Great. Thanks, Ryan. So my name is Kelly Taylor. I'm the director of the newly formed Colorado Digital Service. Much like, other initiatives that you see in the federal government and across other states, the Colorado Digital Service is a group of product managers, engineers, and designers that come spend time working for the state in a digital tour of service. So anything from six months up to two years. The team works on the governor's top priorities, much like US Digital Service works on, kinda agency's top priorities. We're one month in and, you know, very exciting. We are hiring. We are starting to get some some project work done, so it's been a great start.

So for the last twenty years or so, I've been building software across a variety of different startups. I've been through several acquisitions. And, most recently, my team and I were acquired by IBM Watson. So we spent a couple years, building APIs there and, you know, mostly around natural language processing and computer vision. And during that experience, you know, I kind of was able to see across lots of different industries from health care to government. And I, you know, began getting into things like open data. And at that time, also, just, you know, in in my personal life, just getting more kinda civic minded, more interested in government, more interested in in, you know, how technology is impacting citizens, found out about things like Code for America and these other initiatives that are out there. And I talked to, Anish Chopra, who is the first CTO of the US government, and Susanna Fox, who is the CTO of health and human services. And, they pointed me towards the US digital service, which I had never heard of before. And the US digital service is a is a team that formed after, you know, the the kinda launch and crash of healthcarehealthcare.gov. There's kinda this famous story of of that project. And, you know, in in that team, you moved to DC for a year and work on, you know, hard problems in government. And I never thought about working for government before. I really knew nothing about the state government, really didn't know anything about federal government. You know, I was looking to my children's, like, third grade social studies class, and they were you know, knew more about government than I did. And, but I started thinking about it, and the idea of impacting citizens with the technology skills, you know, the thing you've been doing your entire career, really appealed to me. So we decided to try it, and I thought it would be a one year thing and done. Right? And, it turned into this real love of of the impact and the work. So, you know, when you're working on these large problems in government, your work can potentially affect millions of people and improve their day to day lives. So that really, you know, began driving kinda the next chapter of my work. So as I as I returned back to Colorado after my time in DC, you know, this this kind of passion for for impacting citizens and and for working in government continued, and that's what led up to the, you know, the beginning of the Colorado Digital Service.

Yeah. Sure. There there's a couple of, blog posts that I I tend to talk about all the time. And just yesterday, I was mentioning the the managers and makers, famous post by Paul Graham, and, also talking about, government two point o and government as a platform by Tim O'Reilly. Those are two that, for whatever reason, throughout my last couple of years now, from The US digital service now to Colorado digital service, I I just seem to talk about that over and over. For people that are interested in what's happening with the civic tech scene, places that I I really, you know, spend a lot of time with people that are interacting in these these places and, like, you know, conferences and so on is Code for America, which I mentioned before. So the the Code for America yearly conference is, like, really the center for civic tech you know, the the premier civic tech gathering. So that's in DC this year in March. And, you know, just really following that community on Twitter and places like that is where I spend a little bit of time to kinda follow along. The opposite side of the coin is local, government and local politics. So I, for example, subscribe to Colorado politics, like a, you know, all about the local, scene here, and it just helps me stay informed of what's going on. You know, it's it's really interesting going from federal to state because it the state, especially here in Denver, especially around the capital, you know, it quickly becomes a very small community. You know, you you get to know the state representatives and the state senators and various people, you know, the heads of the agencies very quickly because you're running into them on the street. And, you know, so I I feel like as you start to work in this area, you know, just like in a large enterprise, you build up your network to help you get things done. The same thing in in state government where you really need to build up your network to get things done. And a big part of that is understanding kinda what's happening in the news, you know, what, you know, what does the the budget look like for the next fiscal year? You know, what are the the priorities of, you know, the the executive branch and the legislative branch? You know, also here in Colorado, we're a very, you know, a purple state. So you have and when it comes to technology, a very different state. So you have agriculture and farming and oil and gas in the rural settings. You also have rural settings that have ski towns and tourism. And then, you know, all the way to the option of the spectrum, we have the Denver Boulder Corridor, which is, you know, closer to a a San Francisco than, you know, than a a mountain town. So, you know, these these issues impact our state really very widely, especially when it comes to technology. So those are, you know, following along kind of the the national civic tech scene through a quote for America and the local political and state tech scene is kinda how I approach it.

So my experience at the US Digital Service was actually quite refreshing because it is just about the work and nothing else, especially when you come in as a, you know, a member of a community practice. So, my work in DC last year was with the centers for Medicare and Medicaid building an API called the Blue Button API. And all I thought about day and night was this API, the developers using the API, the Medicare beneficiaries, and the applications they'd be using that were empowered by this API. It was quite refreshing because there was there was really nothing else, or not much else to think about, which I loved that. Building the new Colorado digital service team, of course, things are quite different, where we're very, you know, focused on building this great talent pipeline. After governor Polis announced the team last month, we've had hundreds and hundreds of applications for our first four positions. So it's been really about, applying product thinking to our talent pipeline. So understanding what's working, understanding what's driving interest, understanding, how we can scale out, you know, the very steps in the pipeline, like resume reviews to our technical interviews, to our EQ interviews, and so on, automating that. And from talent pipeline to really working on our specific project work, which is just getting started with a project called HR Works, to building up connections in the network within the state government. The office of information technology here in the state has about a thousand people, and that office, really provides kind of support all across the governments. We work very closely. You know, all these things, you know, kind of have to work together to get the team started. There's also a lot of education early days here, you know, educating and talking with legislators, talking with executive directors, and understanding, how the state continue to draw in, engineers and product managers and designers, that are interested in coming to help the state for, you know, six months up to two years.

You know, in my time in DC, again, I was all brand new to this this type of stuff, the government work and getting things done in government that really impacts citizens. And, you know, I was so just impacted by that experience that as I was thinking about coming back to Colorado, and I started talking to different people that I was meeting in the Colorado state government, mostly through my work at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid. You know, that that agency in the federal government, you know, has a lot of overlap between the federal and state government because of Medicaid. And so I was talking to lots of folks in the Colorado government working on Medicaid and, you know, just telling them what I was up to and and how great it had been and and really kinda changed my life and how Colorado was right for a team like this. We have Colorado and the Denver Boulder corridors with the second headquarters for lots of tech companies, from Slack to Microsoft to Apple to Google. You know, all the tech companies, Strava, like, they have offices here, and it's really this tech scene is just thriving. So that's a really kind of great foundation, for talent to go help out in government for a little while. We also have a really strong, university system here and a really strong startup ecosystem. So you could imagine, you know, as I was coming back to Colorado, the way I was thinking about this is, you know, startups that are failing, great engineers that are, looking to take a leave from their company or are ready for maybe the next, the next challenge. Like, this is a type of talent that is ready to come solve some of these super hard problems. In conjunction, you know, a lot of the work that I was doing in DC was all around things like health data interoperability and these problems that need really a strong technical aptitude, but also this really high EQ to be able to to get things done, a real good understanding of policy and these various things. So the type of talent that needs to come in on a digital service team is is really senior, right, and been through these problems before in large enterprises. So kind of wrapping all that together plus my experience, I was, you know, really excited about, you know, a team forming here. We, you know, I mentioned before that I've gone through Techstars years ago, and governor Polis was one of the cofounders along with Brad Feld and David Cohen of the Techstars Accelerator. Governor Polis is a tech entrepreneur, and so the the conditions just seemed right, you know, for this team forming. Also, when you look across kind of the the national landscape, it's been five years since The US digital service formed after healthcare.gov. There's digital service teams all around the world, from The UK to Argentina. Estonia is well known for their digital service efforts. And here in The US, state digital service teams are also forming. So you see, governor Newsom in California has made a huge investment in their kind of innovation and digital service efforts. The state of Georgia has a digital service team. There's new teams that are formed in North Carolina, in New Jersey, in Connecticut. Massachusetts has a team. So this is you know, this trend has been happening across The US. And I think the reason that it's happening is bringing talent in from the private sector into government doesn't necessarily say that there's not great talent in government because there is great tech talent even in government, from the vendor community to, the ecosystem, players like Code for America and others that kinda wrap around, government to the agencies themselves. But introducing kind of private sector into government, giving them this interface to come in, it just levels up everything. So you're bringing in, you know, cutting edge practices. So you're bringing in engineers that are you know, have been working CICD pipelines and deployment strategies for years and years and years. This is not something that's brand new to them. Like, it might be on a government team. Some government teams you see are you know, they're beginning their agile transformation. They're beginning to think about their API strategy. So you have people that that can come in that have been doing this for, you know, decades. Right? And so it's a way to really accelerate, some of the learnings by bringing this type of talent in to to work alongside, the civil servants.

So the the digital service model, at least here in The US, I don't know if it was invented by the US Digital Service, but certainly tuned by it. The model is that you come into the government, you become a government employee, and the type of employee that you are is has a term limit associated with it. So in the US Digital Service, I think that began as a two year term limit. It's now four. There's teams like 18 that is run out of the general services administration in in the government in the federal government. I think it's also a four year term. And the idea is that this is not a full time career path that people joining digital service are looking for, but they are looking to make an impact, and they know that they have the skills that can make a difference. Right? Whether they're an incredible product manager, we have a role we call bureaucracy hacker, which is, maybe not the most, you know, technical software engineer in the world, but someone that's able to really get things done in a unique way, you know, engineers, designers. So, you know, give them an interface into government, where they can come in, make an impact immediately, work on high priority projects, whether it's, what we call discovery sprints, you know, prototyping, wireframing things, whether it's some sort of modernization effort where they're, you know, taking functionality and helping move it from mainframe to the cloud, or whether it's something like running a bug bounty or, you know, scrubbing in and helping if there's some sort of, you know, cybersecurity attack. It's things like that. Right? And the model is to come in, make an impact, and then head back out to your, you know, previous career path. Now one of the things you see with as people come in and get exposed to government for the first time is they they end up staying and doing other impactful things in governments. We've had, engineers from the US Digital Service go on to become, you know, CTOs or deputy CTOs of federal agencies. Right? We now see, as I'm doing here in Colorado, US Digital Service alumni start state digital service teams. And so, you know, that's that's not everybody that joins US Dual Service. Most people, you know, head back to San Francisco, head back to Boston and New York, head back to Denver, but some people do stay. So, I mean, that model is very appealing, at least for me personally. You know, if if the pitch was, alright, go from, you know, your your twenty year career in startups and tech companies and join government now for the next forty years, you know, I wouldn't that's not something I would consider. Right? But this idea of, hey. Do you wanna move to DC for a year and work on a couple of really hard problems and then, you know, go to your next start up or whatever? Like, that's really what I had in mind, and it really appealed to me. And as I talked to, you know, tons of people across the civic tech landscape, they feel the same way. Whether it's eighteen f, Code for America, US Digital Service, or State Digital Service team, it's very appealing.

Great question. So as I mentioned, Colorado has an office of information technology, and that's led by the the chief information officer, doctor Teresa Cizerick. And about a decade ago, Colorado centralized a lot of their, you know, quote, unquote IT. And you can imagine that the economies of scale that are gained by centralizing, you know, laptops and things like that and data centers and and, so, you know, the the centralization of technology here in the state is really strong and, doing awesome things. And so our team, this digital service, we are in the office of information technology. I report to the CIO. The office of information technology is within the executive branch. It's not an agency that stands alone. I think Colorado has 17 or 18 agencies, like the Department of Personnel Administration, you know, Department of Transportation, Corrections, agencies like that. And so we, really are within OIT, and our kind of charter, our mandate is to work on the governor's priorities. So I mentioned kind of the type of work that a digital service does, right, from discovery sprint being very early all the way through to, you know, helping with infrastructure, right, modernization efforts. So one in a good place that I think a state digital service can help is, you see legislation passed in a state. Right? You also see this in in legislation and regulation in the federal government. So legislation's passed, regulation is is created, and in the past, that's been treated as kind of a requirements document, very much a waterfall approach. Here's the legislation. Sometimes in legislation, you see specific technologies, outlined, data standards, things like that, which is a terrible idea, by the way. So this this kind of waterfall approach, a digital service team can help improve that by doing early prototyping, doing lots of user research, and that can help inform the policymakers, right, in their decisions. So a lot of the work that you see from digital service, whether it's a US digital service to state digital service teams, is saying, hey. You know, let's go talk to a bunch of users. Let's show them some things. Let's get some more input. And that's just additional, you know, information that policymakers can use to help create this policy and guide things. So, you know, those are some of the things that kind of we see and how we think that we fit in to this broader, you know, huge enterprise technology, whether it's efforts and team across the Colorado government.

Yeah. Absolutely. So I I mentioned I'd I'd met a couple of of people, that working in on Medicaid things and for the state and, because I was involved in the health care data interoperability work at the US Digital Service. And so it began, you know, with a couple of just real lightweight conversations and a couple of phone calls here and there. And and, you know, one meeting would lead to another. Every once in a while, people that I had met would say, hey. You know? And they would send me people to talk to. They were interested in things like how to create efficiencies in government, you know, how to you know, how we're approaching, you know, modernizing procurement and other things like that. And so that was, you know, what I did while I was in DC. You know, being far away like that, it really all the work really felt like it focused around DC. And and, although I was completely homesick and missed my ski season and all that great stuff, you know, most of my thinking was in DC. But as I moved back, you know, then I began having more face to face meetings with people. And, you know, after the the governor's election, really, we began talking to governor Polis about this in a real way. You know, again, because we elected a tech entrepreneur as a governor, understands the power of an end a good engineering team, good designers, good product people, and the impact they can have on, you know, how citizens interface with government and the overall success of things. He really was supportive. So once once that support came, you know, we we really looked to our the network of kind of leaders in Colorado and beyond for additional advice. So, you know, leaders in this area like Brad Feld, for example, venture capitalist that's that's been a technology leader here in Colorado, for many years. You know, people like that we would talk to and and ask for their advice on where things should go, and and, that was extremely helpful. Then as, you know, as the team, as we got really serious about doing it, I was introduced to Matthew McAllister. Matthew spent five years in the Obama administration, the office of science and tech policy. He worked for Megan Smith, who's the CTO at the time other things, and she connected this. Matthew really brings that you know, I mentioned the bureaucracy hacker. You know, he really brings that understanding of budgets and legislation and getting things done in government, and I was bringing kind of the the project work, the product management type of thinking to the table. Matthew comes from also the the city of Denver. So we started working closely on this and, started talking about budget and what the original team would look like. As we you know, the new CIO, joined the Pulse administration, we began working with her on truly understanding the team because the team would, you know, live under her, of course. And we, did some kind of a unique thing, I think, for the the beginning of a state digital service team where she asked us to do a a kind of a sample project, a quick discovery sprint. So we took a look at at this new HR and payroll system here in Colorado, HR Works, and we had a volunteer, team came together. So just friends of mine. There were these great software developers and designers and product folks here in in kind of Denver and Boulder. We spent two weeks with the HRWorks team, just doing some user interviews and and really helping them understand, you know, ways to become more efficient. Right? And, so we talked a lot about agile software development. We talked a lot about DevOps, a lot about product thinking, product road maps, and that helped demonstrate the impact the digital service team could have and how it's a little bit different. And so after that project, I think people were pretty comfortable with the idea of, hey. Colorado should launch this digital service team, and it'll be a great way to get more and more people into the state government. And kinda one you know, after that, it was all about working with the legislature on the budget, and we had budget approved, you know, a couple months ago to start the first version of the team.

Yeah. It's a great question. And and you're exactly right. That was the path, you know, and and, I was I had learned a lot about the state budgeting process, for legislators, you know, it was really about helping them understand, you know, the purpose of the team. Right? They have funded the office of information technology. Why do we need a second team? You know, is there some risk of shadow IT or or, you know, misalignment on things? And so we did spend time with, you know, the senators and representatives on the various committees. Colorado has a great committee here called the joint technology committee. And, you know, again, going from federal to state, it's really everyone is very approachable, and it was we were able to really talk through the strategy for this team and the why. And we really focused on, the talent pipeline. It's this, again, it's this interface to government that the tech talent that is drawn to Colorado, they're not they're not being reached by whatever channels have existed for a long time to be drawn into government. And that's no fault of the channel. It's just different. Right? So the digital service is a way to talk to engineers and designers and product managers about spending time in government. Again, this tour service model is the key because this is not a long term career in government. This is, a chance for people to leverage their skills and impact this state that they love to live in. You know, Colorado's known for kind of, like, this lifestyle first type of state. Right? People move to Colorado because they wanna live here, and then, you know, they work at the various big tech companies or start ups or whatever because of the ecosystem that's here. And so most people you talk to here are very interested in making Colorado as great as it could be. And, so we talked a lot about that when we talked with the legislators. And, the the executive branch and governor Polis, you know, they they were brand new to the state, you know, their administration, and they were looking for ways to optimize and improve performance, you know, all the way across as you can expect. Right? I mean, all administrations are always looking to do that, but there's something about, you know, a brand new start, fresh start. And so they're you know, they got it right away, and we really the conversations there, we're very collaborative because we both have the same exact goals, and the digital service is just one small piece of this overall puzzle, to help them drive these performance improvements across the state.

Yeah. It's you know, each digital service team, you know, whether it's Colorado or New Jersey or California or New York, Georgia, they can have their own origin stories. So the the big lesson, I think, in the Colorado digital service origin story was this discovery sprint project that we did. You know, at first, I thought it wasn't a great idea to do this, and, I was worried we wouldn't be able to be successful, you know, and, not the right structure, just kind of this volunteer group of people helping out. But that really proved to be the thing that helped form these really good working relationships, build it built up trust, you know, and and it was just this, like, really good experience all the way around. And it helped me understand really the culture of, you know, building software within government, because we got to interact with, an agency and the office of information technology. And it it just it was one of those things that when we finished up that discovery sprint, I was so excited to start the digital service, and I knew it was gonna happen. You know, the confidence is very high. So, you know, a piece of advice there is and a learning is is don't be afraid to take on that type of, you know, show, don't tell attitude of, you know, we're we were talking about all this great tech talent in Colorado, and so the CIO said, alright. Well, show us. You know? Show us this great tech talent and and how they, you know, how they're gonna rally around and help. You know, also, I'd say another piece of advice is really get to know your local civic tech community. So we have a very strong code for Denver chapter, you know, brigade here, code for Boulder. There's lots of things going on. So as we began this effort, really just every day led to another, like, amazing person that I would get to meet, that was, you know, drawn to what we were starting to talk about. So we would do things like, just have these very informal lunches. We just did one the other day. You know, we built up a list of people, that we would, you know, just give a quick email to saying, hey. Here's a couple of things that is going on with this Colorado service effort to try to build this team. You know? And by the way, we're having a lunch next week on this day. Come join if you can. So that was extremely helpful for building kind of a a group of people here in in Denver at least that were just always thinking about how to help and talking about the team. So it's things like that, really, I would advise, you know, states starting their their digital service to to leverage.

Are there any spaces in there that you're maybe more excited or particularly excited about kinda taking a peek into with your team? So I mentioned, you know, kind of types of work from discovery sprints to modernization efforts to bug bounties and so on. So that's a good way to think about the overall work as soon as these different categories. Digital service teams differ a lot. So in Colorado, our digital service team will never own and operate anything long term. It's very much like a come in, scrub in, help out, create momentum type of team. Right? Where the office of information technology and the vendors and the and the agencies themselves, they run the services long term. Georgia digital service, Massachusetts digital service, for example, those two teams, they they run and operate services long term. So that's kind of the another thing to think about. So when we look at our our projects on the horizon and type of work we're doing, I don't know specifically what it'll be since it is the the governor's priorities. But I do see trends that are happening in The US. So I mentioned Tim O'Reilly's government as a platform and government two point o blog post from 2009. Right? It's kind of this core read for anyone in in in civic tech. One of the things that I've seen is for the last ten years or so in government, it's been about this consumerization of the government experience. Right? I wanna be able to pay my parking ticket online. I wanna be able to find the hours of my local rec center on my mobile device. Right? Government should be, have a good user experience. Right? Things like that. Right? That's all been happening right over the last decade. One of the things that you see you know, an example of kind of the next chapter is, this project quality payments program that I worked on when I first got to The US dual service. It's this program under the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, where physicians report quality metrics to the Centers for Medicare, and their payment is adjusted based on these quality metrics. Right? So this program, it used to be where physicians would go to a website and upload information, but we built an API for the program. So now companies are able to do these integrations between a hospital's electronic medical record system and the centers for Medicare and Medicaid, and everything becomes very automated. So that's one example of kind of this next chapter I'm seeing of the role of APIs and government, right, and the role of transacting with citizens and businesses in the community, beyond just a consumer experience. So another, kinda signal of this is the open data movement I mentioned earlier. Right? So when you go to state and local governments, federal governments, everyone has a data portal. Most of these data portals, you're able to access these open datasets using an using API, of course. You see APIs I mentioned before, like the Blue Button API that gives third party application developers access to Medicare beneficiaries' health data given the beneficiaries' consent. You see more and more kind of interoperating between agencies to create a better consumer experience. So this next chapter of states having developer portals, providing, you know, developer documentation, managing API keys, you know, making data available, that was not previously available, all of that will lead to this next chapter of innovation, whether it's around health care data interoperability, where schools and, you know, health care providers are sharing information so they know that, you know, that a student is sick or that they're having trouble in school, and that might lead to, you know, mental health concerns or something like that, or if it shouldn't transacting with government on the horizon. So when I think about what's really interesting to me, you know, that's kind of one place I go. And then the second place I go is is just really continuing improving the citizen experience. So here in Colorado, we just launched the MyColorado app that has a digital ID. So the experience is you download the app, you create an account, you take a picture of the front and back of your driver's license, some sort of magic happens in the background, and now you have this digital ID on your phone. And, you know, the joke is, oh, can I use it at a bar or whatever? And there's, like, places you can use it and places that you can't yet. Like, you can't use it at the airport, for example. But it's the beginning of this, you know, another big thing that's gonna happen over the next decade around identity and just this streamlined mobile, like, so such a good citizen experience. So those are kind of two big areas that I've been thinking a lot about when it comes to the, you know, what's on the horizon and and hopefully what the digital service can help with.

Well, one of the really cool things about this tour service model is digital service teams are always hiring, people are always starting, and people are always leaving. So I remember my first week at the US Digital Service, the first big staff meeting, with administrator Matt Cutts. You know, that one of the traditions is this clap off to say goodbye to people that, you know, had been there a while. And I remember just being really nervous. Like, wow. You know, the people that were being clapped off are a couple of awesome engineers and being like, oh my gosh. They're they're leaving. Like, that's why are they leaving? It was just it was an interesting thing to get used to people always starting and people always rolling off. But that's the nature of the tour service model, and it it keeps the talent pipeline really strong. So people that are, really interested in in kind of civic things. Right? A lot of engineers and designers and product managers I talk to, they have ideas about how to improve their local community. They have opinions on things. They, you know, they had their empathy is just off the charts. Right? They they have lots of ideas. And so that's the type of person that if that's how you're thinking, you're drawn to it, then you'll be very successful on a digital service team. The also the other interesting thing to really think about is digital service team, especially for engineers, is you are not writing code twenty four seven. Right? A lot of this is, helping bring ideas and people together. I mentioned, you know, the intersection of policy and software development. So it's we have this phrase, the deal service. This is a really weird job. You know? And it's it's very true. So the type of person that is very comfortable in the middle of kind of chaotic environments, able to create momentum, move things forward where maybe other people can't see it, I mean, that's the type of person that's a great fit for a digital service team. And, of course, here in Colorado, you know, we people can go to colorado.gov/digitalservice to, you know, connect with us. And, we're constantly hiring, building the first version of the team right now. So if you're a site reliability engineer, a designer, a product manager, a full stack engineer, a security engineer, you know, we are very interested in talking with you.

Well, I'd like everyone to think about how Colorado has three hundred days of sunshine, world class skiing, a thriving tech ecosystem, and, a great place to live. So come and visit and come and, you know, connect with us at calorador.gov/digitalservice. I'm super interested in hearing from you. I my experience at the US Digital Service and now, you know, getting the opportunity to launch this new Colorado Digital Service, it's been by far the most impactful, wonderful part of my career. I encourage anybody that's thinking about this at all to at least check it out. I never ever imagined I would do anything related to government, and, you know, here I am now a couple years later just continuing to have fun every single day. So definitely connect with us and, and check it out.