89 Alliance of Civic Technologists 🏛️💻
We're joined by Christopher Whitaker (https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopherwhitaker/), Executive Director of the Alliance of Civic Technologists (ACT) (https://www.civictechnologists.org/) to talk about the organization and it's upcoming membership drive. ACT seeks to fill the vacuum left by the sunsetting of the old Code for America Brigade Network program. We'll talk about how the volunteer space, how they plan to operate in it, and their vision for the future.<br><br>### Resources and Shoutouts:<br>- Alliance of Civic Technologists (https://www.civictechnologists.org/join)<br>- ACT Discord (https://discord.gg/EM6ywtMhkP)<br><br>##### Music Credit: Tumbleweeds by Monkey Warhol
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Transcript
Hello. I'm Ryan Cook, and this is Civic Tech Chat, a show that looks at the way technology, politics, and policy impacts the world around us. The tools we use, the way services are delivered, and how we talk about and set policy all shape our society. We'll gather around and have a chat about these things together and more. Before we get started, I do wanna let you all know that we've started a Discord for the podcast. There will be a link with an invite down in the episode description. Do feel free to go check that out. It's a small community right now, but hoping to grow it. It's a great way to reach out to me and let me know things that you might want us to cover or to just hang out and talk about civic tech. Anyway, let's go ahead and start the show. Christopher, thank you so much for joining us here on Civic Tech Chat. Could you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about what you do?
Of course. My name is Christopher Whitaker. I am the executive director for the Alliance of Civic Technologist. We're a decentralized network of local civic technology organizations. I am a longtime civic technologist, kinda with the hybrid product bureaucracy hacker background. I've been on, product teams at the United States Digital Service, the Defense Digital Service. I also have a bureaucracy hacking background where I've done federal acquisitions, was acting budget director over at DDS, for a time, and now working, as an engagement manager supporting, an Air Force software factory. So have a a very mixed set of skills that, sort of helps translate the technical stuff to the bureaucracy stuff and vice versa.
What would you say is your personal why? The thing that drives you to get out of bed each morning and do all that stuff.
Yeah. I think for me, it's that I I like to do I like to tackle big big challenges, and civic tech is hard. We take an industry where we're supposed to be good at the technology stuff, coding, engineering, design, each with its own jargon and lingo, and and sort of you have to work really hard to get good at just one of those things. And then we combine that with government and civic life, which has its own jargon and lingo and different levels from, like, federal to state to municipal, its own laws. And sometimes, depending on where you live, those laws don't like each other. And we mash them together into a single field, and it's really it's incredibly difficult, field that we've decided to create for ourselves. And, for me, I like I like the challenge, and so that's kind of why I why I go after it. But it's it's definitely a team sport, and it's it is certainly a a field where you have to have have others standing shoulder to shoulder with you to to get any of this done. It's it's a really complex difficult field.
Speaking of complex difficult fields, I think that's a great segue to get us into our main topic, which is about an organization that, you're a core part of. Folks out there might might or might not be aware that there was an organization, Code for America, that maintained a, brigade network, and they announced their end of support for that February. And when I talk about brigade network, what I'm referring to is there's a large assortment of groups often grouped around municipalities or other local communities that organize volunteers, which then have the ability to get forms of organizational support from the nonprofit Food for America. I gather that, your organization, Alliance of Civic Technologists, is meaning to fill this vacuum for maybe a lack of a better way to describe the intention. Why did you decide to start this organization?
So I'll preface this by saying, like, the the local organizations, they didn't go away. Like, just because Code for America sunset of the program, like, Code for Boston is still here. Beta NYC is still still here. Code for Charlotteville is still here. PAC for LA, Civic Tech Atlanta. All those organizations are still here, still doing good work. And we we want to be able to be the connective tissue between all these organizations and be an enabling organization, to support them and to help them do their best work and to grow more organizations, like Code for Philly and Code for Dayton. And so what we we kind of started the organization almost as soon as it announced that the program was being sunset. We kinda had to lay some groundwork in terms of making sure we have, sort of a five zero one c three started, making sure we had good fiscal sponsorship, making sure we had a good foundation to actually do what we set out to do. And that's kind of what the board has been doing over the past year. And now we're at the point where we can actually officially go from sort of the our alpha phase to our beta phase where we're signing up members formally into the network, building out our working groups, being able to host annual events, and starting mentorship programs, and really starting to be that connective tissue again and starting to be a support function for those groups.
I've seen you mention that the organization lines of civic technologists or ACT, may maybe for folks to like acronyms, is more decentralized than the old network. You expressed that, you don't necessarily have roots in the local communities that folks are out there volunteering in. So, therefore, you don't really feel equipped to tell them what to do. You've gone to describe that a role for ACT seems less like a source of directives and more like a support character. It's kind of the vibe I get from from your words. What advantages do you see in taking this sort of approach?
And that was I think one of the I think that'll be the biggest difference between ACT and, the the brigade program is there is even though I'm like have a fancy title of executive director, we are certainly a decentralized networks. Our members are, will have delegates, two delegates each plus an alternate. They will make up the voting body of the organization. We'll vote on a budget together. We'll elect board members together. When times need it, we'll pass resolutions together stating, like, this is how the network feels about this topic. And, really, the membership is gonna drive the organization. So that's the first part is this is going to be a member driven organization. The second big part is act like, we don't build products. We are not trying to run a a a telephone campaign in which we're trying to get everybody to call, an elected representative with the same standardized message. America's a big place, and cities are are different. They have different challenges. They didn't have different players. They had different setups. And it's it seems silly to say that, hey. Because I'm at the top of this organization, I should dictate what everyone works on, whether it be foods food, security or reimagining 911 or any host of issues that you can pick out. All of these issues are important, but it might not be the most important thing to that city. And every city is set up differently. Beta NYC has deep partnerships with both their local government and academia and, sort of all the community partners, in New York. New York is a huge place. Like, the idea that a national headquarters can kind of steer local organizations. It it's just seems silly. And that's not what ACT's for. ACT is an enabler. We're here to be the connective tissue between all these organizations, convene them together so that we can learn from each other. We could talk about issues, mentor newer entrants into, the space, and and sort of figure out how we can use our our network to support the work that is that is happening in local cities. And if that means that we're mostly a supporting character, great. That's that's what it's here for.
I think something I I hear in your description is a lot of importance on information sharing, or maybe another way to put it as a like, sharing of stories is maybe something I'm hearing in there. Sounds like there's a lot of, local expertise out there that maybe something works in New York and maybe it's applicable in Tulsa or in LA or and and maybe that you're kind of stepping into be this space where you're kind of helping be like a curated storyteller of a sort to kinda raise those things up. Am I kind of am I along the right path for what you're Absolutely. Absolutely.
Yeah. One of the one of the big one of the advantages that sort of the civic tech network used to have is we had a vehicle in which to share wins with each other, lessons learned, and to sort of help communicate how we got there. With the subsetting of the program, we've kind of lost that a little bit, even though the work is still happening. And so one of the things that we wanna do is be that storyteller to amplify wins and lessons learned, both nationally, and being just a a vehicle to do that, be it informally through our Discord, or more formally through, our newsletter, giving talks and the, annual event that we're gonna have.
And I think another thing I I heard in your, answer before is you used the the word, like, member driven, which seems to imply to me that there's a then an a need for, like, strong, like, member representation in order for this to kinda function well. Could could you kinda, talk a bit on that?
One of the things that we wanna do is make sure that we're responsive to members' needs. If the entire purpose of ACT is to enable local civic tech organizations to do their best work, then we sort of have to listen to the local organizations and and make calls based on what what their needs are. And so the the structure only works if we have local members involved. So the way we'll we'll structure the organization is we'll have working committees, sort of our membership committee to help bring in new members, sort of ensure the health of the network. We'll have a finance and fundraising committee, that'll help us raise funds. We'll have an events committee that'll throw our annual event, sort of a working kind of a a education committee to help sort of codify and write playbooks and sort of do help share the lessons that we've learned through doing this work. And those are all gonna be, member driven, so that we're everybody will will be able to take an active role in sort of shaping how shaping the network.
There's a state scoop piece, and you've also used this phrase actually here as as we've been talking, where you're quoted as saying that, you know, we're not gonna be building products or, you know, we're not building products. It seems like you're really trying to communicate this focus on network building and organizing and support, which I I think those phrases to me kind of start to sound like it's like you're building infrastructure, the things that will allow the organizations to, like, work together in this big, big country that folks live in. Could you talk a bit about how this focus on network as your strategy kinda how you see it playing out in kind of the near, medium, and longer longer term?
We wanna develop ways to connect groups with each other so they can learn, be able to sort of join forces on joint efforts, be able to say in one voice that, hey. This piece of legislation that's going to Congress right now is either really, really good or really, really bad. Here's why. And you should listen to us because we are experts at we are civic technology experts working in local communities. Many of us have professional jobs in government, be it in state government, in federal government. Like, this is this is what's up. We are as as a as act itself. It's we're narrowly scoped to where we are primarily an enabler and a convener. We're not gonna build product. That's what the what our local what our local members will build product, but that's not our our lane. We're we're mostly helping to build up these organizations, mentor newer organizations to get at sort of the same level as the code for Phillies and the code for Boston's, and really focusing on that. I don't think we're gonna ever go into a situation where somebody produces a product and we're gonna go, hey. We're gonna scale this nationally and have, like, a million users. That's that's not what we that's not our purpose.
Yeah. That that's a good point. Actually, as as you said, like, like, that mentioned about scale, it made me realize, oh, like, so far, we're, you know, this far into the conversation, and that word hasn't come up one time. And I think that's perhaps intentional. Right? Is that kind of it seems like that kind of thing is maybe something you're trying to, maybe not maybe avoid is too strong of a word, but not necessarily walk into.
And that's part of why we're decentralized is because we don't know the user need in every city. So if you in some places, I'll pull an example of an of a civic tech app from from the Chicago area called Expungio. It was an app that helped assist youth who had juvenile records get them expunged. You go fill out a form. They would do sort of a quick gut check to see if you're you're a good candidate for expungement, and then they would feed that information to a local nonprofit who would then assist with getting the record expunged. Makes sense in Illinois. It does not make sense in a state that has automatic juvenile expungement, which really is probably the preferred way to go. Just make it automatic. So if you're trying to, scale something like Cathy Ding's expunge.io nationally, well, you're already gonna run into issues in states that do this automatically. And so it's to me, what because we are enabler, where it makes sense to have apps redeploy, that's a decision that's made locally, and we can assist with that. But that's not a that is a benefit. That's not a, like, a goal of, hey. We're gonna scale this app across the country, and it'll be great, and our branding will be all over it. That's that's not what we're doing. We're we're starting as this is good civic technologists. We're supposed to focus on user needs first and then everything else.
As you go into this, beta phase, as you mentioned, and you seek to grow that membership, what do you think will make for a successful local chapter that's seeking to join?
One of the things that makes for successful chapters is having a strong leadership structure in that you have a a large team of people who help run the organization. You have good partnerships with your local community, be that government or the nonprofit nonprofits in your community. You have good trust and safety guardrails. One of the things we require is a code of conduct that has descriptions of how you enforce the code of conduct and just being good at running a volunteer group, which is a skill that you have to learn. It's not something that people can just throw together. And that's part of why we built in a leader a mentorship model for newer organizations, because we don't wanna, like like, hey. Sign this thing, and now you're you're a member. But rather, like, we wanna make sure that we're not setting people up for failure and to make sure they have all the right tools they need and structure they need, to be able to succeed.
That is, a good thing to hear. I I remember being somebody in that newbie chair and, effectively being handed just, like, a pile of documents, and it's like, good luck. That that was kind of my experience with the the the network. I I go to America.
Sounds like you're maybe trying to be a bit more proactive with how the mentoring will work. Yeah. So our on the twenty ninth, we're gonna open up our membership drive. We're primarily going to focus on established groups in our first wave. So these are organizations that, you know, they've been around for a while. Hint hint. It's all the former brigade people, or, groups like Shy Hacknight, which was a part of the brigade program, but certainly one of the oldest and largest and most active civic tech volunteer organizations in the in the country. So for those that have sort of been established, we've set it up to where, like, they can become members pretty easy. Like, because they have all the they have all the things that that make local civic tech organizations work. For new organizations, We're gonna do a new we're gonna do a different membership drive in the spring for people who want to start these organizations. And the reason why we're delaying and not doing it all at once is whenever someone expresses interest, what we wanna do is we wanna pair them with an existing organization as a mentor to talk about, like, here were our challenges. Oh, here's how you find a local space to host your events. Here's some good ideas for finding sponsorships to help buy pizza. Here's some of the challenges about fiscal sponsorship that you should probably know about. And just sort of, like, guide people and help them get to the level where we're like, okay. These are the standards that we need people to hit in order to become an official member. We're gonna help you get there. And then when you're ready, you tell us, we'll we'll check to make sure, but then we'll make you a full member with voting rights and the whole shebang.
And, there at the end, you mentioned, the existence of some standards, which I had a chance to get to peek at that a little bit in that document you let me, look at that you'll be circulating around. But, can you talk a bit about the importance of setting those kinds of standards for for this sort of setup?
Yeah. So it it kinda circles back to, not wanting to set people up for failure. The biggest part for me is sort of making sure you have a place where people can find you on the Internet, a place where people can, find your group and register to attend one of the public events. We wanna make sure that when people say that, hey. I'm a local civic tech organization, we wanna check to make sure you're actually real. So, like, you're meeting regularly. You have at least three people on your leadership team. You have a code of conduct that, sort of meets a minimum standard for trust and safety. You have a plan to enforce it. You're all set up to be able to do this work. And if people don't hit that immediately, that's fine. That's why we have the mentorship program. I think it's important that if we say you're you're a chapter and that you have voting rights and that you can participate in the larger network in a leadership capacity, because that's ultimately, every member is a leader in the civic tech network, then, we wanna make sure that that people are are actually are are ready to go.
Okay. So I I think what I'm hearing there is, you know, by going through mentoring and ultimately, like, meeting those standards, checking the box to show viability, you're kind of, like, earning your voice in in the larger community.
One of the lessons that that we learned from the brigade program is sort of when you experience this hypergrowth, you get some really solid chapters, and then you get chapters that just they either become ghost chapters where they're on paper, but they don't exist because they're not meeting. They don't have leadership. And we wanna kind of avoid having zombie organizations. And so by sort of putting some structure some some standards in place, we sort of avoid that problem.
You mentioned one specific one, or I think you mentioned, like, having three three leaders. I I imagine there's there's others. How have you gone about trying to set, the kind of the specifics of, like, what what centers make for a good, viable organization?
Yeah. So we have a working document that the community's been, kinda commenting on and going back and forth. So it's been a collaborative process with, leaders from across, from across the network, and wanted to create sort of what a minimal viable chapter would look like.
As as you, you know, get to this beta status and maybe, you know, in that executive, director role, you're starting to think even beyond that, what are kind of other crucial milestones or capabilities you'd like to see act get to as you work towards maturing the network?
So one of the things that we wanna try to do this summer is host a a act congress and basically having that be our our annual event. I imagine the first one's gonna be virtual, just to make it a little easier for us to to to host as we sort of get rolling. But, for the next for our second one, we'd like to do it in person and kind of gather everyone up together. This will be similar to the brigade congress that we had, previously. And, really, a chance for people to gather, present their wins, talk through issues, and learn from each other, and really form those connections that sort of make the network stronger. So that to me is gonna be our sort of big milestone for next year is being able to host that conference. The other milestones we're looking at is sort of number of number of members and then seeing our mentorship program succeed and being able to bring in brand new organizations that hadn't existed before and really start to grow again is is gonna be what gets me excited.
That, that does sound exciting. As someone who who misses the experience that brigade congress used to bring, I'll I'll keep an eye out for when you announce that. Maybe try to find a way to sneak over to it and and do some coverage there. I imagine there'll be a lot of folks that are excited for that, experience to happen again. Continuing this theme of thinking about the future, though, what sort of challenges do you see, for the alliance coming up?
So one of the bigger challenges, I think, is sort of the environment we're gonna be operating in, after the twenty twenty four election. I know there's a temptation to say, like, civic tech should be sort of this nonpartisan neutral area in which, like, we don't really take sides. Like, this can work for everybody. And then I like that sentiment, but it sort of crashes hard with reality. United States Digital Service is run by a political appointee, so the election will have a direct impact on what our premier organization does. Whoever takes control of Congress and the White House will have the ability to change laws that have a direct impact. And as technologists, we have to be careful of sort of what comes out of that. Certainly, the the advancement of AI, and how it impacts our work is is something that could really change have a huge impact in government in both good or bad ways. If you're now pushing for AI to take over some of the judgment in whether someone gets benefits or not, Well, they've tried that in Michigan with its Midas, unemployment system that ended up having thousands of people accused of unemployment fraud, all their benefits stop because the algorithm got it wrong. We had a whole bunch of recent examples where algorithms get it wrong, and it impacts social services. There's also, on the flip side, things like Clear My Record were a great win for the civic tech field because we were able to help expunge marijuana convictions for hundreds of thousands of people. It's a fantastic program. Clear My Record only happens when marijuana decriminalization happens. Without the community organizations that fought for years to not only get marijuana legalized but have those provisions that allowed for those records to be expunged, none of that through my record work happens. It just doesn't. And so as we look to issues around climate change, transgender rights, women's health, privacy, are you being tracked from one state to the other because you're trying to get health care? And technology is enabling that. How do like, these are big thorny issues, and how the election turns out will dictate what fights we end up taking on because like, pick your future here. And so I think one of the challenges beyond just kind of the normal building up a new nonprofit and fundraising and all the things that every nonprofit volunteer organization has to do is the environment which we're gonna be operating on. So if you're listening after the election, we'll have our answer. But that's sort of one of the things that are that are top of mind for me because I I don't think we live in a world where, like, we can just sort of be hands off in the middle and not and take a side on on these topics. We have to take a side because we understand both the the policy implications of what's happening as well as how technology is being used both for really big positive impacts and really big negative impacts.
That is a really good point. Honestly, just being a living person in the country, by default, you're impacted by the politics of the country, right, whether you want to be or not. And I imagine, you know, you're a large and growing organization with with a lot of, like, local groups in different places. And I imagine different folks are personally affected by things in different ways, kind of impacting the world view is, and maybe in different conflicting ways at times. Is this is this are these conversations the sort of thing you see kind of, happening in the network already? And if so, like, how how do you kinda seek to facilitate that in times like like ours?
Yeah. So I think so. Well, for things that are are are really, contentious, I think hosting sort of moderated discussions over these events. But I one of the things that we're gonna do early on is have a solidify our values document. This was something that, brigades did early on when we started having brigade congress and saying, okay. These are our values. And I I think it's a good exercise, regardless how loud the election turns out, but something that says, here are the things that we believe and we feel that are worth fighting for. And I think that being sort of the the guiding sort of providing some guiding principles will help us not only have these conversations, but pick and choose sort of when it comes down to it, what things are we gonna stand shoulder for shoulder on and say, this is worth all of us coming together to fight for.
Something I saw in my own experiences doing the brigade leadership thing during the CFA days was there's this kind of side effect that would occur where, all of a sudden, there's this emerging talent pipeline that was kind of appearing going through these different projects through through the partnerships we were doing. Folks would come in, and it turns out these things would provide a space where you could learn new things, gain some experience, and it was really, like, a ton of risk. You know, if you broke something, you weren't taking down, like, a multimillion dollar system or something. Right? So you could kind of learn and get and get better at your craft. How do you view this sort of side effect in this in in the in the, context of the alliance, and what place, if any, do you think it has?
Yeah. I that's that's one of my favorite things about, civil sort of these volunteer civic tech things. It it it does it is a great recruitment tool for government and for for for civics for civic organizations. The for people to be able to come in so, like, I have a government background. I have a master's of public administration. My first job out of college my first real job out of college was working for the an unemployment office in Chicago during the great recession, which at the time was, like, the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes. And that's actually how I got into civic tech because I went in, turned on my machine, and was greeted by a system from 1975. Not a real time system. And it's a mainframe system. So, like, every time I did something, I didn't know for sure if it worked until the next morning when I printed out a ream of paper about all the transactions that happened the day before. I was mad. Like, like, I am not coming in this from a, like, an altruistic point of view. I'm I'm coming in because I was pissed off because as a public servant trying to do good work and help my community during this crisis, I didn't have the best tools for the job. And so me, not knowing anything about technology, starts going to local tech events and meets Derek Eder, who started Shy Hacknight and started learning more about the technology stuff and then started like, like, things started clicking together. I'm like, oh, like, user centered design. Of course. This is no wonder I was mad at the new system they gave me. None of these things applied. And from from other side, you have people like Harland Weber who, you know, trained as a as a u as a designer, joined Code for Boston, started learning more about government, and started getting more and more knowledgeable about, like, sort of how the sausage is made on government side. And when you combine these two skill sets together, you create a new kind of hacker, the civic technologist. And I and civic technologists to me are very are great allies for local governments and community organizations to have it for for for those organizations who wanna make good impact, because we can sort of straddle the line between all the stuff you have to do on the government policy side and all the stuff you have to do on the technology side, help bridge those things together, and really enable those those change makers to make the impact that they wanna have. And if I I like the idea of us being civic tech's front door, because anybody can can come to one of these events, play around, learn. And if they're interested, you now have a vast network of people who have very senior roles in civic tech organizations, whether it be United States Digital Service, state government, local government, in in nonprofit organizations, in some of these newer companies that specialize in in civic tech. And so it's a sort of a built in network to help people who try this out, find that that's what they wanna make a career in. Now you've got a whole network of people who can help you get there.
Speaking of, talents to people out there, perhaps there's some enthusiastic ones. They're listening to this conversation, and they're like, wow. You know, maybe in in my neighborhood, in my city, we can have a local group, and I wanna help put it together. What advice would you give them as they're thinking about getting started?
Yeah. So the best place to start, if you go to civictechnologists.org, you'll see a link to, signing up for our newsletter and then signing up for our Discord. Definitely join the Discord, introduce yourself. That's where a lot of our our conversation happens. And then, we'll start to announce, like, our our events, and sort of that's where those conversations will happen, including how to start an organization. If you're running an organization and wanna join, that's how you'll we'll do it through through that website and sort of use that to communicate out to to the network. So that's that's definitely where I'd start.
And if there's someone that's out there that's like, maybe, you know, running a a group isn't for me, but I still wanna be involved, how should they go about either trying to find that local group or I'm not sure if there's also, like, you're looking for volunteers kind of in the network part as well.
Yeah. So what I'd encourage people to do is, join the Discord. If there's a an existing group in your area, we'll connect you. If there's not, when the time's right, we'll we'll help you start one. And then we we do need I mean, we need help getting everything going. There's a lot of work to be done. And so we we're kind of using the Discord to sort of coordinate our efforts and and, get things rolling.
Oh, and if there's, potentially an enterprising organization or someone who works in one, and they're like, hey. Maybe I could, like, convince this organization to help, you know, help out, like, that sponsorship type capacity. Is that something y'all are open to as well?
Totally. Join the Discord. Reach out to us as as sort of the the best front door.
Awesome. Well, you heard it, folks. Go to that Discord. Check out the website. There is a place for you if you have that civic tech interest. And, Christopher, I just wanna thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to join us and tell us about the Alliance of Civic Technologists.
Thank you for having me.
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