not able to apply in person. So the team found a willing participant in the state of Vermont. They actually were very. Vermont was very. Vermont had a really terrible time with standing up their health exchange. I don't know if it was like uniquely terrible or if it was just average terrible, but they were on the evening news every night.
Hana Schank:
And so they were they there were people who are already in the state of Vermont looking for, "How can we not do this this way? Again, let's improve this process." So together and this was Nava, who is a public benefit corporation. So it was partially philanthropically funded, and they worked with the state of Vermont to develop an uploader. So the theory being that submitting online would make things easier, and they started with a SNAP pilot in one office with 50 people where they had allowed 50 people to upload documents from home. So if you can imagine what this process was like in the state of Vermont, which is like not an easy place to travel from point A to point B, it's probably even more complicated than in a flat state or one with straight roads. So the it's a part of...so this is one of the things that I love about this story is they chose to start the pilot in a town called Barre, Vermont. And at first I figured, "Well, that must be because they have a high percentage of SNAP applicants or SNAP recipients." And the answer was that was not why they chose Barre.
Hana Schank:
They chose Barre because the town of Barre had Jimmy in it, and Jimmy was a front line worker who was really excited about this project. And so along the delivery piece or sorry, the design with users, he was a user, so he was not the ultimate end user, but he had he was part of the team that had to be excited about this change to make this project work. So they built this uploader. They ran a pilot with 50 people. Before the uploader, six percent of applicants would receive same day determinations. With the uploader, the number went to fifty-five percent. So they were validated that the office hours and having to having to submit everything in person was a real issue. So oh, and also almost half were submitted outside of office hours. So one of the things that is great about that story is that the design piece. Which is. How would you how do we design this to meet people where they are? So it started with the...back up, so it started with the question of how do we meet people where where they are? And was then designed with the office staff piloted and tested so again designed essentially with the end user. And it was a delivery focused. The design was about the delivery.
Hana Schank:
So the design thought about how do we meet people where they are? How do we serve them best? And how do we...at the end of the day our goal is to get people who need SNAP SNAP. So I think the other piece of the design and delivery comment...question is that it's really important to know what your goals are when you do a project like this. So they had clear goals. The short coda to this story is that after the uploader, they rolled it out statewide and because it is a because procurement is a thing, they then had to procure the next round of services. And because that happened at the same time as the pandemic started, the state of Vermont was like, "Actually, that's a cute project. You guys built this uploader. Adorable. Love it. We're going to go with Optum, who is our usual provider." And then as things started to even out a little bit with the pandemic and I think also in part in large part because it was something that was so needed during the pandemic when people could not come into the office, that the state of Vermont actually then regrouped, retrenched and said, Actually, we're going to we are going to continue with this project. So as of today, it is ongoing.
Bill Brantley:
All right, great. Yeah, it's a great story in there, and it's really interesting to see how that took those twists and turns. So we're getting kind of close to the end here. So I want to ask both of you what is probably the most important piece of advice you want to give a Presidential Management Fellow so they can succeed in their career based on the lessons from your book? What would you say the most important piece of advice for?
Hana Schank:
Um, I think probably to ask questions and be curious. I think the the most certainly the most important thing I learned from my time in government was that there are a lot of things that people don't question. People just say, OK, yes, that's how we do it. And actually going back to the Maria Nietze story, the child welfare...Marina always talks about, like, is this printed on blue paper because that's the law, or is it printed on blue paper because somebody liked blue once and now for the rest of our lives, we always printed on blue paper? So I think curiosity asking why huge.
Tara McGuinness:
(Unclear) this before, I think probably two parts, one is. It's overwhelming, I think your jobs are overwhelming and the systems are entrenched and the ability to kind of stay on top of the things that you have to stay on top of and maybe miss the forest through the trees on opportunities is really easy because just the list is, you know, like regenerates every night while you're asleep. So I think, one making sure that the thing that you're like, "That would be really impactful but isn't like no one's beating down my door to do that." You don't always ignore the possibility of opportunity because as a public servant, there's really no place to scale change for good, like being a public servant in the federal government. So just, you know, it doesn't mean you have to do that every day, but don't...but really hold that idea on a kind of quarterly or annual basis of prioritization of your time on a thing that really matters. And the second, and I hinted at this before, is just like, no transformational change happens because of a person. So if you're approaching anything that it's like you carrying something up the hill, then you need to find some other people who can carry it with you, who can open the door, who have a pulley and they may be in government and outside.
Tara McGuinness:
But really thinking about the kind of how you how you do a multiplier of hands of ownership of something really important? And that's like a...to do that well involves a fair amount of humility and really a fair amount of cultivating teammates who might be folks you don't even have to work with or wouldn't have any reason to be in the room from other agencies, from think tanks and nonprofits outside. But I think, Hana and I are really grateful for what you all are doing that you took your lunch hour to be in conversation with us. We wrote the book because we care about expanding the tent of people solving public problems with efficacy, and we know you are among the most active teammates in that project. As current and formers, if we we could be of use in any way, we really hope to make the type of work you're doing visible, accessible and something that more people can join in and be a part of because it can't be a tiny team. It's got to be a big team. We have a lot of public problems.
Maria De Fazio:
Awesome, thank you both, so, so much as we are nearing the bottom of the hour, I just want to take a moment again to thank Hana Schank and Tara McGuinness for their time. Again, their book is "Power to the Public." It is available through Princeton Press. Now, since you've made it through today's session, I'm going to drop a link in the chat for everybody. Tara and Hana would love it if you would take this survey, and if you take this survey, they're going to send you a really fun sticker. So I think, first of all, definitely do that, second of all. Just a couple of things to wrap up. I want to thank everybody again for coming out for supporting PMAA. PMAA exists to support the ongoing excellence of PMI and PMF alums and to reinforce our efforts to build an exceptional public service--particularly relevant to what we were discussing today. So we do this by creating opportunities for you, our fellows, our alums, the friends of our program. And so what's important to us is to be able to support current and future leaders as they learn and grow and network. So I'm going to ask everybody to take action. Please consider giving whatever you can to PMAA to help support events like today's as we go forward, as we're very hopefully looking to get back in person and do events like this actually in a room with each other with like fun networking stuff after, we definitely are going to need all the support we can get. If you haven't signed up for our newsletter, you can do that at PMAA.us. If if you would like to donate, you can do that at PMAA.us/donate. We're actually trying out something super cool. We've set up a new text-to-give option, so if you text the word "give" and a donation amount to 8557741036
Maria De Fazio:
it's incredibly easy to like, donate to PMAA, so hold on one second and I will actually make it even easier for you to see that number, so these are the ways that you can get in touch with us if you want more sessions like we've had today, if you want to do this stuff in person again with us, check us out. Let us know. Please support us. And yes, and you can find Tara and Hana on Twitter, so we would love to have you follow them so you can keep an eye on their work and what's going to be coming up in the next couple of the next couple of months that they previewed. And in terms of previewing things, we've got a fun service event coming up in December that you're going to be hearing about where we're going to be volunteering with the Capital Area Food Bank. We are going to be launching a new "What I Wish I Knew" series in the New Year, where we bring in a variety of alumni leaders from the community and have them talk about things they wish they knew before they left federal government, before they became a manager, things they wish they knew right after they completed their fellowship, so constantly building more professional development and networking opportunities for everyone. We would love it if you would help support us so we can continue to do this and grow this community together. Again, thank you, Bill, thank you Hana, thank you, Tara. And everybody have a great rest of the week and happy early Halloween. Thanks, all.
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