22 Thought Leadership and Product Management with Leah Bannon from USDS
This episode features [Leah Bannon](https://twitter.com/leahbannon), founder of [Tech Rebalanced](https://twitter.com/tech_rebalanced) and Product Manager at the [United States Digital Service](https://twitter.com/USDS).<br>We talk about her path to becoming a thought leader in the civic tech movement and dig into the weeds of doing product management in government.<br><br>### Resources and Shoutouts:<br>- [Leah's Website](http://www.chipy.org/)<br>- [Code for DC](https://chipymentor.org/)<br>- [USDS](https://www.usds.gov/)<br>- [Tech Rebalanced](https://techladyhackathon.org/)<br>- [User Research is not Illegal](https://medium.com/@ErieMeyer/user-research-is-not-illegal-uncle-sam-51f2f92a280a)<br><br>##### Music Credit: [Tumbleweeds by Monkey Warhol](http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Monkey_Warhol/Lonely_Hearts_Challenge/Monkey_Warhol_-_Tumbleweeds)
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- code 0.005
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- digital service 0.004
Transcript
Hello. I'm Ryan Cook, and this is Civic Tech Chat, a podcast about the civic technology movement. We seek to harness the power technology has to improve the delivery of public services to people everywhere. Welcome back for another episode of Civic Tech Chat. If you've enjoyed our content so far, I'd ask that you head on over to your Apple Podcasts app and leave us a five star review. Doing so helps reach a bigger audience and helps us keep this fantastic production going. So with all that said, let's talk about our guests this week. We're gonna be featuring Leah Bannon. Leah has been a product lead at AT and F. She's run a Code for America brigade, Code for DC, and is currently a product manager at the United States Digital Service. We're going to have a sort of fireside chat talking about her path to being a bit of a thought leader in the space, as well as talking in-depth a bit about what product management is like in the government. So go ahead and sit down and relax, and let's enjoy the conversation.
Leah, thank you so much for taking the time today to be on Civic Tech Chat. Could you introduce yourself and tell the audience a bit about what you do? Sure. So I am a product manager at the United States digital service.
I'm on the team that's based at the Department of Veterans Affairs. And I'm actually moving into a role as of this week to take over and run operations and, see what the team needs and iterate and improve.
Now one of the themes that we hit on a lot at the beginning of these interviews is this concept of personal why or why one gets out of bed each day to do the things they do.
What is that for you? I mean, for me, a lot of it comes back to especially right now when it's kinda one of the hardest times to work in government, in America, perhaps. I think that I really get out of bed because this work right now is still currently the best way that I can have an impact on improving people's lives and getting them benefits they need. It's especially easier at the Department of Veterans Affairs to be reminded of that, because the VA provides really incredible health care in a lot of ways. They have a lot better health outcomes than most private, insure private medical care in this country and, based on numerous studies. And so, a lot of the things that people hear about are not really, you know, accurate to a veteran's experience accessing health care, but there are still a million problems that are getting in the way, primarily around technology and bureaucracy, to getting them that care. And so
it's feels like an especially interesting time to be working in this space even though it's especially hard. And I think it's clear that your path, I think, really closely reflects what you're communicating there about your why. You know, you've I I as I kinda dug through it, it's clear you, you know, you've worked at consulting. You've run a Code for America brigade. You're now managing products. And it it sounds like even, like, very recently here, maybe taking on some operations type leadership, tasks. Could you talk a bit though about the career journey you've been on kind of from the beginning to where you are now?
Sure. So I I started wanting to focus on, humanitarian crises and human trafficking. And so I I started actually in the intelligence community because I wanted to work at the state department, and I thought I saw all my friends doing really terrible, like, passport renewal work for years before they were able to do anything interesting. And, I thought I'd be able to just transfer over after a couple years and, work more in human trafficking. And at the time, parts of the intelligence community were helping with some intelligence on the routes that a lot of the traffickers were taking to smuggle people. And so I was working on that for a little while, but I found it to be especially, this was around 2004, 2005, and that kind of ramp up of the Afghanistan war and the the defense industrial base massive expansion over the last fifteen years. And, it was just an incredibly conservative, community. It was there was still a lot of hatred towards Islam. There was a lot of discrimination and a lot of support for, torture. And, I mean, there were definitely a ton of wonderful dedicated public servants who really just wanted to help make people safer or improve the systems that I was that I encountered. But for the most part, it was it really wore me down a lot. And so I was moving around and trying to find different positions, and I got into I was trying to find a field that I could move outside of intelligence and that would translate. And so I started working in communications, and I started playing around with the Intel community's version of Wikipedia called Intellipedia. And that's when I taught myself WikiCode and started losing hours just writing code and having fun with it. And, then I finally was able to get into a position where I was had a public media presence. I was managing a public website for the government. It was a small program that was started at the same time that the a lot of the DHS and ODNI, a lot of the big federal, agencies that were stood up shortly after nine eleven, that they were designed to improve information sharing theoretically. So we were, trying to bridge that connection between the cops on the street and the intelligence community, which, was interesting because I was able to finally get involved in, public social media and stuff for the first time as opposed to, being stuck on, classified systems for a long time. But, it was I was still in a space that was very much around controlling information and and and keeping it secret. And so, I started going to a lot of tech events. I started getting involved in code for DC, and I started going to, a lot of open data meetups and, meetings. That was when a lot of the data.gov work was really taking off, and we were starting to get more agencies on GitHub. So, I was able to start encouraging and pushing my organization on to GitHub and and speaking more publicly, and then I got really involved in the civic hacking, civic tech community, and code for DC. And and, so I started going to tech events in DC almost every single night and seeing and meeting some of the same people, but I really felt like I was tired of being the only woman in the room. At the time, this was around 2013 in DC. The tech events were just super male dominated. I was often the only woman, especially, in the standard tech meetups. But even at Code for DC, there were only a handful of us. And so I started asking around. I got into Tech Lady Mafia, which was, founded by, Erie Meyer. She's one of the founders of USDS. It was just kind of a support network and email list for women in tech, and I started meeting a lot more people who wanted to make things better and asking them how. And, also, I'd been to a million tech events. I've done the kinda user research. And so we organized the tech lady hackathon as a way to get more women involved in tech and kind of break down some of the barriers and intimidating factors around hackathons and tech events and also give women that kind of just general basic intro course to, you know, what is Python so that when people are mentioning and dropping words and jargon, you don't feel immediately pushed out or intimidated. And that I mean, that was really inspired by another woman leading and teaching, women Python in her living room, Shannon Turner. And then the everyone who went to my tech lady hackathon kind of went into hear me code, which was what, Shannon was putting together as a free Python courses for women. As soon as you take the first class, then you were able to start teaching again. And so that started growing. And then shortly after that, I took over as one of the code for DC brigade captains. And also right around that time, 18 was starting, and I was just bugging them every other day, for when they were actually gonna be able start hiring people. And then in May, I started at eighteen f, and I started with a handful of folks. And we were the first non, we were the first folks who weren't already government employees, who weren't able to transfer in, who weren't the presidential innovation fellows who founded AT and f. And, I was there for almost four years and then, came over to USDS. And I've been at USDS since February.
It sounds like you were there kind of in well, it sounds like a very early days, for '18 f.
What was the environment like there in in that time? It was amazing. I mean, it was especially for me having worked as a contractor and subcontractor and government employee and toiling away trying to convince people that, you know, GitHub is okay and then going and immediately being thrown in this environment with all the folks, the presentation innovation fellows, and a ton of folks who all agreed and had Slack from day one. And we had Google Docs, and it really felt like I had been just trudging through mud trying to get anywhere and was now just like flying. At eighteen f, it was like half my day was normally taken up by trying to figure out how to collaborate on something with someone or to, you know, talk through something and suddenly, we had all of this and, a lot of supportive, diverse leadership, and it was it was really exciting and inspiring. And there was a lot of we also I mean, I think the other biggest thing that was especially exciting to me as a someone who had been in government for a while was the protection and top cover our leadership brought. We had this saying of being a shit umbrella for your team, which, you know, has has its flaws ultimately, which I could talk about. But, like, overall, it was we we kind of had the freedom to find problems and fix them and and improve and had that kind of trust and protection from our leadership that as long as we were doing the right thing and not breaking laws or, you know, really screwing things up, like, we could really kind of take some different things on. And it was really exciting.
Now one one of the things that I I rather enjoy about your your personal website is that you give a bunch of links to a ton of these, like, really fantastic resources. One of those sites is hiremorewomenintech.com, which is, for one, a fantastic domain name because it's, like, very to the point. But it also gives a bunch of, advice where it's like, hey. If you want to do this, maybe try these tactics, these strategies out. I believe, like, a couple of those things include being, like, really mindful of the language being used in the posting as well as, you know, tracking data about applicants and not just data about the folks you you end up hiring. I will be curious since we've, you know, talked through a bit of your journey. Have you seen any of these sorts of concepts being taken to heart by organizations along the way?
Yes. I've seen the concepts taken to heart or or folks really trying hard to push them. I think what I like most about that site was that, to me, it just felt like, the kind of scrappy hacker approach to getting the word out or improving a situation, which is I know the solution. I'm gonna throw up a quick site. I'm not gonna make the perfect the enemy of the good. I'm gonna provide some resources for folks who are looking to do something better. That's awesome. But that doesn't fix your larger diversity problems. I mean, diversity is much more about inclusion and equity and empowering people when they get to your organization. And, you know, I think the folks who are working on this are still kind of figuring it out, and allies are definitely still figuring it out. And the thing that gets me is you can adjust, like, some small aspects of this, like your job description so that, you know, when folks look at it, they don't immediately think that they need to, you know, the studies have shown, for example, like, those those changing things like your job descriptions is helpful because studies have shown that a lot of times women will think that they need to have everything, you know, checked off on that box and men will think that they only need five, for example, or something. This is a common statistic that's cited. But I think what that misses is that maybe the woman does need 10 out of 10 and the guy only needs five out of 10 to actually get the job. Right? Or, like, you know, when you when you just kind of blanketly tell women to behave like men as a way to solve the problem, you're not really getting to the root source of what's not working. And I think that that model of feminism is hopefully fading. And I think that more, it's about creating diverse, inclusive environments in the space that you're in so that when you recruit folks, they're not expected to just conform into our version of meritocracy. And and, you know, it's a complete meritocracy as long as you just completely conform to exactly what we think professionalism and success are, and you mold yourself in this way and and make it work for us. You know? It's and and I see this a lot on teams. I see a way that, like, if you if you are in that environment and they're completely dominating your version of what success is, then you are really hard on yourself, and you're constantly trying to force yourself into a mold that doesn't quite fit. And you're not bringing your your full self and your ideas and your skills in. And they're not gonna be recognized by someone else who has another creative career path or a different experience and can see certain things that you're good at and help you grow those skills or mentor you. You know? And it's so it's a big complex thing that we should be focusing more on many parts, and I should probably update my website.
Also on your personal site, is a contribution that you highlight is is one that you, were a part of is the work you did on foyer.gov, which, for folks listening, the acronym FOIA stands for Freedom of Information Act, which the act is a law that was passed in 1967 that requires federal agencies to disclose information to citizens that request it if that request doesn't fall under a number of different exemption categories of which I think there's nine, if my memory serves.
Mhmm. My favorite one is you're not allowed to publish well data.
I did I did not realize that was a category. Well data.
Yes. Yeah. It's, it's or or we're not required to share it because, you know, then you could find it. So there's a bunch of there's a bunch of weird caveats, but the main ones that people focus on are around, if if something is,
in progress or unfinished, I think that there are some weird caveats for that. But, the main point is, sorry, what was your main question around? There there was a question coming for that. I guess, could could you talk a bit about, maybe a bit about your work with that and maybe, you know, how important that that that foia.gov resources?
Sure. So, I see I see the current foia.gov as a very you know, it's an it's an alpha to MVP, minimum viable product, attempt at improving FOIA as a whole. We were brought on as an 18 to work directly with the Department of Justice team on helping them implement a new law. This is, a lot of digital service or eighteen f teams end up helping, an agency comply with some last minute law requirements. And this one, made a few updates and changes to the act, but the main change was that it mandated a single, site, a portal, where anyone could submit a a FOIA request to any agency in government. And we did a lot of really great user research, and we, we found because this is such a beloved, resource for journalists and, data open data nerds, there was a lot of research that had already been done on who is filing FOIA requests and where are they filing and then what type of request are they filing, which really helped us map out initially who do we need to talk to rapidly because we only had about a month to do our initial user research. And, we pulled DOJ came in and sat in on a ton of the user research meetings and, so did a bunch of the engineers on the team. And most of the team sat in on almost all of the interviews, which is incredibly difficult to plan out on a new project, but paid off so richly. And all of our conversations later, everyone was constantly grokking that those user experiences and raising them when we were discussing potential solutions or features and and questioning them. And it ultimately led to me getting to hear DOJ defending and and demanding certain user needs to the CIO's office, on a you know, because they heard it and believed it and cared about making this change. And that was really, thrilling and exciting. But so the main point is that, FOIA is not the main problem with FOIA is not that people don't know where to file a FOIA request. Like, that part is, like, it's more about the fact that it's a difficult, confusing process that, is many users describe as a long black hole. When we talk to a lot of users and ask them how long they would expect once they submitted the their request, they most people estimated around two weeks. Usually, it takes about a year for a lot of substantive requests. And so since we only had that mandate from the law to create that single portal, we focused on how can we use this as a leverage to improve the user experience if, you know, we are the single point that everyone is going to. So we also did a ton of user research and interviews with all the agencies to understand what their biggest problems were at least as far as receiving requests. And some of their biggest problems were around the fact that, vague requests take them a lot longer to track down and figure out. And, there's a lot of distrust in the process of what's going on and and and why is it taking so long. And so we tried to build in a lot in the foyer.gov site that would help educate users about ways that they could write their request so that it would be responded to more quickly, but also prepare them for the delays and the waits, that they were about to face. I think the two main lessons that came away from this is, one, you should be doing user research before writing policy, which we all know already. And then two would be FOIA is very challenging, and it's not going to improve until you improve the infrastructure that government uses to manage its information and technology, as far as, like, a timeline is based because finding information in government is reliant on outdated databases or going through file paper files or you know, it completely depends on the agency. I think it's really important to
hear you describe all of that in part because I I think most folks experience with if they're even aware what what FOIA is is like hearing something on the news that's like, so and so made a FOIA request and now there's a lawsuit. And I I imagine that there's, like, this sort of misconception that when you make a FOIA request, some magical stuff happens and then either a digital document or a box of documents just appears from somewhere. But but to hear you describe that, it becomes clear that there are a lot of moving parts that have to go into perhaps even even the simpler types of requests like that. I do wanna interrupt us on the substance for a minute to ask you some significantly less serious questions. So I I think I I've taken to lately is looking at folks' old tweets as they're somewhat informative and sometimes funny and and generally interesting to ask people about. So I of course, like, the first thing I looked at was your your first ever tweet. And that one is is, as I quote, goddamn Twittering. Okay? And there's an exclamation point at the end of that with the question mark, so it's very, very emphatic. It it I I'm getting the sense from that line that there was a bit of peer pressure to to get you on to Twitter. So I have to ask, like, is is that Twitter thing working out so far? And are they, like, keeping an eye on you, like, making sure you're you're you're keeping that up?
I don't really remember. I remember it was, no, I have no memory of that tweet. All I remember is, yes, there was peer pressure to get me on Twitter. And, I think I think Twitter is mostly working out for me well now that I, am filtering out words like Trump and president and Mueller, just for a little bit of sanity. And, yeah, Twitter's got some work to do to not screw up our democracy in my opinion.
Yeah. I I I don't think there would be a a lot of folks out there that would disagree with you on that. Certainly a lot of work to be done. And the the other tweet that I I wanted to ask you about is one that comes maybe, I think, just a few days later, or maybe a couple weeks. I I don't I didn't write down any of the dates like a probably like a a journalist or somebody who's serious would. But that tweet says, thinks Anise should come to her party. So I have to ask because, you know, I didn't see the end of the story later. Did did did they go to the party?
I don't know, but I feel like this is a good reminder that, we're all Twitter noobs using it very poorly at one point in our lives, so should be, patient with everyone else when they're learning tech for the first time.
Oh, yeah. Actually, one of the little weird themes I've noticed, like, looking at and actually looking at my own tweets also as long as well as others is there seems to be this period where people kinda used it like they were using Facebook. Like, the same I don't know if you remember, like, old Facebook when it was it was like your name is, and then you'd have to type something. And it seems like, or it was like your anyway, like, that that's sort of, like, tense, was was a pattern.
Yeah. I mean, I'm pretty sure, like, when I joined, they we still had that video on the site that was like, you can share you're making a sandwich, and then your friend will know that your their friend's getting coffee and their other friends are making a sandwich. And I think that became, like, everyone's excuse not to join Twitter, so they moved away from that approach. But
They just weren't ready to jump on a sandwich focused platform.
One of the things that I've been thinking about lit a lot lately is, you know, instead of following, like, institutions, following people, and and their ideas across, this movement. And it's been really interesting to see, like, you know, how things are changing or people's beliefs are evolving or becoming a little bit more long term, focused on you know, I have not we have not figured out this digital service thing at all yet. Like, I mean, we definitely figured out parts of it. We've made a lot of amazing progress in certain ways, but it's still really hard to be on one of these teams and and to get on one of these teams. And I think that there's there's a lot of work to do there, and I I don't know. It's I'm I'm kind of going off on a tangent, but I was talking to Audrey Tang, a little while ago, and she was saying that she doesn't even follow people. She only follows hashtags. You know? So, like, she's always staying, like, up on top of the latest content, I guess. So I thought that was kind of an interest interesting approach.
Oh, that does sound like an interesting technique. So back back to substance now, I suppose. So as we talked about, like, early earlier in the conversation, you know, you've managed products, whether or not it was explicitly mentioned this part, but at two different agencies. For folks that aren't in the know about what product management is all about, could you give us kind of that that high level view of concept?
Sure. Product management is very interesting role, especially in digital service type teams. I see a product manager as the person who is familiar enough with everyone's work to and the standards across the team so that they're kind constantly keeping an eye out for anything that's falling behind or missing or, not being done properly. And then on the other side, team health and, managing people, like, supporting their, careers and needs and checking in with them on a regular basis. I think second level that is fundamental to being a product manager is that you are leading without authority, usually. It's usually a model in which you're seen as more of a coordinator of the team and facilitator, and, you're constantly having to influence a lot of other factors outside of your team to support them or escalating, things that you really can't fix, and problems you see coming up in the future to your leadership so that they can help you out. I think we're going through an interesting time now because for a long time, product managers have kind of been the the kind of people who become product managers, I think, are the also the kind of people who will just keep taking on more and more stress and, accepting it as something that's their fault to fix. And and especially in this kind of very stressful government environment, that's not an especially sustainable model, especially when we're trying to pull in more junior folks or, folks who haven't done product management before into that role because the government product management role is so different and weird. I think folks are trying different angles on it. And USDS kind of has an interesting model in which they also like, the product team is also shares a team with the strat ops role, strategy and operations. And, that I see as kind of an interesting approach of having someone there to help with the bureaucracy hacking and the strategy while the product manager is more focused on the team and getting an MVP out the door, but it's tough. I don't know. I I mean, I'm currently moving into operations, and leading operations for the VA team. So trying to figure out, trying to treat our current systems for managing our products and teams as a product itself and doing discovery. I think the digital service movement is currently kind of trying to figure out how do we have the best impact, how do we keep people in the movement and keeping them inspired. And I think a lot of it is around, you know, showing that you're making an impact, showing that you have a strong strategy forward, and celebrating the small wins and talking to each other about the problems. But I know a lot of teams are struggling with this. And, so my current product is kind of figuring out a model, and or at least creating a you know, using our discovery or research tools that we know work on problems to solve some of our own digital service problems.
So you mentioned, like, taking some of those things that you've, those bits of knowledge you've accumulated along the way here. To that end, are are there any, like, strategies or tactics you've observed as as being effective and whether it's, like, trying to keep a product on track or kind of interacting with those problems that you were describing there?
The the biggest help in this work is having done it a few times, honestly, and find I I found, you know, volunteer ways that I could practice my skills before anyone would was willing to give me a job for something I thought I could do but hadn't actually done before. You know? So going to code for DC, organizing tech buddy hackathon, proving I'd, like, managed humans and and led them towards something without paying them, you know, and was really helpful for getting into the field. I think, staying on track is very much about focusing on what is the minimum thing you need to do to get the user from point a to point b and and just being ruthless about getting that first version out, and and pushing people who want you to change that or add to it to reprioritize instead of just increasing your workload. And then just following those methods when things get really hard of starting small, talking to your users, iterating, getting something public as soon as possible to start proving that it's possible and and start testing with more and more people, is kind of one of the best approaches. I think talking repeatedly about what that MVP is with your team, making sure that's really clear over and over again what direction you're headed and what the most important tasks are, it's been my main goal.
And I I think you might have alluded to this a bit in, an answer or two back, but what might be some things that a a product manager like yourself in the public sector might need to be mindful of that perhaps ones in the in the private sector don't?
Well, Dave Svyonich actually recently wrote, he's a one of the former directors of AT and F, a piece about product management and government that I thought was, really articulated in answer to this well, which is the government is very hierarchical, but also decision making is spread out across the organization in a lot of different ways. And I think a lot of product managers who come into government, expect to have a lot clear leadership choices and, direction that they can then use to translate into their strategy and goals. And a lot of times, you're not gonna find that or, you know, it was built in as a way and checks and balances against corruption. And so kind of understanding more about and and really focusing to understand more about, you know, asking why. It's okay to ask why and learn more, but it's not okay to just assume that there's an obvious better way and that you can make it happen. There's usually many, many layers. One of the things I like to talk to people a lot about is, thinking of the rules and and bureaucracy that they encounter as kind of a cascading waterfall of, of rules. Like you start with the constitution and laws and, decisions from judges and cases and, you know, laws turn into regulations, which, then lead to policies and an agency, which then lead to, you know, tasks and rules from your boss, which then lead to your own culture and understanding of what your power is in an organization and how you can affect it. And learning more about the thing you're encountering and where it falls on that waterfall of rules and how changeable it is. You know, like, for example, Eri Meyer did a ton of work on, making it easier for folks to test with users just by asking around when she was told you can't talk to users. It's against the Paperwork Reduction Act over and over again. Well, the Paperwork Reduction Act was written with some good intentions in mind to convince to to force people to justify the number of hours that they were going to be asking the public to devote to a new form and and proving, you know, and measuring out how many hours is this gonna take. Are these new rules and regulations gonna take? But you're allowed to talk to 10 or fewer people if you ask them different questions, and you're just testing a new thing, without going through all those regulations and policies that's specifically in the law. So kind of figuring out those hacks around I think we figured out a lot of these kind of baseline hacks around to to to do our work in a minimum according to minimum standards, but, or, like, fixing the ATL processing government that you're required to go through before launching a a site. Like, these are things that are movable or improvable if you train your community organizing skills on them.
And, actually, if I'm not mistaken, I think, didn't Erie also post, like, a blog post that was something like, no. The paperwork reduction act doesn't mean you can't talk to users is, like, the title?
Probably.
Okay. For the listener, I will, try to hunt that down and see if I can't link it as a in in the shout out section of the episode here. So, you were also mentioned in a, Medium post that I found that was, like, all about this thing called the move forward one hundred event, which, for listener context, is an event that was inspired by, president Obama writing what was called, like, the first ever line of code written by a sitting president during what I I think was computer science education week in 2014. And the reason why it's called move forward 100 then is because the function that was called, by the president and that was move forward, and then I and then it the argument used was 100. I I believe it was in the context of this, thing where he was, like, trying to move a a character around, which maybe was Elsa, if if I'm not mistaken.
But Yeah. I think it was something like that. Yeah. Could you,
speak a bit to, like, the the importance of of of that moment and perhaps the event that then kinda followed that was kinda celebrating that happening?
I'll have to find this post. I don't remember the following event that closely. I remember, this was a kind of a very exciting time because I think Megan Smith was newly CTO, and she is just a wealth of ideas and creativity on kind of pushing forward and moving the needle on some of these things. And, it was h and f started in March 2014, and so this was probably, you know, a few four or five months after we started, I think. And, we were just thrilled to have support and, any kind of gesture, especially from the president that tech is important and learning tech is accessible to everyone. And, you know, this is also a time that we were really trying to make the argument that people should have, you know, written a line of code or two before before they're making massive decisions about, how to build technology, trying to get more technologists involved in a lot of these discussions. And I think we based on that, we also, had a quick, intro to code at GSA with AT and f, and we got the administrator, Dan Tan, Dan Tan Grilini, at the time and and Megan Smith writing code and taking pictures.
No. And I think at that same event, the thing, like at least I saw on the post that was tied to your name, and it was, work you were doing with analytics.usa.gov as a as a product or slash project. Could could you talk a little about that? That was a fun project that,
so it started based on a couple years of work that a team at GSA had been doing called the digital analytics program, DAP. And they had purchased one of the things GSA is their mission is is to sell services back to agencies cheaper than the agency alone could procure it. So, shared services is what they call it. And so, we the that team had, purchased a a global, Google Analytics tool and done the work, the policy work to get them to remove certain tracking things that, like so that we wouldn't be able to track individual IPs and some of the things that we're worried about from a privacy perspective and that are regulated. And, so there was this wealth of of data, and and they've done such an amazing job. They had hundreds of government sites on there, and, we wanted to make it more public. So, and then the more fun kind of long game on it was, some of the work that they Eric Mill was one of the leads, and I think it was his idea to expose more of the information about browsers and, operating systems. At the time, a lot of contractors were still being forced to build to IE seven. And this is, like, 2014, 2015, long after it had been end of life. And and there were a lot of, poor decisions or things that I remembered from my days as a contractor that had I had something like this to show, look. Across the entire government, there are, like, maybe half a dozen IE seven users, and they're all from China. Like, can we not support this, please, on our site? And so we wanted to expose this data to kind of help inform some of that better decision making or folks who might not be empowered to make arguments on, along those lines. And so it was kind of a joint project with AT and F and this DAP team at GSA, and then we got some support from the CTO's office, Charles Worthington, who is now CTO at the VA. And, yeah, we we got this thing out in, like, a month. I think I I got nervous and did some last minute usability testing at code for DC. I just kind of took over my meetup that night and had everyone poke around at it. And we realized that, like, the way we'd framed it made people think that we we were showing them data of, like, all active Internet users in the country, and and that it, like so we were able to make some changes to make it less creepy and more focused on very basic Google Analytics data, and then also release it via API. And then, yeah, and then we struggled with the White House comms office for, I don't know, like, a month trying to get it out and, finally did. And then, most of the traffic came, I think, from Twitter and Hacker News, not the White House.
Leah, again, thank you for coming on and sharing with us your, you know, your knowledge, your experience, and your your thoughts, as we've had this conversation today. Now as always on Civic Tech Chat, we try and give the, guest the opportunity to leave the audience with a series of, concluding thoughts, kind of the whatever the message is that you'd like us to leave this podcast episode with as we draw to a close. So what would that, be here in in your case?
I think for me, what I want folks to think about is, like, kind of what I was saying earlier. Like, this is an especially interesting time in civic tech because a lot we're doing a lot of, looking back and learning, and, also, folks are spread out across all new projects and new versions of solving the problem. And I think, you know, talking to each other and and really asking for advice, is just so powerful. And and going back to the tools that we know work of discovery, research, interviewing, iterating to solve our own internal problems is is one of the most important ways that we're gonna kind of keep this movement going and and keep figuring it out. And one of the things that has been most rewarding for me about going to USDS has been finally getting you know, for so long, I was such a true believer in 18 f and and and I and, you know, wanted it to be the one true way where we fix government, right, which I knew was nuts. But, I was it was so inspiring and exciting to be a part of it, but, I was so focused on defending it, and it's one model. And being at USDS has helped me kind of and and and and also watching everyone go out and spread out across all the different contractors and digital service teams at state and local levels in Canada and stuff and seeing, you know, kind of what they're talking about about how to address and fix this problem or seeing some of the decisions that US d DS made that were different from how eighteen f worked that have been better or worse, you know, and the effects that they've had. Like, there are a lot of different ways to do this, and there are a lot of different problems. And I think comparing one team against another or another digital service or, you know, another country or something and saying, like, you know, they're they're doing it wrong is the wrong approach. I think, you know, everyone's making compromises and trying to fix things and trying to adjust and improve. And the more we can kinda talk and keep sharing what we're learning and and have empathy for each other in this difficult work, I think we can really make some huge progress for people in this country.
I think that's an excellent note for us to conclude on here. And, Leah, again, I I I can't thank you enough for taking the time to come on the program and, speak with us here in Civic Tech Chat land. So again, thank you.
Sure. It's my pleasure. I'm a big fan. So keep keep it up.
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