27 Humane Technology with Genevieve Gaudet
We talk with [Genevieve Gaudet](https://twitter.com/genevievegau) Senior Designer at (Nava)[https://twitter.com/NavaPBC]. The conversation focuses around the idea of humane tech and how it interacts with the social safety net. You don't want to miss it.<br><br>### Resources and Shoutouts:<br>- [Wild Geese](https://rjgeib.com/thoughts/geese/geese.html)<br>- [Indiana and IBM](http://www.govtech.com/health/Nobody-Wins-in-Indiana-vs-IBM-Lawsuit-Judge-Says.html)<br>- [Civic Tech, #MeToo and Toxic Ecosystems: Invest in What Comes Next](https://medium.com/@beingbrina/civic-tech-metoo-and-toxic-ecosystems-invest-in-what-comes-next-34c5276f7dda)<br><br>##### Music Credit: [Tumbleweeds by Monkey Warhol](http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Monkey_Warhol/Lonely_Hearts_Challenge/Monkey_Warhol_-_Tumbleweeds)
Top Keywords
- work 0.012
- folks 0.008
- health coverage 0.006
- civic tech 0.006
- civic 0.006
- health 0.006
- nava 0.006
- tech 0.006
- public 0.005
- technology 0.005
- vermont 0.005
- state 0.004
Transcript
Welcome back to another episode of Civic Tech Chat. If you have a moment, I do have a favor to ask of you. If you head on over to our website, civictech.chat, there you'll find a give feedback link. When you click on it, it takes you to a forum that lets you give your thoughts, your feedback on ways that we can improve the program. So again, if you have that moment, please head on over there and tell us what you think. For this episode, we are joined by Genevieve Godet, a senior designer over at Nava, and also a person who helped put together a design shop within the New York City government. We're going to be talking a bit about this idea of humane technology, what it means, and we're gonna dig into the topic as far as, like, what kinds of ethics it touches, and a whole lot more. I think you'll enjoy this conversation just as much as I did. So let's go ahead and get started. Genevieve, thank you so much for joining us on Civic Tech Chat. Could you take some time to introduce yourself to our audience and tell us a little bit about what you do?
Yeah. First of all, thank you so much for having me. My name is Genevieve Godet. I'm a designer, building humane technology. My work focuses on strengthening the safety net in The US and in particular on, what we call eligibility technology. So that those are the the systems and processes that people go through to find out if they qualify for help with things like, health coverage or help buying food through SNAP or even assistance paying utility bills, things like that.
One of the things that we talk about often on this program, at the beginning of every episode, is this concept of personal why. That idea of what drives you to get out of bed each morning and and do awesome stuff like that. So what what would that why be for you?
Yeah. Thank you for asking that. Whenever I I reflect on, you know, why do I do this work and why I'm here, there's a a really specific story that, comes to mind for me. So back in 2007, I was a college student at Tulum University in New Orleans, and, I was a volunteer, EMT, working in public health clinics and in ambulances. In public health clinics, I mostly did what's called intake, which is, to ask people why they're there, you know, why do they need to see a doctor, and get a little information from them so that the the doctor, the nurse can be prepared to help them. And at the time the city was still recovering from Hurricane Katrina and so often when I asked people, you know, why are you here today? Two years after the hurricane the story always started with the hurricane you know with the big disaster that had just like unseated you know so many people's lives and two years later folks were still trying to recover and were experiencing a lot of a lot of health issues and other issues coming out of that And I think for me that that really embedded sort of in my in the very beginning of my career this idea that, it doesn't really matter who you are or your situation now. Devastating things can can just happen and so it forced me super early on to start asking myself questions like, what do we owe each other? You know, when when really, devastating things happen and who or or what institutions are positioned to to help people in situations like that, Especially, you know, in in a situation in New Orleans, there's a hurricane. Almost everyone I knew was affected, but I think there are, like, what I think of as little hurricane every day for people all over the country. And, you know, if you have the sort of brain, space, and relative privilege to ask these questions, you know, are you obligated to do anything about it? And for me the answer is yes. So, that's why I work on what I do now.
You've gone through kind of an interesting path yourself in kinda getting to where you are now. It's a background that includes research, community engagement, design, and, leadership roles among others. Could you talk us through this path of that is driven by that personal why from where you were to where you are now?
Yeah. Sure. So I wanna I wanna be clear upfront that, when when I talk about how I I got here, that my particular path has involved exercising the enormous amount of privilege that I'm lucky to have afforded to me, and I think it's important to call that out because often, when we do, like, what I call more casually, like, do gooder work, I think it's important to acknowledge that there's a lot of barriers in front of, a lot of things for people who can't necessarily afford to work for free or or volunteer or things like that. But, if we start, like, back in that public health clinic, I was a volunteer ENT in New Orleans, working within a very broken public health system, and I ended up devoting my studies to that and getting super frustrated with the state of design and technology in public health which was certainly there but I felt like you know, there could be a better approach to the way we we build things, the way, folks interact with, public services and with that domain. So coming out of out of graduate school finishing at Tulane, I moved to New York and started doing a lot of design internships mostly in the social impact and public health space. I worked on design projects for organizations like Global Health Corps, the Aspen Institute and eventually a few for the City Of New York and around that time a community in civic tech in New York was starting to form with the founding of Civic Hall, and I was suddenly around a lot of people who are really interested in this problem and, you know, who were also sort of collectively realizing that government as as an institution you know has access to has access to the the kind of scale that you need in order to be able to you know improve a lot of people's lives all at once or you know change one thing and really have an impact folks like a class of city or state or whatever level you're operating in so for a few years I just stuck around that community and sort of inserted myself into any anything I could and you know was lucky that eventually in 2015 I had the opportunity to co found the New York City service design studio in the office of Maribel de Blasio alongside two really incredible women, Ariel Kennan and Jason Raisin. When I was there as a deputy director, I helped to redesign how the city helps their residents, 8,000,000 people, figure out if they are eligible for any of these programs that I mentioned at the beginning, you know, finding health coverage, getting help, paying for food, paying for housing, things like that. And then from there after that project launched, I had the opportunity to join the team at NAVA, a public benefit corporation, whose mission is is very similar. You know, sort of this threat of, like, how do we help government serve those folks? You know, what are the the levers and institutions that are, best set up to help people who are experiencing, all kinds of struggle or or poverty or anything like that. And so right now at Nava, I'm focused on building up a team of technologists who are trying to make it easier for folks to access health coverage and food and energy assistance at the state level, specifically with the state of Vermont. It's where all my focus is going right now.
Now I would imagine that cofounding a design studio at a city as large as New York must have been a unique experience. What was it like for one, like, trying to do that and then kind of also then, like, trying to carry that through the execution execution?
I mean, we were really lucky in that, there was buy in, you know, at the leadership level way above me, that the studio was gonna happen. So we didn't have to fight that fight necessarily. But when we got there, I think at first the challenge was like, what are we gonna work on? You know, how do we find projects that will, demonstrate the value of what we're doing, you know, and that that best use our skills as service designers, product designers, and will set us up to really grow in studio because we can't just have designers unfortunately. And you know one of the first projects that we we all worked on together was a project called Homestead which let us apply service design to a really big ongoing body of work to get houses New Yorkers into permanent homes. So this the big question in that project was really how do we help New Yorkers who are living on the sidewalk or in the subway, get through this, you know, really, meticulous bureaucratic process that, you have to go through to get a permanent home. We mapped out that process through a lot of field research and working with, program experts, policy experts, things like that. And we found that it took, like, hundreds and hundreds of steps, and it could take years, to really help someone who is in that situation. And, you know, that was, like, the that was really the way our team was able to demonstrate a lot of value and, get buy in to do other things like the redesign of the of Access NYC, which is the site I mentioned that helps folks figure out, what they qualify for and things like that. So in some ways, you know, we had buy in for this team, but the challenges were, like, how do we really focus our efforts so that we can, actually help the programs we've been asked to help and, you know, make the case for for sticking around and growing that little practice.
At the beginning of the path you described, you mentioned volunteering, in a, like, a medical capacity. And I and I believe in the digging around I did that one of the titles you have for that was crew chief, which for one that, like, that just sounds like a cool title. But, I would be curious if, like, that you must have had, like, a really unique experience there. Could you tell us a bit about that and, like, what inspired you to step up and and serve that way?
Yeah. Well, a crew chief I'll tell you what a crew chief is. I don't know how I can't if you want. So a crew chief, when you call 911, you know, a few, medical professionals will show up. And in this case, a crew chief is the person who is responsible for, the team, and and the medical decision, so getting you safely to a hospital. And that wasn't what I started with. No one starts with that, but it's what I did eventually. And the reason I found myself in that position, like, holding a radio and, like, deciding what hospital we were gonna go to is, when I was 18 and the day I was preparing to move into my college dorm at Tulane, hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, in the city, which incidentally is also my, my home city, was devastated. And when New Orleans opened back up there was an incredible shortage of of medical professionals, you know, just to to help people, through, you know, medical emergencies in the case of EMTs but even just ongoing health issues. And so I had the opportunity to, take a training and it it seemed like as an 18 year old, this was the best way I could help. And that all just sort of happened, you know, to be honest. Yeah. The city I love really needed me, and so I did it.
That that is a really great reason to step up.
Yeah. I think a lot of folks would do the same in that situation.
So as I'm thinking of folks that might, for example, be aspiring, themselves work in the same zoning of excellence as you, if you were to give them advice on, like, bits of media that you consume, whether it's reading, listening, watching, that you kinda use to, like, keep up to date to keep your skills fresh, like, what would you recommend to those folks?
Yeah. You know, I thought about this question for a long time. And, I'm extremely lucky to have people around me who, are often sharing a lot of content that helps me understand how, the policy environment around us is changing when it comes to, like, what different public programs are doing. Our partners, at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in particular have become a really huge source of education for me so I recommend, you know, checking out the things that they are publishing. But to be totally honest, I am more likely these days to recommend that folks in civic tech consume things that are not like news media. It's a super hard time to do this work and I think it's so easy to feel like success is really far away in transforming a lot of government services. So I've actually been recommending a lot of poetry to people. In particular, Mary Oliver. I don't know if you might be familiar already with her. A really wonderful American poet who just passed away this last month. And she has this one called called Wild Geese that I have been reading often, like, if I've got the news. And there's this, like, really beautiful line in it where she's like, meanwhile, you know, meanwhile, the geese are are heading home again, and it has all this beautiful imagery. And I think for me, in the environment we're in right now in civic tech, being reminded that, like, the pressure's off, no matter how far the work is, the geese are heading home, everything is still gorgeous. And, as long as we, like, keep pushing forward, we're, you know, adding contributing a little more to a world where, like, everyone can just take a second and appreciate the geese heading home. Yeah. I don't know if that's the answer you're looking for, but that's the I've noticed I've been pushing people more toward, like, appreciate some art. Remember that, you know, it's not always gonna be so fraught to do this stuff. That is a really beautiful bit of poetry.
I'll often admit when I wrote the question, I wasn't expecting that, but, I think that answers better. Yeah. That that's really nice. I I think what I'll try to do also for the the listener is maybe hunt down a link and throw that in the description in case there are folks that wanna read the whole the whole poem as well. I can send it to you too. Oh, excellent. Excellent. That that'll make it easy on me. Yeah. Alright. And then, I'm gonna go ahead and shift our gears here, over to kind of, like, our our, main topic for the episode here. This, idea that, the the phrase I really gathered from from your online presence, this idea of, like, humane technology. I think, like, one of your taglines is, like, designing humane technology. And I would be curious to get your perspective, of what that phrase, you know, what what does it mean to you?
When I think of that phrase, I think of, you know, technology that is is shaped in a way, to work for the people who who have to interact with this. And, you know, in government that can mean a lot of different people. You know, for the kinds of programs I work on for something like food assistance that means, you know, a person who needs help buying food and so they're applying. They're often caseworkers involved. They're folks whose whole job it is to report on that system, so they're also interacting with the technology. But for me, the the absolute the center of that, the person whose needs have to be elevated the most are, whoever is the the least power in that situation, whoever really needs the service. So, almost always for me, that's the the person applying, you know, the resident. And a a really good example, I think of, like, the application of this idea is our current work at NAVA on the safety net. I work on a project that is called integrated benefits which is an initiative partnership between NAVA, Public Benefit Corporation, Code for America and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities where we're working with a few different states to pilot really small pieces of eligibility systems you know how might we build them in an agile way how might we make them much more people centered you know and when you think about all those components there's there's a lot to consider from like how flexible is this staff how easy is it to administer but for my practice and the folks I work with you know the big question that makes it humane is is what we're building dignified? Is it going to provide an experience that helps people get what they need quickly that doesn't feel like a struggle which you know quite frankly is the historical precedent of a lot of these systems you know can can we empower people at all to to recognize what choices they have even in a situation like this? I think those are all factors that go into whether a piece of technology is is humane or not.
Something you've pointed out about Nava, I think, both times you've referenced it is this, fact that it's a, like, a a public benefit corporation. Yeah. I would be curious to know, like, do you think that that structure, like, has an impact on your ability to effectively do the things you're describing there?
Absolutely. Yeah. You know, I think the most, sort of the most straightforward way it has an effect is, the public benefit structure. Like, as a corporation means we have to act in the public interest. Otherwise, you know, the shareholders who in this case are the employees of NAVA, could pursue legal action if we were to act in a way that was not, in the public interest. Sort of that. I think there's also, you know, the like, the partnership I mentioned, partially philanthropically funded. I think that would be really difficult to do if we were, you know, maybe an LLC or something like that. So I think there's sort of all these little ways in addition to this very, like, clear legal structure that makes it so that we can, we can participate in, you know, these very, these very targeted efforts to, yeah, increase the the public benefit that comes out of the safety net programs.
As you might be aware, there have been misuses of technology in the past on things that impact the the social and safety net. I think any listener of the program would probably not be a stranger to some of those horror stories. Like, one such such example that I'm aware of would be the kinda like the debacle with that, like, very large IBM contract with the state of Indiana, I think, was, like, the late nineties into the February. I think it maybe it ended in the late two thousands. And it ended up being essentially something that wound up making it more difficult for folks to get access to things that they needed, that they had right to, for many reasons that I won't dive into right now. But I'll be curious to hear about, how your approach to to building, systems for the safety net is different to where it, like, prevents kind of falling into similar pitfalls.
Well, we think it works. Right? We're pretty sure. I'm I'm almost joking. So there's a huge amount of evidence that, you know, monolithic technology projects like the one you mentioned, in Indiana, that take years to deliver, that are, like, tens of millions of dollars and there's more, are are likely to be over budget or are really behind schedule or, you know, in some really fraught cases, not launch at all. I think there's a study from the Standish group I believe that, puts the failure rate of projects that, are that large at like 60%. And the same study found that when you when you sort of flip that model when you have government projects whose labor costs were like under a million under 2,000,000 like that we see like 60% success and see that the failure rate go way down so there's just like the scale of project I think that we like as a community are pretty sure that if we scale it down just it's just like very clear way of reducing risk because you're literally putting less public money at risk but there are also a number of practices that are you know becoming more and more widespread in the space that further reduce the risk associated with building software in in the government environment we've got lots of factors maybe, working against you. So agile development, you know, says that we should solve, like, the smallest problem that we possibly can, and, like, put it in front of folks who are actually gonna use it and and get those feedback loops going really early and often. You know so in Vermont the way this has worked out for us is we are working with the state to introduce a new way for folks to send in what are called verification documents. So if you can imagine you are applying for food assistance and you need to show that you have a certain amount of income you might share your pay stubs, you know, to show the state how much money you're making right now. Historically, you would have to either mail that in, which can take a while. And if you need help buying food, you might need help right now. Or you can bring it in person, you know, which costs money and gas and can be really inconvenient for folks, who work. So we're allowing people to just upload their document electronically. And, you know, it's a really relatively simple piece of technology, but one of the first things we tested out and put in front of Vermonters was just like a sketch of how this could work. And and, you know, Vermont, the Vermont, like, the Vermont product owners and their product team, are doing that along with us. So they're seeing, like, oh, you know, we can be getting feedback from folks as soon as we have an idea about how this could work. And, like, slowly, we've repeated that as, you know, it's gone, like, out into the world and people are actually sharing documents with this state through this channel now. We're continuing to get that input. So not only are we able to, like, move faster work in a much smaller way that reduces risk we're also getting a lot of feedback super early from the Vermonters from state staff people like that the folks who can really highlight for us what are the risks gonna be, where might this project run into troubles, and in that way you're able to, like, if you do fail, fail at a much much smaller scale than, you know, maybe previous government project had with enough time to to correct yourself.
Oh, for sure. Yeah. That that that definitely sounds like that's a a positive direction. And in that, you mentioned this, like, idea of, like, you know, if you're going to to fail, you know, you know, fail, you know, fail fast and maybe fail small. But then that also implies, like, there's the opposite possibility of, you know, success. Right? In in this sort of project, like, how do you go about trying to define success within those those those boxes?
Collaboratively with a lot of conversations. Yeah. I mean, it depends on on what you're trying to do. Right? So for us in the example that I was just sharing, where we're providing a way for Vermonters to share documents, one of the success metrics we're looking at is, you know, one, does it work? Like, can people actually successfully get all the way through the little web application that we have, you know, and that's something that we can learn really early just with a prototype. But other metrics of success are like, well, how long does it take people to respond for to that request for a pay stub or something like that? You know, can they respond in a day or or does it take a week or do they not understand the request? You know, other things you might look at are, like do the caseworkers get actually get what they need when someone sends in that case that they need more information to be able to to process that case and just get that person on food assistance. So it's really you know you really have to get into the weeds of how these programs work, what else is going on with the state that might, you know, influence some of those metrics so we can really understand what we're looking at and, like, how does it compare to what came before. So it's really I think in most government projects, there has to be a really deeply collaborative effort between, you know, the state, program, the tech people, and, you know, whoever's building it so we can figure out, like, once we see this number move or once we see this signal, we will know that we we're actually succeeding.
And I I think once we start to talk a bit about, things like metrics and, like, what success and failure looks like, it's kinda hard to decouple that from, well, ethics really. Right? Mhmm. I would be curious to hear how you go about, like, evaluating concerns either for you individually about projects you work on as well as, maybe like teams that you lead.
So I'm really lucky to work at Nava because they're that particular group of people have aligned on, really explicit values for how we work together, what we're building, what we're trying to do, you know, and so that's something we can we can really return to if there's a particularly fraught situation. I think a really good example of this is, early on in the integrated benefits work, work requirements for Medicaid started rolling out. And for folks who aren't familiar this is a requirement that says people who are receiving Medicaid which is, there are a lot of reasons you could be on Medicaid but generally like folks with low incomes who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford health coverage. Work requirements mean that you have to prove that you are either working a certain number of hours or that you're looking for a job. And there's a lot wrapped up into that, but in practice it means another sort of bureaucratic barrier in front of people being able to get health coverage. We have seen that sort of the more, requirements you add to programs like that, the more likely people are to drop off. So it's something we're pretty against but, in the early days of the initiative, states were coming to us and saying, you know, this is a technology problem. We don't know how to track this stuff. We don't know how states are gonna or we don't know how people are gonna, actually give us this information. And so we had to decide if we were going to engage with states that were doing that. And, you know this is there is a view of that that says you know we work with what's in front of us this is the reality people are gonna have to do this anyway we could build technology that like just guides them through it makes it as easy as possible and And then there's another view that says, well, this would be erecting an additional barrier in front of health coverage, which I personally think is a a human right. And our our company values are that we are we are active stewards, that we acknowledge that, the work we do impacts millions of people and the stakes are are super super high and that we have to advocate then or, what is actually gonna positively impact people's lives. And so, we elected to not engage with states that were trying to implement work requirements. And I think, the conversation would have been would have been more difficult to navigate if we hadn't, you know, already all agreed that, we are we are active stewards. We are here to think very long term beyond election cycles, and doing this would not be, inclusive. It would not be in the public interest. And so we will forego the opportunity to work with states who are interested in in building, like, work requirement software.
That sounds like a really complicated conversation to have as as an organization and one that's gonna be you know, it's gonna be fraught with with really strong opinions on both sides of that. Could you talk about a little bit about, like, how do you go about having that's that sort of discourse? Like, at least in your case, like, how did that flow happen?
It was pretty open conversation. At the time, the team was pretty small. So when I think back, it's, like, just a few people, you know, like, in a room all talking about it. You know, but when I say we have company values, like, we literally have a document. There's, like, a sign on the wall behind me that says be active stewards. Like, it's actually one of our values. And we have, like, documented, what all of these things mean to us. So to be honest, it was it was a little fraught in, like, communicating with our partners possibly about it, but, I don't think anyone was surprised that we didn't wanna do it. You know, I think we we try to lead with our values anyway, and so internally, like, it's pretty fast, you know, that we weren't gonna do that.
So you've mentioned the phrase, be an active steward, a couple of times in in discussing these values. Can we dig into that a little more? Like, what what does that mean to you?
For me, so part of that is an acknowledgment that, we are in the incredible position of, like across NAVA, the work we do impacts like more than 60,000,000 people, a huge number of people, Right? And so we need to be very conscious that, decisions we make here even if they seem small can have an incredibly outsized impact on people. And because of the nature of the programs we work on, you know, Medicare, Medicaid, our origins at healthcare.gov, you know, the safety net, broadly at the state level now, the stakes are super high for people. These are things that people rely on to meet, like, absolute basic needs. And so we have to hold ourselves to a very high standard, and that's something we've agreed on, you know, together as a group. And in order to do that, and I think this is where the steward and the active part comes in, in order to meet those standards, we have to to listen really closely to the folks, we serve. So the folks who who benefit from these programs, the folks who work on them, and we need a nuanced understanding of their experiences and their needs. And then because we have that understanding, we have to advocate, for those voices to, like, internally to ourselves, you know, saying, okay, my understanding of work requirements, you know, as a designer researcher is that it's actually really gonna harm people. It's gonna be a barrier to any health coverage. And then we have to advocate to our partners that this is gonna this is gonna result in people losing and losing health coverage, and it's very serious and and something we're not willing to engage in and then, you know, only by taking a lot of a lot of care and a lot of, like, a very humble approach to the whole thing. Can we actually build things that will that will last and, like, be truly helpful to people who need them?
What I what I think I'm hearing there a little bit is is almost something that it kind of gets almost up to that border of of, like, having to be a policy advocate in a way. Like, e even the message of, hey. Like, we can't work on this because these outcomes will occur is is in a way a message to that end, whether that's the the intention or or not. Do you do you find yourselves in in that situation where you're kind of having to put on, like, policy advocate hat along the way?
I think we have to we often have to understand it. I think, if you're gonna work in this space, you should understand the policies and often how they're changing because it seems like they're changing all the time. I've been super lucky in the integrated benefits work that we partner with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. So shout out to them. I feel like they've been my policy education, like, source. Personal line for this project. So we need to understand it we're lucky we have partners to lean on who can sort of help write us and say you know okay if these are your values then like you know this is the community interpretation or the the impact you're trying to understand as a result of changing a policy or something like that. So I would say there's less of like we are you know lobbying congress people you know, to change particular things, but, I think the implementation of particular policies, the things we need to understand in order to do this right is absolutely a huge part of the work.
And for folks that, want to do well at designing public services, are there, say, tools in the tool belt, for lack of a better phrase, that you might suggest, like, hey. Like, go out and learn about these things. It'll make you better at it.
Yeah. You know, I used to just say, like, oh, go talk to the people. Learn to talk to people. You know? Ask, the the beneficiaries and recipients of your service, you know, what their experiences, ask the people close to the front lines, you know, what's going on. But, and that's still true. Increasingly, I'm seeing just how critical, buy in from leadership is to, like, give public servants room to to even just go have those conversations or to to try things in any way. And so I think the tool belt is really, like, comfort with, having people work in a new way and, for leaders, like, just that little bit of bravery that it takes to say, like, okay, it's okay if we fail, but let's just do it in a super small way. And it's hard to do. It's it's really hard to change, the way that things have worked for a really long time, you know, but really close to my work in in that integrated benefits work we're seeing state leaders stepping up and saying we understand that, you know, these technology systems that we use to, determine eligibility for for Medicaid and and SNAP, which is food assistance and, you know, all these other programs, but they have to be different. And so we have to be different. And, you know, the state that I work in Vermont, this is where we see state leaders really shining and giving that air cover to their product teams, to go out and try something totally new and that's like the the sort of the precursor to any of those little successes figure out how to carve out some of that room, for people who are looking under you so that they can go try out some of these things.
Looking at the civic tech move in in a broader context, let's say you had a a magic wand. And with that wand, you could change, like, any one thing or or one trend within the civic tech movement. With that power, like, what what would you change?
Yeah. I could change anything at all. I think that as a community, we we need to break out of the the sort of legacy we've inherited from thinking that, you could do, like, a tour of duty in civic tech and be done with it. You know? Or that, like, one one fellowship or one, you know, two year term of service might be enough and, I think for some people it very well could be but I think we also need to create space for this to be, a longer career for people. I think we're seeing that this work takes so much time, you know, to realize the to realize the big successes and right now frankly we're not set up well to either take junior people or to keep other people around, you know, once they've been here for a couple years. I mentioned, you know, earlier that it's it's a hard time to do this job and, when I when I look at the people who work around me, I'm incredibly lucky that they're they're so talented and they're here but I also see like the blank space of people who left the field because they were burnt out or because you know, sometimes it can just be really hard. It can be truly like a toxic environment, especially if you've inherited a lot of the problems that already existed in Silicon Valley. And so I think being, you know, really critical and not get caught up in, like, oh, yeah. Civic tech. Like, we're always the good guys. Like, I think not giving ourselves a free pass and being super critical about whether we're inclusive, whether as a community, we can sustain people staying here for an entire career. Those are really good questions that we have to answer. We have to change things if we wanna keep all of the talent, that, you know, we've been lucky enough to to have in the field as it's been growing over the last few years. I really recommend an article by Sabrina Garcia about this. It it addresses many of this stuff specifically like how civic tech in The US can be really toxic for for people of color or women and and why it's so urgent that we take accountability for changing those patterns. I think if we don't proactively elevate, all kinds of people into into leadership in civic tech, especially people who tech normally tech broadly normally dismisses, we're just gonna recreate the problems that we see in in Silicon Valley. If you wanna Google that article, it's called, civic tech, me too, and toxic ecosystems. And I I highly recommend folks check it out if you wanna know what should change in civic tech.
Excellent. And, or worry not, listener. I will go ahead and go fetch a link and put it in the description so that you can do one last Google. I I will Google for you in this case. Cool. And, one of the things we like to do on Civic Tech Chat is leave some space here at the end so that, folks like you, the the guest, can leave us with, kind of that last message. Like, what what do you want to leave have us leave this episode thinking about here at the end? So to that end, like, what would those sort of concluding thoughts be for you?
I've been thinking a lot about, sort of the long tales that precede and follow our work in civic tech. I had the opportunity recently to be a part of a few legislative presentations to the Vermont legislature about some of the things we've been doing with the state and it was one of the first times that I saw how clearly, how I but I saw really clearly all the decisions that get made before a project can even be formed, you know, before the money, like, gets to an agency that decides they're gonna buy a new piece of technology, and kind of everyone who who lays in on that. And then on the other side, you know, often, living as technologists show up to work on something in government, we are working with technology that's been around in some cases for decades. And if we if we go ahead and assume that the things we do now, whether we want them to or not, like, are gonna have that that super long tail into the future, then we really need to interrogate the impact of of what we're designing and what we're building and the choices we make right now, and then hold ourselves accountable for the outcomes that it produces. And I I find myself thinking about this idea of, holding ourselves accountable for outcomes way into the future, you know, not only when it comes to tech but when it comes to how we treat each other, when it comes to how we build the community and all of this stuff. I think that is what I would encourage folks to reflect on is that in this in this environment, our our choices stick around sometimes way into the next generation. So let's be really intentional about what we're trying to do.
I think you've given us a a great deal to think about here, as we come to a close. And, I wanna thank you for for taking the time to to come on the program. I really appreciate the fact that you may for one, made time for us, and two, we're willing to engage in, you know, a topic. It's it's not always super easy to approach and and to discuss. So, again, thank you so much for coming on.
Thank you so much for having me. I hope hope you enjoyed it.
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