51 More Than Code
[Leah Bannon](https://twitter.com/leahbannon) leads an AMA featuring [Georgia Bullen](https://twitter.com/georgiamoon) and [Maya Wagoner](https://twitter.com/mayawagon, authors of the [More Than Code](https://morethancode.cc/report/executivesummary/) report.<br><br>##### Music Credit: [Tumbleweeds by Monkey Warhol](http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Monkey_Warhol/Lonely_Hearts_Challenge/Monkey_Warhol_-_Tumbleweeds)
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Transcript
Hello. I'm Leah Bannon, and this is Civic Tech Chat, a podcast about the civic technology movement. We seek to harness the power that technology has to improve the delivery of public services to people everywhere. I'm guest hosting today because I organized a Q and A with a group of friends, including Maya Wagoner and Georgia Bullen, authors of the More Than Code Report, which is awesome. You can find it at morethancode.ccreport, and I strongly recommend you check it out. When I first read it, I was yelling and cheering the whole way through because it felt like they addressed so many issues or concerns I wonder about in this work with hundreds of interviews with folks in our space. We talked about why user research isn't enough, why civic tech and public interest tech are maybe not the best terms you want to use, and why there are no innovation shortcuts to justice and equity work. So in this recording, they'll introduce themselves and then answer some great questions from the group. Very excited to have Georgia and Maya here today, to talk to us about the More Than Code report, which came out two years ago, and I should have read and promoted more back then as well, but here we are. And I've been slowly badgering everyone to read it, so I wanted, to have a session to chat and, learn more and try to get as many people to read it as possible. So, Maya and Georgia, can you start by introducing yourselves?
So hi, everybody. My name is Maya. I was yeah. So I started working on this report a couple of years ago while I was, working with, I started as Georgia's intern at the Open Technology Institute. And, before that I was one of the organizers of the Code for San Francisco Brigade. And just was really interested. Did a lot of the interviews for this and ended up interviewing like 60 people, just myself. And yeah, since then, I had a Ford Mozilla open web fellowship at the Brooklyn public library and now I work as a UX designer there. And yeah, I'm excited to be here to talk more about this. I think we learned so much from talking to like an extremely diverse group of people who are working with technology for social justice or equity or whatever people wanna call it. So, yeah, I'm I'm excited to share.
And I'm Georgia Bullen. I was at at New America at the Urban Technology Institute working with Maya. This report, which actually the whole project took about two years, to do. So it was came out two years ago, and we started on it four years ago, which is kind of insane, more or less. Like, I I'd have to look up the exact timing to be sure. But, I've since left New America, and I'm now I now run a nonprofit called Simply Secure. We do, usability and design work with a focus on security and privacy. So we work a lot in the Internet freedom and human rights space. So that is where I am now. But, I would actually say a lot of that shift and move and actually return to because my my background was in UX and human centered design, prior to working in a think tank in a policy institution. So I returning to that was somewhat driven actually by the work. Like, doing this work over two years helped me kind of recenter and see how and where I wanted to be doing that work and is part of why part of what led me to return back to those roots and sort of reprioritize how I was working. Yeah. I'll get started with a couple questions and then if y'all wanna ask a question,
please feel free to post in the, your post your question in the channel, and I'll try to get to everyone. I think, to me, the recommendations were the most interesting part. I I, I think, like I'm glad you just talked about, user centered design and co design because I thought that I think that, like, this group that I've pulled together is roughly united by support for user centered design and generally working towards democracy and justice and equity in this space. And, you know, not as their full time job, but definitely a supporter. And, I I I guess I think, you know, you even called out 18 f and USDS as good examples of, success at the federal level, but I also think that we do a lot of just user centered design and not codesign or, you know, maybe even a little parachuting, which you recommended against. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the difference between, you know, a design process that involves users from the beginning and and does talk to them and and collaborates with another government office, but maybe isn't necessarily reaching the level of co design and what what that kind of means.
Yeah. I guess I would see it as just a difference of power and who's running the show or making the decisions. I know that in a lot of traditional user research, a lot of times you're, like, building a product and you wanna find out who your customers are and sort of take their knowledge and how they live their lives and then use that to sell something back to them. But there's also, I think, a way that might be more complicated or might have you might have to shift your practice a little bit to bring people in as deciders that bring their own values to the work or even find out, like, what work people are already doing on the ground and what they need versus coming in with a solution and then getting feedback on that from people. So anything that can be coming out of work that people are already doing or that there's the right of refusal where if you're working with a community and they can say, no. This would actually be harmful. Just agreeing to be like, okay. It's over. We're out. Like, we're not gonna do it. We're not gonna release it. So I would say that's how I kind of understand the difference. As well as, like, the gate the gatekeeping, the skill sets. You know, like, you might be involved with something as a, you know, UX designer, engineer making a ton of money or, like, prestige off of it or getting to speak at conferences or getting access to a lot more opportunities, whereas the people who you're kind of, like, harvesting their knowledge and life experience from get none of that. Like, being transparent about who's benefiting and passing some of that along,
I would say. I don't know. Georgia, what do you think? No. Yeah. I think I mean, part of what I'm curious to hear more about is, Leah, you framed it as, like, just doing user centered design or, like, I and I think my question there is, like, what does that mean? Or, like, we're not doing it every day. That's like, well, no one is every day, like, running a work some people maybe for a month, and then they're exhausted, like, running a workshop every day with the people they're working with. So I think, I I think what we're talking about doesn't mean understanding that working in government is always gonna come with a certain amount bureaucracy, and some of what you're doing there is actually figuring out how to navigate that bureaucracy and, like, figure out where you have opportunities to bring community in. Right? And if that's sort of the lens that you're like, if that's part of what you're doing every day, like, that doesn't mean you're not doing human centered design or you're not also doing co design. Right? I think the question is, like, Maya is talking about, like, when it comes to decision making, when it comes to problem identification, when it comes to, like, solutions and ideas, like, how are you involving the people impacted by the work? Are they, just testing the thing? Are they, like, informing the features and the design? Like, how much of that is there and how much what are ways that you could actually engage them in that prioritization or decision making or, like, process as a whole. I do think it's important. I think sometimes we undervalue the work of that, like, navigation and bureaucracy. Like, that is that's really important work, and it's actually kind of it's good for people to know. Like, that's also stuff that should be recognized as part of the work of that process because the systems you're interacting with need to figure out how to evolve to make that possible. Right? So I don't know. I wouldn't undervalue that. I would just also, it's a question of, like, what are ways that you can go a step further in how you're identifying and defining problems in a way that you could work more closely with the community rather than saying, like, oh, you know, we're here's a solution we've already come up with, and we need you to test it. Right? Like, can you take that further, to where the community is helping to find the problem?
I don't know if that makes sense. Yeah. I think that's a great framing on, like, how much power does do the people have as well that you're collaborating with or just extracting
knowledge from. I think I mean, one thing just to add on this before we jump to your next question, like, in a lot of the projects that I see in more of the strict like, where more commonly civic tech is the tie a term that's used, a lot of times what we're doing is trying to take a paper driven process and make it, like, more efficient or more technologically powered, whatnot. Right? Whatever that means. Like, we're trying to solve for some efficiency problem, and I'm using air quotes here. I remember having a conversation with the folks working on the, oh god, the, like, food stamps project at Code for America. And I we were talking through it, and they were like, oh, you know, we worked on making the project the system better and better and much easier for people to apply for food stamps. Like but then we realized that the problem is the policy of who gets access to food stamps. And I was like, yeah. It's like the technology doesn't solve that problem. Right? Like, that was a the revelation for them was, like, the poverty definition sucks, and so the poverty definition does not reflect, like, who's eligible who should be eligible for food stamps. Like, you can't efficiency efficiency out that problem. Like but if you were talking to like, in talking to people and understanding what their lives are actually like, you know, how that plays out and how that impacts people. I remember when I realized that, folks are only eligible for, like, low cost Internet if they are, fall into the definition of poverty and therefore on programs like have access to programs like food stamps. But if you're, say, a grandparent raising your grandkid because the parents aren't around and so you're an intergenerational household, that that doesn't make you eligible for things like that. And it's like, those are policy things that need to change that we need to understand about the way people's lives actually are. Right? It's like, how can we how can we actually have that conversation and solve the problem? But, like, the technology process being more efficient, isn't gonna make it more like, that's not gonna make it co design it more better. Does that make sense? Like, how do you change the policy conversation too?
Did wanna, go go to Amy real quick because I thought Amy raised a really good question, that I wanted to talk about as well.
Yeah. So the question is gender identity demographics to this the did the question require a single answer? That one? Yeah. People potentially, yeah. I think people could choose all of the terms they identify with. Maya, do you remember?
I actually don't remember.
I think we left it as open and people could also self define. We were pretty, we tried to make that as, like, people could define and that way, we could most easily support that. So people could choose multiple terms.
I think the next question we have is coming from Ryan.
Yeah. I had a question. One of the recommendations that stuck out to me was the one that reads develop and adhere to specific concrete mechanisms for community accountability. And I was curious to hear your perspectives on what makes for, like, quote, unquote, good systems design for this sort of thing.
Yeah. I mean, I think if you have a I don't know. If you have a co design process and you are sort of starting with the goals that the people in your community are working with set out, then that's always, I think, the best place to start.
But yeah. George I don't know. Georgia, do you have Yeah. I was I I would say to me, this is about governance. Right? So, again, thinking through and even just, like I think a lot of people struggle when you start talking about things like governance or accountability structures because everyone wants it to be perfect. And it actually is probably good to just start with, like, what is it? Like, let's make it not implicit. Right? Like, that's a great place to start. So, we work with a lot of day to day now, I work with a lot of open source projects, and this is something that comes up a lot when it's sort of, like, who actually gets to make decisions about what changes are made in the software. Do we consider users contributors? Like, things like that. And it's, you know, making it clear, like, how decisions get made, who has power, sort of back to the, question about, like, what does co design look like? Like, what is the role? Who's making what decisions and how that gets made? Again, for those of you who are working in government, like, some of that happens because of, like, the hierarchies in place or maybe, like, which agency is making a decision, or paying for it or whatnot. But it can still be really good for that to be documented and clear, so that the people who are participating in that process, like, know what their, like, agency is. Right? Like, can they, like, who is who's gonna keep this going after whatever is happening right now? Right? Like, if something needs to change, who does that get taken to? Where do my contributions go? Right? And how does that play in? So I think that, a a great place is starting by making it explicit, and then and to sort of think about how do you shift that more towards, a co designer participatory model, like, how can you give the community more power, or how can you give the the people who are sort of driving that process, more power in that process or, like, keep yourselves accountable to what you're promising. So, you know, if you're agreeing to do transparency reporting on a quarterly basis, like, what happens when you don't? Right? I think a lot of times when we talk about this, we don't always think about, a great example of this is codes of conduct. A lot of people spend time developing code of conduct and publishing code of conduct, but they never have a plan for, like, what happens when the code of conduct is violated. And so the first time it's violated, there's, like, suddenly a scramble to make a committee that's gonna respond. Right? And, and everyone ends up being so frantic that they don't have a process or a structure to actually say what's probably the right thing, which is, woo, slow down, take a breath. Like, what do we do about you know, what's our process for this? They're like, what are the ways that we hold ourselves accountable to the structures that we use to govern the groups that we're working in, whether it's a code of conduct and, you know, follow ups of what happens when someone, is offended or, like, has a harassment thing that they bring up. Right? Because those things are gonna happen. So as long as we know how we're gonna handle them or how we might make a decision, That's that's sort of those are good models. Right? So thinking about actually the implementation or working through the the risk scenarios of when things go wrong, I think are really helpful. But documenting explicitly, sharing that openly, and having thinking through those scenarios are really good structures.
Yeah. And I guess another thing I would add to that is just especially the things like inclusion and equity and racism and sexism, like, holding yourself to the outcomes more so than to the attempt. And, like, I feel like I this happens a lot where, you know, there'll be a group that is, you know, predominantly, like, white or male or whatever, like, or cis, and people sort of, like, express, like, well, we invited them and they didn't come. So what can we do? And kind of move on from that. And just not moving on from that and saying, like, okay. Well, maybe there's something deeply that needs to change about how we're organized or where we hold these meetings or what we're focusing our work on or how we're sending out the invitations and basically, like, being willing to change as many things as possible until you have an equitable organization or whatever it is that you set out to do, even if that is difficult?
Well, it is I mean, I think it's about accountability. Like, I think always sort of asking yourself, like, is this, once you've been able to name it explicitly and document it, like, what needs to change for us to be meeting our goals? Right? If one of the things we wanna be held accountable to is, a representative decision making body, right, or, like, some form of that, do we have that? What would need to change? What what work do we need to do to make that possible? Right? Which maybe isn't just, like, seeing who responds to the call. It's, like, doing directed outreach, to find out, like, what's not working about this or, like, what would be to to change and engaging the people you're trying to reach about why it doesn't work for them. Right? It could be as simple as, like, well, the meetings are at a time that don't work for me because I have a standing community meeting, so I can't show up on Thursday nights. Right? Or it could be, like, I don't wanna be on a committee that is a bunch of people who are very different from me. So how do we make this something that I feel welcome at?
Georgia, you were talking about, like, yeah, a lot of people in this space were recognizing it's not technology. It's it's a policy change that's needed. Mhmm. And it it's implied and I've, you know, I've skimmed through this. I've read the executive summary. I haven't, read it in detail. I keep meaning to read long form things, and it just never happens. It's long. Yeah. There's there's that implied idea that a lot of folks don't necessarily, are are here for, you know, values around spiritual justice, not, you know, technology certainly not what leads them. Did you get a lot of concrete examples perhaps of the idea where people were using technology to, like, support and make it easier to make that policy change?
The thing that comes to mind for me is this is sort of the split between, like, things that are framed under civic tech that I think have really driven from technology and open datasets and a lot of that, like, open data movement, where I think there's always sort of been this driving force of we have all this information and resources. How can we make it help us better? Right? Like, how can we actually leverage the assets we have better? That's sort of been to me, that's one of the fundamental pieces in civic tech. So the policy thing hasn't been there yet because we were still actually just trying to figure out, like, what we know and what we could do more with. Right? Like, a lot of the first, like, civic tech projects were all open transit data, and those projects are I mean, it's great. Part of that is, like, the transportation field has more structured data that was easy to open and maybe less political to open. Right? So it was easier to get those things going first, and so we saw a lot of those projects first. And I think, I so I think in starting from the projects that started more in that field, you see them hitting policy later because they started working on the problems that are more rooted in policy issues maybe in, like, a later wave, if that makes sense. I think where we've seen stuff that depending on how you frame it, if you look more at things like, media justice work or, digital divide work, like access work, that's where, like, actually a lot of the community efforts and initiatives and technology that's been built for mobilization of campaigns towards policy, like, has come from a very different frame and path, if that makes sense. So I I would it's sort of like there's things that have been I would have misgroup things as there are things that have been built in pursuit of policy change versus things that have been, kind of like leveraging public goods more effectively. And, I think we're starting to see that, like, crossover as we're digging into the harder as people are willing to work on the more political and harder problems.
I feel like I've seen it lately as sort of, like, this group as we hit, like, the five year mark, it's kind of where we all end up. Like, the project I'm leading right now is, it's a automates eligibility verification for seniors. And the state what the state would like to do is get all these transit providers to switch to age 65. And so they're but transit providers refuse to have that conversation. The boards refuse to talk about policy changes. And so what we're just doing is, like, if you want the code, we are only offering it for this one policy definition. We won't support your, like there's, like, 16 different versions of senior throughout 340 transit agencies. And so it's kind of this opposite thing where, like, a lot of the tools we're developing right now in transportation is we're also trying to get people to switch to fare capping. But in our, like, 40 page feasibility study, we never use the phrase fare capping, but, like, that's the major driving force between all of this is, like, we're prioritizing our partners based on who's willing to accept fair capping, and that's all based in, like, equity.
Yeah. Mhmm.
Yeah.
Yeah. I think yeah. I think that we're starting to see it more. I don't, there are a bunch of I know that are some stories in the report and that are on the website that, talk about it, but I from my memory, it's more, like, things that are coming more from the media and access justice work, that are coming to mind at the moment. So sorry for not having a great example.
Yeah. I guess I can also think of an example. Well, since this but since working on this, I started working at the Brooklyn Public Library on a credit ground fines, and some of the, like, members of the Board of the Library were saying, like, oh, why aren't people paying fines? Maybe it's hard to find on the website. Maybe people can't figure out where they can pay them, or, like, maybe the usability is not good enough for paying fines. And it was just so hard for them to conceive that sometimes people don't have $15 or that that could go to something else. And so, yeah, it's like, occasionally, the problem is it's hard to find out how to, like, how to pay them in the interface. But a lot of the time, it's you know, if if your child loses a book, it's like that money is gonna go to groceries this week. It's not gonna go to unlocking your library card. And so, I mean, that's leading to some policy changes as far as, like, a lot of libraries around the country are just getting rid of fines altogether. It's the only people that really impact are people who can't afford to pay them in the first place.
Yeah.
So yeah.
I think, one thing I'll add is and then I know there are more questions, so we will keep going. But, this is actually something not from the report, but something that I wrote about in my grad school thesis because I focused on open data for that if anyone is interested. But I actually I was writing Code for America was really new at the time, and I wrote about it. And I was like, actually, to me, the biggest win that Code for America is doing in its design is they're forcing, the the model at the time was that the city that participated had to put put up part of the money, and so they actually had to work it into the budget, which made it really hard to cut next year. Right? So one of their, like, weird theories of change that they were never super upfront about, but they were doing through their operational model, I think a lot of this is, to Alyssa Black was the, head of operations at the time, and I remember her telling me this. And I was like, oh, this is kind of genius because rather than they basically worked it into the budget structure in a way that it, made it more likely for the city to be willing to spend that money again the following year. Might be not in the same way, but it made it harder to cut. Right? Because the half of a fellowship funding that they were putting up to match the funding that Code for America was bringing basically introduced a policy through the budget, if that makes sense. So it was a way to kind of, to make that change more structural. And I just always thought that was, like, a really fascinating thing that no one was talking about. But I think it's sort of to the same to the, like, fines example or the fair capping example. Like, how can you, get people to, try something different? Like, if you frame it as a pilot. Right? Like, do people then realize that it works and so you can keep this new financial structure that actually, like, becomes a massive equity shift. Right? Can you, like, introduce a new concept on, lightweight risk? Like, the other example that comes to mind that, oh god. I'm forgetting his name right now, but it was he used to be at the, department of IT in New York and is now at Johns Hopkins, I think. Anyway, they, changed the threshold for RFPs to be much lower, right, so that you could have smaller businesses responding to them. Right? Like, what are the ways that we can what's the thing that's actually creating the barrier, and, like, what's a way to get people to try something, like piloting a fair cap without calling it a fair cap that then allows that to prove the fact that it it might change, but it's actually you're still gonna get enough money. Like, this is still gonna work. Like, allowing those people for those extra five years is still gonna be okay. Like, they can still be included in that. But is it that you need to pilot it first, or is it that you need to, like, show it in the budget that it will work for them or just, like, give them another model? I don't know if that's helpful, but those are some of the examples that come to mind.
Corey and Ben both asked somewhat similar questions, so I wanted to get, go to theirs. Corey's had a good suggestion of combining them. So Corey, could you ask yours and then Ben ask yours and we'll take them together?
Sure. I'm just curious, maybe we can move to the recommendations for a moment and do a little bit on Ben's question is actually probably better first, but then mine more tactical as always, right? Georgia and Maya, we love our friends at Mozilla and Ford and, whatever vision they had. But I'm curious, like, how much have they actually dogfooded, the work that they supported and and are passing it along to others? I think, yeah, I'll just leave it at that.
I was just kind of curious, like, which recommendations were the most radical, or sort of just, like, beyond the edges of, like, current practice or acceptability?
So first, it was, pretty radical for us to include social justice work in this report at all. That was, that was met with some resistance, but we pushed it forward. And, one of the biggest I I wanted to build on that and give the and answer Corey's question. One of the things that happened after this is actually Ford ended up renaming their I'm not gonna claim full credit for this. I think, they would not like that. But, Ford's program that had been Internet freedom and they I think they were thinking about renaming it Public Interest Tech. They instead changed it to Technology and Society. And that's partly because this report and this work helped them realize that the media justice and other things that were under Internet freedom work they had been funding was actually quite interlinked to the sort of focus on public interest tech that was, that they are interested in trying to grow, and seeing this sort of alignment with this concept of public interest law, which Ford Foundation helped to make happen, back in the day. So, that's one thing that I know is definitely, like, how Ford has continued to run those programs and frame them and how they talk about the work. What it has very much shifted, as a result of this work. So I think that's one thing. It's not like, oh, this total program design changed or, like, this funding thing changed, but, like, a lot of the way that they build narratives has changed, and I think that is we're still seeing that like ripple out. One thing I know that they're exploring and actually I think is one of the programs that they are now now have in place is actually a two year fellowship program so not, they're working with more international organizations, and it's similar to the, like, Open Mudd fellows program, which, Maya participated in and, is one of the programs in this space that they've made a much longer window of time. And I think that also, I I think was influenced by some of what we were talking about where these, like, really short these, like, less than a year fellowships are really hard to be impactful and, tend to leave with you know, end up being more parachuting experiences or not. So those are some things that I think we've seen change. Yeah. Maya, if you wanna add to Yeah.
I mean, to full disclosure, since this, I haven't been taking such a zoomed out view of the whole ecosystem. Like, I've been just working on things at the Brooklyn Public Library mostly and some other projects, but so I have less visibility into it. But I have noticed things that have, like, come on my feet of like, Code for America is seems to be doing demographic survey pretty widely, which wasn't happening before. And I think that that was one of the recommendations was, like, actually especially for the biggest organizations in the space doing Leading by Doing demographic surveys even on volunteers, especially volunteers. And then as far yeah. And I've also noticed that in some of their job postings have specifically, like, wanted to prioritize people who have lived experiences with some of the systems that they're directly working with. So, you know, people who have received food stamps or people who have either loved one incarcerated or have been incarcerated themselves. And that seems really important. I don't know if it came from this. But, yeah, I mean, I would say that one of the recommendations from my report was a lot around kind of shifting the perspective of how these kind of fellowship programs are designed as far as either bringing someone from the outside to come in for ten months or a year to do all this work versus finding out who's already doing the work and has been for a while and is embedded in the community and has known you know, has, like, intergenerational connections and then funding that or figuring out how they can get the tech skills that they need to level that up or basically just capacity building and yeah. Like, starting with people who are already starting to do that work. Yeah. So I don't know if that's the most radical recommendation. I think there's also the whole section on different model. Like, there's been a lot of focus on government agencies and NGOs and nonprofits, but so many even the organizations that we partnered with weren't any of those, and we're either not incorporated or we're, cooperatives. And so just looking at, like, the variety of models and not necessarily assuming that it has to be a five zero one c three?
I think for a lot of people through this report, we basically were able to say things that people were feeling and thinking. So I think, part of what was, and and I think this is part of why it's had a bit of, like, a soft permeation, like, just kind of flowing out into the space is, people are like, yeah. And then they still have to do the work, right, to make those changes happen. But, I think a lot of what I've seen is that that it has given a voice to concerns people already had, and so even just being able to name those things. I know other folks have modeled research on the project. I know, I've seen a bunch of places where people built it into their syllabi for teaching, which is cool. So it's I think things like that, I'm hoping we continue to see it. Like, Maya and I were talking about this the other day. We're like, oh, yeah. This is all still stuff that we are working on every day, and that's good. I mean, it's also good. It would be good to feel like we had, like, won more, but I think as you all know, like, these are it's not like there's a a checkpoint where you're done. Right? This is about, like, changing how we work and, doing that in an ongoing way. So I that's sort of seeing it continue to permeate out, I think, is a good sign.
I I wanted to follow-up real quick on one of the points you made around, that you made that case for, including social justice work, because I think one of the things that I was walking around yelling at my excited support for the report as I was reading it was, the point that there are no shortcuts to justice work. And I think a lot of what we do is around tech modernization in government or innovation is that we kind of hope and think that technology or some of this work will give us this kind of shortcut to social justice. And I think, like, I'm constantly trying to push that we have a more justice and equity framing on our work in civic tech or the organization formerly known community formerly known as civic tech. And that we I guess, like, I get a lot of pushback from people saying, you know, this is government. Like, all government should be modernized and improved, and all government should be just as good as my favorite company's app. And I guess I'm curious how you can like, what you did to to push that and frame that, and if you have any thoughts on how we could
Yeah. Thank you. The the project started framed as, baselining the public interest tech ecosystem. And so we did an initial set of interviews, under that frame, and everybody said, what is that? And instead talked about, like, their frames, and a lot of, like, justice and equity came up in that. And that was coming from folks working in government too. And so we sort of reframed as we brought on the partners to help define, like, more questions and build up the research as the technology for social justice project. And it was interesting. I don't think and my you can you can check me on this. I don't think anyone was like, oh, I don't identify with that, so I don't wanna talk to you. Everyone was like, oh, yeah. Let's talk about technology and, and impact. Right? Like, because there was something about that frame that more people, like, no one was saying, like, oh, that's not me, but they were like, oh, I can talk I yeah. I'm happy to talk about my experience, much more than when we were doing the public interest, like, baseline frame. People were like, that's not me.
Right? Yeah. We definitely have people in government who said that or said I can't identify with that. Like, I we're definitely not allowed to use that framing. Yeah.
But they still were willing to talk to us. Right? Like, that was Yeah. I think it was interesting. Like, we were able to using that frame, we were able to prime a conversation to be able to talk about that more even if people didn't if they were like well that's not how I frame it and or I can't frame it that way I can do this. But what we were yeah I just think it's interesting. So we kind of just did it and, yeah, it was met with some resistance, but we were like, don't worry. We're still gonna talk to all the people you want us to talk to. Like, this is just this is a thing that's come up, and so we wanna make sure we talk about this and that that frame is clear, and we think it's important that it's clear because it's come up so much already in our initial in our pilot round of interviews. Yeah. And that I'm I'm glad we did those. I think that was helpful for, allowing us to shift and do the work the way we like, in a more participatory way and with that, like, frame as part of the conversation.
Yeah. And I think yeah. One of the things that I think came out of this was that basically all of any way that you frame it is going to keep some people in and keep some people out. And for the the organizations we were working with on the research team, social justice, I think, was something that united us a lot more than something like public interest, which people more often were skeptical.
And I think and, but, you know, what is a like, on some level, government work is about equitable access. Right? Like, in modernizing, like, a lot of that is about, in many cases that's about getting people the access they should have or, like, making the systems work for the people the way they're supposed to. Like, maybe social justice isn't the frame, but, like, equity is definitely a centering point for people. Yeah, I realize we didn't totally answer your question Leah, but hopefully that was helpful. Just tell me how to convince people
to support equity and justice. That's all I wanted to know.
Yeah, I mean a lot of it's about finding out how they how they talk about it. Right? Like, what is the word for what is it for them? Like, what is, because it's maybe just those words they're familiar with. Right?
Looks like Brendan had a good question. Brendan, do you wanna ask your question?
Yeah. Sure. Thank you so much. I can't wait to dive in further to this report. I was just curious with, with COVID, Unfortunately, a lot more people are having to apply for unemployment insurance or they're experiencing, some of these processes that might not work as smoothly as as they've liked and in the past have have not really thought much about them. And I'm just curious how that might lead to, more people demanding better services and then also an opportunity to fold more people into I don't know what to call this space. I don't wanna, offend after learning all the different terms, but more into this movement of of trying to improve things. And I was just curious your your thoughts on that.
I Feel like COVID is a nice equity opportunity, to be to say one positive thing about, this pandemic situation. Yeah. It's a great point. I think a lot of people, you know, suddenly a lot more people have to think about what it's like to be unemployed or what it's like to try and access government services or Yeah. It would be nice if a lot of that was going more smoothly, but I I do think it is I I am optimistic that people will see and I think the hard part here is really the narrative of the way these things are talked about and covered, but, it's really clear to me, sorry, not a not a totally coherent thought, but let me step back and explain. My organization, Simply Secure, actually, a lot of my staff are based in Germany, and so it's been really clear to me to what extent having social infrastructure has made a difference in this pandemic. The way, like, just like Germany and Europe are able to respond because of the way their social social infrastructure is, there for people and business owners and, you know, just the whole ecosystem, in a way that, like, we don't really have, in The US and so like how hard it is to navigate things like the PPP loan programs, the other like disaster relief programs, like the things that are are there. It's really just fascinating to me how stark the differences are when you already have those systems in place. I'm hoping that that's something that people see and see that to change that, we need to be willing to invest more in building those systems and that like we need things like universal health care to provide for people and we need like programs that work. I think a lot of it's gonna depend on how people tell those stories and how we sort of use these moments to explain that we could be making a difference on them,
if that makes sense. I'm curious on universal basic income as that has an opportunity also as as, because people have seen simulations now with the $600 on. It's it's, unfortunately, not familiar, but if there is a silver lining, maybe it's a way to discuss some of these things. Thank you so much.
Yeah. I don't know, Maya, if you wanna add it all, but that's definitely something I've been thinking about.
Yeah. I mean, there's definitely has been a lot broader support for these things where it just it seems so absurd that, like, people are still expected to pay rent when people are not even allowed to work right now. Or yeah. The introducing the idea of a universal basic income has also been a big piece. But, yeah, I mean, as far as from my work at a public library, it's like, you know, like, 30% of people in New York City don't have broadband at home. And a lot of those peep a lot of those people come to public libraries to access computers and Wi Fi and to have access to devices and space. And with libraries closed, that's not really an option. So figuring out how to yeah. The Department of Education sent out tablets to a couple 100,000 kids.
I've been still doing, like, mail distribution from the schools in a lot of cities, like, making sure people get food because if you were on, like, free lunch programs, like, I think that's been I feel like people are hearing those stories. Yeah. Sorry, Maya.
Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. And so we are right now installing a bunch of, like, outdoor seating and Wi Fi hotspots for people who do have devices that maybe don't have the broadband capacity to support their whole family. But
yeah. Yeah. Sarah mentioned Wi Fi buses in the chat. I've there's been a bunch of stories I've heard in different cities of, the school buses that have Wi Fi being deployed into places where we know, like, access is low. And, I think that's a great, like, I got these are the stories I hope people hear about. So we say, like, oh, these are things we should be working on. Right? And, and making and just, like, thinking more creatively about how we share and distribute resources so that we can address.
Amy, are you still on? You had a good question here about mentorships.
So my question is, like, obviously, throughout the report, I saw a lot of references to mentorships, especially in the practitioner experiences. I wanna hopefully I mean, like, one of my biggest goals is to better understand how we can support underserved individuals with mentorships. Like, communities tend to form, frankly, to me, like, around middle class and upper class communities. Like, they tend to have more access to groups through colleges or through the workplace they're in or just because they can afford to live in a city. So I'm wondering if there are better recruiting methods available that were identified by your participants, specifically even getting in as early as the high school level, identifying sort of underserved communities, and and conducting better outreach and mentorships.
I think one thing that we had been hoping to do as part of the project was actually, enable some of the people the partners to, like, go and give talks at their like, one of the things that came up was, like, even just being able to go and talk about what you do now to, like, the people that you where you went to college. Like, one of our participants who majored in English but is now, like, sysadmin, DevOps person was like, oh, I'd love to go and talk about why I do the work that I do, how I ended up in technology to, like, my English program, to also just, like, get people understanding that there what you're studying might not be what you end up doing. Right? And there are ways to, like, develop skills outside of, like, the educational structures. So I I think that was one one idea in general that we were talking about was, like, enabling people to tell to tell their stories more. And that's, like, part of why on the website we publish profiles of a lot of the practitioners, like, people who are open to it. We wanted to share more of their paths and stories because I think, to your point, when it's framed as a starting place of a community or in, like, a professional framework, that may already start excluding people. But if we can start from a place of, like, personal experience, then people are have the potential to see something that they connect with and then maybe can see how that would affect their path, or how they could be see themselves doing similar work, if that makes sense. That was one of the reasons we tried to highlight people's personal stories and paths so that that was a way to, like, open those doors for people, since that was something that had come up in the interviews. I realized there's not, like, a structural answer to that, but I think one thing is, like, what can you know, what are day to day things we can do? We can talk to each other more about how we got here and who helped us and what was help you know, like, we can tell those stories more to each other, and then some of those men those relationships and mentorship relationships can evolve from those conversations in maybe ways that don't have to be as formally structured. That's like a a thing that we can be doing every day. Yeah. I'm trying to think about other examples. That's like one thing that I remember being a big portion of how we wanted to bridge presenting the work. Yeah. And big shout out to Georgia for being an incredible mentor
for many years of my life now and just ongoing. Like, truly has linked me with so many organizations and people and to this day and also this particular talk that we're at right now. But, but, yeah, I guess one takeaway is that I don't know. I kinda wish we've made this like, framed it a little bit differently on the report is that there's both so many people came in through these ad hoc networks and just knowing somebody and, and having, like, a mentor who hooked them up with some opportunity. But a lot of the times, yeah, like, Amy, like, as you mentioned, a lot of that's inequitable. It's people who have already access to money and connections or went to school in the right places. And, like, being aware of that and saying, okay. I have an opportunity and I know that of a job or I know of an of a grant or something. And being conscious about who you're telling about that and, like, specifically, you know, knowing people who aren't gonna always have access to those opportunities and to share those and be a mentor to people who aren't going to, you know, maybe benefit you so much, but who might be, like, the next person coming up and who we need in the space. So there is also, I think, the structural issue of not being so elitist and, like, flattening it more. But, also, like, personally, always looking who's coming up after you and being Yeah.
I I totally agree with the struggle that it's it's very difficult to find a systemic way of addressing this problem, and that's why I asked because I hope that you were just both smarter than me and, like, configured this Adirai, and it's totally cool that you didn't. But, like, I look at it from that same perspective. Like, I got very lucky. I met certain mentors along the way, who saw something in me and said, okay. I'll try to give you a leg up. It sucks that it's for some people, especially for certain types of communities that, again, don't have access to a lot of these, like, people in positions of power already, like, that it's just it's a bit of a luck game for them whether they get noticed or not. And I think that's that's what I'm trying to solve for. And I think I don't know. Like, I I touched upon this idea of, like, high schools. Like, I think it would be weird if I just reached out to a random high school in DC and was like, hey. I'd like to come talk about how, like, it was, you know, not a standard career path for me to get into this space, into public interest tech. But, like, I'm just I guess this is something, like, hopefully, it's something that you can identify in future, you know, user stories, in interviews with participants is, like, ways in which they were able to reach out to groups that they weren't already connected to. I think that's that's where I'm trying to bridge the gap.
Yeah. One thing I will add is, I'm also I've been an advisor on the Tech Congress fellowship program since it started, which I think folks might be familiar with and, or the Congressional Innovation Fellowship is, I guess, the other way it's framed. One of the programs that Travis Moore has built in there that's actually been really successful is the, like, recommend some of the sponsor someone else to nominate someone to apply. That has actually led to and offering financial incentives for when those people, like, for those, nominations. That has actually been really successful and has led to some of the people getting like, some of the fellows themselves have come in that way, like, people who didn't think that they didn't know about the program or wouldn't have thought to apply. That nomination basically, like, incentivizing people to nominate diverse applicants has been really, effective as a program, and I think Travis has some blog posts about that. So I would like for an example of a structured program and how they built it, you know, paying for that, offering incentives to, get people to help you do that labor, I think, has been an effective model.
Unfortunately, I'm blanking on the name of the program right now. It's out of Detroit, like Detroit Future
Schools? That one?
I think it was one of the other ones named Detroit Future. But I there was a model they have, like, an orange, like, publication about it. But, basically, it was like a tech and media training program, but the way that they selected people to participate was people who of all ages, who had were leaders in their own community, whatever that community might be, and, like, prioritizing people who are going to be able to bring those skills back into, like, an existing community and maybe be mentors themselves or who already have those deep community connections. So even just, like, prioritizing that and who you're bringing on in the first place, I think is a good place to start, which is yeah.
The other model that, that reminds me of is the Mozilla open leaders program. And I see. Abby, who, leads that program, has a couple talks about this, like, the scaling model that is the way they designed the leaders program, which was the idea that everyone who is a part of it would many of them would move on to, become, like, mentors in the following year. So there was this, like, building program that helped expand the network organically and actually, like, a lot of what people were I I mean, people are learning about how to lead open projects, but they're also learning about how to then pass on that mentorship, and that can then evolve itself in a really effective way.
From personal experience, like, that's an amazing program. But I joined as, like, basically a participant and have someone mentor me on my projects. And then I think more than half of the people who participate the next season of it come around and mentor other people. So yeah.
Yeah. It's a real it's a really excellent program, and they have a there's, like, a textbook on how to do like, they've published all of it openly about how to run a similar program. Mozilla is not driving it themselves anymore, but this year, there's a, like, a lot of open leaders x programs. So I think it's a great model for how to scale. Like, it's basically a leadership program, but about working sort of built around the concept of working in the open. That's great.
My question is about, the fifth recommendation that you guys make, the last one about, yeah, we know all of these organizations that, you know, come to mind, but, you called out co ops and collectives and, networks that are doing really innovative stuff, but they're not talked about very often. So I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about them, if they'd be cool with you sharing. I I kind of just want you to give me a list of them so I can reach out to them and and talk to them. But but I'll let you answer how how you want. So I I just wanna know who they are, and I wanna be their friends.
Yeah. I one of the things that I really wish that we had managed to pull into the report is there are a bunch of resources, and there are more now than there were at the time. But about starting co ops, there's a bunch of now, like, incubators for people to set up co ops. So, like, there's a whole broad I think there's way more of a narrative around this than there was even two years ago. But I really wanted to try and have us have more data about the, like, co op movement in the report, and we just didn't get it in time for publishing. But I think I totally have a link in my email that I can send you later. There are there's a bunch of, there are some organizations that specifically organize and support co ops, and so they have, like, lists. There are lists and, like, I can get you access to we can find the list and get them to you. But, yeah, I think, I mean, Maya talked about this earlier. I I a lot of this was coming from a place of people just understanding other models. And to some extent, this is even just, like, other models of governance. Right, like, collectives and cooperatives are just people choosing to have a more value centric governance model to their entity. In many cases, they're still using an entity status that might be a traditional nonprofit framing depending on what's possible in the state that they're in and whatnot. But, it's about having a different value structure to how you run your organization. And I think it was, I learned a ton just, like, hearing more about that and being like, oh, yeah. You could run this totally differently. Like, why do we think it has to be this way? But one of the other things I I remember taking away from that was there are actually a lot of structural barriers around this is something I run into being a nonfounder of a nonprofit, but a female ED. I'm not eligible for any women founder programs. Right? Like, there's these weird restrictions we put on things, which side of that's where a lot of the funding goes into, like, women led organizations. It's into things that are specifically founder framed or specifically small business framed or specifically, like, nonprofit framed. And I think one of the, like, my big thoughts coming out of this is just, like, how can we be more inclusive by actually, like, calling attention to those organizations, like, co ops, collectives, like, alternatively structured entities, like, you know, women led organizations or, like, you know, maybe you're not the founder, but, like, you're in this role. Like, how can we actually make that a, not an exclusionary frame, but something that's broader? Because a lot of, a lot of co ops might not be eligible for some of the programs that we're talking about because of their industry structure being one thing and not another. Right? So how can we make that, just not a place where we're excluding people and instead, like, an opening to alternative structures.
Alright. Well, I think we're towards the end. Thank you so so much for all your time, energy answering all of our complicated questions. And, is is there anything you wanna say before we close out?
Look outside of technology for inspiration, to give credit to more people than just engineers or people who you typically think of as tech workers to, yeah, form an intergenerational network of contact. And and, yeah, like, support each other and, like, give credit to people who are older than you and people who are younger than you is all I would
say. Yeah. I will plus a million that, and say, like, one of the things that I have one way I've tried to act that, like, and put that into my day to day work going forward is, I've been trying to push a narrative around thinking about everybody as contributors, like, including the people who are you're interviewing. Like, they are giving input into a project. So how do you value that contribution? How do you make sure that they know the contribution is valued, that they are helping shape where that direction of that work? I think that's, you know, that really like, if you rethink about how everyone in the project is contributing and giving them credit for those contributions, You count a lot more people and what it takes to get something done, and you're able to sort of see that in a way that shifts the power narrative away from, like, the builders to, like, all of us as contributors. And so I think that's just to the give everybody credit, like yeah. How can you, how can you take how can you make space to name the work it actually took and, like, everyone who is involved in a way that they're comfortable with being named. But, to recognize everyone as contributors in a project, I think it's really important.
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