04 Innovation Teams
[Andrew Schrock](https://twitter.com/aschrock), Communication Post Doctoral Fellow at Chapman University, joins us to converse about Innovation Teams and how they fit into the Civic Tech movement.<br><br>### Resources and Shoutouts:<br>- Perspectives<br>Innovation Teams, Mundane Innovation, and the Public Good : [https://www.epicpeople.org/innovation-teams-mundane-innovation-and-the-public-good/](https://www.epicpeople.org/innovation-teams-mundane-innovation-and-the-public-good/)<br>- Andrew Schrock's Website [http://aschrock.com/] (http://aschrock.com/)<br><br>##### Music Credit: [Tumbleweeds by Monkey Warhol](http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Monkey_Warhol/Lonely_Hearts_Challenge/Monkey_Warhol_-_Tumbleweeds)
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Transcript
Civic Tech Chat is a monthly podcast about the civic technology movement. We seek to harness the power technology has to improve the delivery of public services to people everywhere. This episode will focus on some communication principles and the concept of innovation teams. These teams are groups that are put together by various levels of government or by private entities in order to drive institutional change and technical innovation. Oftentimes, these are put together with folks that are empowered and able to break down departmental barriers and gain trust among stakeholders. To join us in this conversation, we'll have Andrew Schrock, a post doctoral fellow with Chapman University. Andrew is also the author of a book that's soon to come out called Civic Tech, Making Technology Work for the People, and has some experience with the Los Angeles I team. With all of that said, let's go ahead and get started. Andrew, could you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your story and background?
Sure. So my name is Andrew Schrock. I grew up outside of Boston, Massachusetts. And kind of from an early age, I was really interested in computers and networking. And so I got my bachelor's in computer science. I kind of went into the tech industry. I gloriously failed to be a software engineer, but what I found is that I really enjoyed talking about the political and social implications of technology. And so when it came back to grads when it came time to for me to go back to grad school, I became really interested in what was then kind of a new phenomenon, which was social network sites. This was in about 2005. Since that point, I went back to get my PhD as well. And so I kind of continued this line of thinking and became interested in topics of civic engagement and in particular, how larger political systems can be changed for the better. So, along this way, I kind of started to notice a lot of what was going on with civic tech and how it kind of started to gain momentum around 2009, 2010. So it's really in civic tech that a lot of these interests of mine kind of came together around, the technology driving communication and then also a lot of the socialization that was kind of happening to produce new technologies. So the people who are actually doing the work, to create technology.
I really like that phrase you used, to gloriously fail. I'm gonna have to make a mental note of that one for, my own use later. And it sounds like you've been on an interesting journey trying to marry some skill sets, some background areas that perhaps traditionally wouldn't have been considered compatible. So I also wanted to ask you as many of us don't have experience in your job, what is a day in the life of a post doctoral fellow like?
Oh, it's really great. I get paid to do research. And particularly, for my postdoctoral work, I research what's known as cyber infrastructure, in the organizing communication and technology group at Chapman University. And what cyber infrastructure is is essentially scientists and technologists using technology to solve, really big scientific problems. And what I found kind of in that world is that communication is really important to organizing and collaboration. And, you know, as so far as civic tech goes, I've sort of applied a lot of these ideas that we're developing in the research group to my own work. So for instance, we talk about the importance of communication infrastructure in the research group among scientists and sort of I I use a lot of the same terms in my own personal work with civic tech because a lot of the time, it seems like a lot of similar problems, except with the added challenge of being in the public sector and not being scientific work necessarily, but more kind of bringing community and government together in a more intimate and productive way.
What would be an example of one of those big scientific problems where you would have applied that approach?
So in cyber infrastructure, a lot of the time scientists are doing things like mapping the solar system, trying to cure cancer, mapping the genetic tree of every single plant on earth. And a lot of these problems tend to be very computationally intensive or data intensive or sometimes both. So you really need things like high performance computing, and big data analytics to make that stuff go. So when I look at that world, there's, you know, millions of dollars going to a lot of this stuff. I kind of wonder why we can't do the same thing for civic tech. Why it is that we're sort of still always on the verge of something big happening.
In, looking into your work, I saw that you were part of a group called the organization communication and technology group. How would you describe that organization that you work with?
It's a small research group, and we work from money that we got from the National Science Foundation. And I I would say a lot of what we're interested in is very much kind of bread and butter topics for communication. So for instance, we're very interested in how new innovations are distributed and adopted in different contexts. We're also really interested in how communication is used to build capacity, in organizations for tackling very difficult problems. So that's another kind of point at which I would say there's some carryover. Right? Because a lot of the nonprofit organizations in the civic tech world, you know, are always trying to find not just money, but expertise and space to kinda do their thing. And kind of at OCT, which is the research group I'm part of, we really see communication as being how all this stuff happens, because you're always in a position to convince funders to give you money, to talk with someone who will let you use their space for, you know, one night a week for, you know, some wacky mix of, you know, geeks to come by and, start start to solve, civic problems. You know, all these things inherently involve communication. And a lot of the times, it's communication of a very kind of old variety. Right? It's a lot of the time, the talking, the meeting and greeting, you know, the posting up of, you know, videos on YouTube that show what it is you're capable of. So all, I mean, all these things together, are what we're interested in.
I can relate to what you're saying. While organizing Open Uptown, I've run into that situation a couple times where it's been hard to find a location for an event or to get access to resources. Are there any things you've noticed groups like ours overlooking as they attempt to work around those sorts of problems?
Well, I think the biggest one is that they don't recognize the value of communication. A lot of the time in particular among techies, they kind of are doing communication even though they don't realize it necessarily, if that makes sense. So, you know, there's sort of the understanding that if you hold weekly meetings, and you get the word out about what you're doing, then more people will come and maybe you can get the interest of, collaborators and local government. But there there's not really a systematic way that people think about this happening. And as it turns out, you know, this is exactly what communication theory, is all about, about how you get the word out to spread adoption of your innovations or develop the ability to get more capacity to do what you wanna do. So I actually think a lot of civic techies are kinda doing this stuff. They're just not using the same terms. They're just doing it in a more grassroots way.
I think this is a good spot for us to shift gears to our main subject, innovation teams. For someone out there listening that isn't as well versed on the topic, how would you describe how those teams are structured?
So innovation teams have a long history. They actually started in the nineteen sixties in the public sector with educational reform, but most people kind of know them because they're used a lot in the business world. So for instance, if you have, a shift happening, in management or you want, to figure out why your organization isn't functioning as it should, or you want to develop a new a new product line, you might bring in an innovation team. Innovation teams as a whole don't really follow a consistent set of organizational structures. Some can be a little bit more headstrong with leadership. Others can be, a little bit more embracing of letting people pursue their own goals. But I think, universally, the goal is to change the way that organizations function. So in the case of innovation teams in the public sector, a lot of the time, the, whoever brings on the innovation team, say a mayor, is really interested in getting a lot of people inside of government to go along with her or his, goals and perspectives. Or there could be kind of a crucial social problem that they're really interested in, but they just don't really have the time or money to deal with. So this could be something like, crime, public housing. There's a lot of things that people inside of government really want to address, but they just don't really have the personnel or, bandwidth themselves to take on yet more, questions and problems.
I'm getting the sense that innovation teams are in involved in this work in a way that goes beyond technology change. What about them differentiates them from other government programs which address similar
scopes. If we're talking about local government, for instance, local government might have people if that local government is of a sufficient size, They probably have an IT department that does a lot of the day to day, technological provisioning. And chances are if they're of a sufficient size, they have other people in government that are also interested in technology even though it's not kind of their main thing. So one example would be, like, in the city of Los Angeles, Ron Galperin, the city controller, has historically had a real interest in, open data. Because as comptroller, he's got a lot of it and he wants people to use it and see it. So I think the different thing about innovation teams is that they tend to be focused on particular social problems, or organizational problems. But in the public sector, for the most part, it's social problems. And they come in with kind of that as their directive. And a lot of the time, what differentiates them is they have a good amount of leeway, I would say, to communicate with and collaborate with people across different departments and throughout a particular, local government. Right? So instead of being siloed and being tasked with existing priorities, they're really out to problem solve and see what can be done to improve one specific social problem or other.
I'm hearing that their existence as being interdepartmental seems to be a pretty strong advantage for that mission. Am I hearing that correctly?
Yeah. So they a lot of the time, we'll talk with stakeholders across different departments to see what kind of common goals or, needs they have. And a lot of the time, again, back to the kind of the importance of communication, A lot of the time, this is where communication comes in. They're trying to better understand what the problems, of government officials are, and they're trying to figure out what might be a way to get everyone around the table around a particular initiative. This is, I think, kind of the substance of innovation teams. And it's not necessarily totally technological even though some of their initiatives can involve technology, if that makes sense. So if it leads them to, let's say, a technological way to address a persistent social problem, then that's an avenue they'll go down. But otherwise, they won't. And depending on who is calling the shots at a high level, the, let's say, the director of an innovation team, the innovation team may be tasked to, you know, have a mix of different types of interventions. So there could be, let's just say, policy reforms, process reforms where kind of how people collaborate or do their business has changed, and then also technological reforms. And I think this is a good way to connect with sort of the broader civic tech movement is that a lot of what I hear is that it's not just about technology. And in fact, a lot of the time, people who work inside of government have heard this quite a few times before, you know, this message of, oh, well, we're going to bring you some shiny technology and it'll solve all your problems. And in fact, they tend to be a little bit shy about that now, because they've heard that so many times. And I think that's actually a selling point kind of for civic technologists and other people in this world is that they really are well versed in having a more robust vocabulary about social change.
You yourself have had some experience working with one of these teams. Would you be willing to share with us a bit about that experience?
Yeah. Sure. So I worked on the LA innovation team in a pretty small capacity. But what happened is I got out of my PhD program in 2015 and was really interested in doing something with this knowledge that I had stored up. So in a PhD program, you learn things like, how to do quantitative statistics, you know, how to run a survey or qualitative methodology, so how to interview people, for example. And it seemed like the innovation team would be a cool place to, to do this and something a little bit unusual and outside of, the typical academic experience. So I was lucky enough to get into, Los Angeles City Hall. Abby Nemani, and Lillian Coral were really, welcoming to me, at the time. And I ended up working on the team for, for quite a bit for almost a year. And it was just really an exciting experience and, a a real learning experience for me where I could start to see a lot of the theories that I had read about kind of in the grad school context being put into practice in, city hall.
What about your experience with I team most surprised you? And what about it did you find least surprising?
It's a good question. I think maybe least surprising is that government really is at times very difficult to change. That is probably not a surprise to anyone listening to this who has worked in local government. And a lot of the time, it's not a fault necessarily of the individuals that comprise local government, but it's an organizational problem. Right? So I would say that is not that was not necessarily surprising. That was the least surprising. I'd say the most surprising was the diversity of the people that the LAI team brought in. They really brought in, young people who were, growing to be experts in their particular subject areas. I think this was a phenomenal kind of strength of that particular team. And the director really did a great job of both recognizing and rewarding people for doing things that they were really interested in that matched up. She was sort of, like, trying to find the way to, make what people were interested in match up with the larger mission. And I should also say that, you know, the innovation team that was in LA is a particular kind of innovation team. Right? So I've mentioned that innovation team started decades ago, moved into the private sector, and then kind of came back out to the public sector. Kind of one of the ways that it did that and why the idea of innovation teams reemerge was really through, Bloomberg Philanthropies. And they've really kind of promoted innovation teams as have other people. But they were really the ones that were able to put funding behind it such that they could get innovation teams in a lot of different local, governments nationwide and worldwide actually now.
How would you describe that relationship between your team and Bloomberg Philanthropies as you were going forward working on projects?
Yeah. So they have a fairly clear commute set of communication practices with Bloomberg Philanthropies. And they have kind of forms that they fill out to notify, Bloomberg Philanthropies of kind of the development of their plans. They also have a very clear way that the problem solving unfolds. So if you wanted to, you could go look for what's just called the, Bloomberg innovation playbook. It's also just called in slang terms, we called it the purple book because we had a purple cover. And you can really see how they imagine a lot of the problem solving happening. And in particular, you know, the sort of iterative cyclical problem solving also connected with points where, you know, the team would talk with the mayor or talk with kind of Bloomberg philanthropies. The other thing that would happen is occasionally all the kind of Bloomberg Philanthropies teams would come together and share tips and tricks. So I would say there is a warm and collegial relationship kind of, not just within the team, but across bloom different Bloomberg Philanthropies innovation teams.
In an article you wrote on this topic, you quoted Aaron Snow saying, eighteen f isn't really a digital services office. We are a change management office disguised as a digital services office. Could you elaborate a little bit on what they were alluding to in that quote?
Sure. Absolutely. So what change management is, goes back actually to the early beginnings of innovation teams. And there was a psychologist, Kurt Levine, who was really interested in how to get these big organizations to change. And he thought about different ways of kind of getting organizations that were what he called kind of frozen into one way of behaving to then kind of shift and change before reforming and freezing into a different way of behaving. So although there's been a lot of different models of change management like McKinsey, change management at its core is really about how to get new, how to get organizations to adopt new patterns of behavior. I think what Aaron Snow was getting at, although I don't really know him personally, although I greatly respect the work of eighteen f. I think what he was getting at is that it's not necessarily their job to come in and drop some technology on the floor and bail. I think what they're really tasked with is what my core interests are as well, which is how do you get these people inside of organizations to adopt new technologies, and then build patterns of behavior around them such that they improve the organization as a whole? And it sounds like eighteen f is really, making strides with doing all sorts of different levels of engagement and getting the adoption of different practices, among different agencies at the federal level. So I I think a lot of what eighteen f is doing is really change management at the federal level instead of the local level.
I think a lot of folks out there can relate with what you're describing. Even in the private sector, I've seen that large enterprises can be slow to change, and it can require buy in from very particular individuals and teams in order to push that forward. Do you have any tips or strategies that you've observed are effective at trying to manage those interdepartmental relationships?
Yeah. I mean, I I think a lot of the change management and kind of that's going on in innovation teams really revolves around building trust and building trusting relationships. So some of the time, what has happened in government relationships and I I think we should understand that relationships in government are different than relationships outside of governments. So people inside of government, the way that you can note respect is a lot of the time giving people authority and recognition that kind of they were the ones that came up with a particular initiative or developed an initiative. And so a lot of the time what's happened is that for one reason or another, there's been some bad blood or there's been miscommunication between different people inside of governments and, you know, people who once worked together no longer really want to work together. This can be for all kinds of frankly totally boring reasons. It could just be, a changeover in administration. It could be someone got a grant and another person felt like it was their idea. So a lot of what innovation teams do is try to build, back these trusting relationships between potential collaborators to get traction on a lot of these projects that we all sort of find interesting. So I would say that that's sort of the behind the scenes look that I think maybe people don't talk about too much outside of, government. But, you know, inside government, it's really apparent that that is the main thing that innovation teams do so so far as it is from a change management perspective.
I think you're apt to point out the importance of building trust. I think that's a part of the conversation that is often overlooked. And the way you're describing it, it really drives the point home. In your writing, you talk about something called mundane innovation. To me, this sounds like technology changes that are smaller, less earth shattering, but impactful nonetheless to the day to day. Can you describe this concept in greater detail?
Sure. So with mundane innovation, I was really trying to bring innovation back to earth a little bit because a lot of the time when people use the word innovation, it's not quite clear what they're talking about so far as, you know, tangibly what they imagine innovation being. So we can think of, of course, a lot of different ways of thinking about innovation. You know, we can talk about innovation as breakthroughs of a technological nature. I think what I was trying to get at and where I was trying to advance the discussion is thinking about innovation as something more kind of everyday and mundane. And I don't mean mundane in in insulting way. I mean, mundane in sort of, like, a way that it's wonderful that these things are kind of common and all around us. So, for example, I think a lot of the innovation that's going on right now at the local level is really kind of tackling, in my opinion, the bread and butter of what governance should be about and in a liberal democracy. Right? So there should be services that support residents, for instance. This is typically not what sort of the high rhetoric of innovation talks about. Right? It's always shooting for the stars, and it's always promising something that's slightly out of reach and slightly in the future. So I think the more important thing about innovation is that, you know, it promises change, but we can't promise more than we can actually deliver. Right? So, you know, the mundaneness is both mundane in two sense. Senses. It's mundane in terms of thinking about everyday technologies. So just things like cell phones that are in everyone's pockets. And then also mundane in terms of thinking about the types of thing the the things that have to happen to get innovation to occur. And from my perspective, a lot of that is as you can tell about communication and getting people to work together who may not otherwise work together. That's not usually the type of innovation that is given kind of the spotlight in, like, TED Talks, but I think that's really the important message of what's going on, in civic tech is that a lot of really the best ideas and the enduring ideas and the ideas that can really help people in a tangible way are not necessarily the same ideas and sort of big promises that have been made in the past. They're things that are kind of realistic and, doable and accomplishable with an existing, team of players.
I think you make a really good point. On the tech culture side of things, there can be this tendency to chase after the disruptive thing, especially if you're someone coming from the tech sector and you're new to civic tech. And what you're saying provides a nice reminder of where change doesn't have to be about upending something, but simply about improving it in an iterative fashion. Solutionism seems to be an ideology where technologists start to believe there are quick technical fixes for larger societal or organizational problems. Have you run into this in the course of your work, and are there ways to get past this tendency?
Yeah. I think we've all run into those types of promises and those types of people. And I think with the idea of solutionism, which is Morozov's term, at least as I'm aware of it, the term he developed to describe this idea that, people become attracted to network technologies because they offer easy solutions to very complex social problems. So in the process of applying, a technological fix, a lot of the time, they just don't not only do they not address the underlying issues, but they think they're having an impact when really they're not. They're making life more complicated. So I I I think we've all sort of found those people in our travels that are the you know, we're going to throw technology at a problem and, you know, think that it's going to solve it immediately, and everyone's going to be wowed and amazed. And we're going to, you know, just have, cheering cheering people all around us telling us how wonderful, our idea was. But I haven't found that many people, certainly not those who have been in civic tech for any amount of time. And in fact, most of the people I've talked to in the world of civic tech are really painfully aware of the constraints of bureaucracy and the constraints of kind of building relationships between government and community partners. You know, I I think Josh Tibera really made this point in a blog post a year or two ago where he was the one who kind of came up with GovTrack to track legislation as it made its way through the house and senate. And he kind of was frustrated by people emailing and pitches, that they were going to fix democracy using technology. And I think his response was really good that he said, you know what? We need to pay less attention to technology and more attention to building relationships with partners and really gaining the expertise to understand these very complex problems. And and I think that's where a lot of people these days in civic tech really come down, on problem solving. Right? I I haven't really come across too many people that are of the let's throw some tech at it and run away. I mean, maybe maybe I don't live in San Francisco and and this is why. But sorry. I just had to get a little North South California dig in. But I I think the, it's it's kind of overstated that, solutionism is as prevalent and as dangerous. Because the other thing that I found is that among friends of mine that are very critical of the tech industry, now they're afraid to use more or less any form of technology in the pursuit of alleviating public problems. And that becomes dangerous in a new way because then in a lot of cases, you're foreclosing on what are essentially very good ways to communicate with the public. So for instance, if you don't pay attention to, you know, who is using cell phones and how you might reach them on a mobile device, this may actually foreclose a lot of very helpful and important ways to reach the public. But I think the important lesson is to and I think what Morozov was really getting at, is to really not just let technology lead, not just make public life and civic life conform to technology's will, essentially. Right? Because that can be a very dangerous thing indeed.
I'm getting the sense that there needs to be balance to the way that one goes about tackling a change management process. On the one hand, you wanna make sure that you're able to get the right resources to the right place and build trust. But on the other, you don't want a situation where you end up creating a ton of overhead either. So what does the right balance
look like to you? Oh, boy. I am not entirely sure. I think the the only ones who would really know exactly what that balance is are are the ones who have been on innovation teams, and have been part of these kinds of efforts in the long term. And so far as this latest kind of iteration in the public sector, there aren't a huge number of of folks like that. But I have talked with, some people like Nigel Jacob at, mayor's office of New Urban Mechanics. And he, you know, he's had quite a bit to say about that in terms of how do we achieve, that balance, how to achieve that sustainability. I think he's been very influential on my thinking so far as what ends up being important is, you know, to you know, if you want to keep this more experimental mindset in terms of trying out new ideas, you really have to be somewhat independent from other groups inside of government if that's where your innovation team is. And then you also have to protect collaborators. You essentially have to shield them from negative repercussions. I mean, I think I think, you know and then in addition, kind of have some source of sustainable funding that lets you do your thing, moving forward. I mean, I I think that that's kind of what it's all about. You need autonomy, and independence in this world, to be able to take a lot of this stuff on. And then you also need to be able to absorb some of the repercussions if something happens that someone else is not so happy with. You have to be able to be there to absorb some of the, potential, blowback.
Yeah. I think this is definitely one of the more difficult questions to answer. I don't know if we'd be able to come up with some silver bullet thing that we could tell a group like eighteen f or your old team and say, hey. Here is what that balance looks like. And I think this is a good time to shift gears again and talk about some other participants in the civic tech movement and how they relate. One thing I've observed is that there is a greater amount of participation in civic tech from the private sector, whether it's Microsoft starting their own civic tech unit or cities like New York appointing industry leaders to advisory boards. Is this a phenomena you've observed in your work, and do you think it's a positive thing?
Yeah. I think I welcome industry participation in civic tech with the caveat that, you know, they they should be, good partners in this world. And I I think you're only gonna be able to go so far organizationally without working at some point with one of these larger players. So I think it's important that they're in the room. I still think it's important that, you know, these industry partners should not necessarily lead the discussion. They should be, supportive of the kinds of organizations and grassroots interests that have emerged over the last few years. And at times, I think, I've seen some collaborations that really haven't been as equitable for, all of the partners involved as they could be.
You make a really good point. And I guess we're back to that concept of balance again. To me, it seems like a really heavy handed approach from the private sector to drive the direction of this would be negative. Is that something that you would agree with as well?
Yeah. I mean, I don't think industry should necessarily be dictating how we develop our cities. I don't think we should let, for instance, a lot of these big players, whether they be, you know, a a Ford Motor Company or an Amazon dictate exactly, how our communities develop. And, I think one thing that I see occasionally that's very uncivic, is that a lot of cities will give pretty incredible and unbelievable, benefits to these companies for doing business in, their city. And, you know, as much as I like a lot of these companies, you know, giving giving them the keys to the city is not necessarily in anyone's, best interest.
I can definitely hear you there. This topic is perhaps even more salient lately with, for example, the competition that Amazon has had with cities competing in order to see which one can get the new HQ. HQ. Though this probably isn't a practice that is just something Amazon driven, but is perhaps ever increasingly something that the industry likes to do now. I also saw from your website and the like that you have a book coming out. Is there anything about that you would be willing to share with us today?
Sure. So I decided to put together a book on civic tech, and I'd really been watching the scene develop. And I was really inspired by a lot of the books out there that I've read, like, Mica Siffre and Jessica Jessica Mackenzie's The Lever in a Place to Stand. Of course, in Chicago, you're familiar with kind of, the cut group and Chris Whitaker, Lauren Allen McCann, you know, watching what they were publishing so far as, self published books. So I I found that really inspiring. Like, oh, they're just going out and and doing this. Like, they don't, you know, necessarily need a publisher. They're just kind of going for it. So I found that inspiring. At the same time, I wanted to do a different kind of book. A lot of what has been written about civic tech has been rather policy oriented. So I'm thinking about, for instance, Stephen Goldsmith at the Ash Foundation. Stephen Goldsmith at the Harvard Ash Institute, or, for instance, Anthony Townsend's book, you know, tend to be either policy oriented or or urban planning oriented. And so I I thought really the opportunity was to talk about kind of the history of civic tech's ideas because I do think there there's a significant history in just about everything we're talking about in civic tech. So user oriented design or participatory design has a long history going back to the sixties. Innovation team, same thing. Open data, even further. So, I mean, one of the things that I was inspired to do is to take a cultural perspective on the political implications of civic tech. To do this, I interviewed a lot of techies, but then also wove in a lot of history into the book. Because I think we need to be aware that civic tech is not the first such movement to make this promise that technology will reform government and communities. I mean, we're like the fourth or fifth. So, you know, I think we should kind of not forget all these lessons, of people that came before us, and at the same time, retain some of the excitement and the spirit, that's really reverberating through civic text. So I think the book does that. I hope it does. And I'm just excited. I'm literally I told you at the start of this that I just got proof, so I'm holding it in my hand for the first time. I hope a lot of people will be excited about it. And you mentioned at the start, like, my, you know, my folks are asking me what I do. Well, this is something you can give to them and say, here here. Here's, kind of some of the stories and the histories about what I'm doing right now and why it's important. So that was really kind of my motivation is to not write another policy oriented, guidebook, but really make something that's readable, enjoyable, and that's really kind of taps into this cultural moment that we're in where I think ideas, for instance, of, improving services that government provides, even though it can be, let's face it, a little dry, is really hugely important right now, as are so many of the other ideas we're talking about in civic tech, whether it be, participatory design or transparency. You know, I think these are the core important ideas that we're going to be talking about five, ten, twenty years from now even though the technologies will have shifted underneath us. And I think you can see this already with a lot of the interest in, for instance, artificial intelligence. So, you know, I I'm interested to see kind of where we go from here and hope that I've kind of done a little bit of my part to give clarity to a lot of these more enduring ideas that are so important to the movement. I think we do live in a rather unique time,
both in the way technology is developing and in the way that we're choosing to make use of it. And I think you're tackling these topics and how they relate to civics in a way that's a bit different than perhaps what has been done by others. Plus, to be honest, it'll be nice to have a book that I can point to, when my relatives ask me, hey. What's that thing you spend all your time volunteering for? Instead of me trying to explain it and getting that glossy eyed look?
Well, you can give them the booking. If they give you the glossy eyed look still, it's my fault, not yours.
There we go. It's always a good thing for me when there's the chance to shift the blame off. So I'd like to ask you a couple more future focused questions as far as looking at where things are going. And one of the first things that comes to mind is, is there anything that sticks out to you as far as things that innovation teams need to look at and try to do differently with their approach?
I think innovation teams are in a very difficult spot in a lot of ways because they're trying to do so many things at once. They're trying to be true to themselves as, you know, researchers and politically active individuals. They're trying to be true to the goals that have been set for them kind of by the administration, by the mayor, and or the innovation team director. And then they're also trying, I think, in a lot of ways to be true to the residents, of the particular areas that they're working in. It's a tremendous balancing act, and it's tremendously difficult. I think one of the things that was apparent to me, and still is is that like a lot of very intense work, burnout is kind of common. Right? It's very difficult to do this work all the time and to try to, like you said before, find that balance. So I think, you know, one idea would be to give, people on innovation teams a little bit more time to think for themselves and to not stick to quite as constrained a timeline. And then the other would be to be kind of more sensitive in terms of the kind of cultural culturally oriented engagements that they do with particular neighborhoods. Because a lot of the time, the goals that they have and the topics that they've selected to work on are really hot button issues. And, you know, this can be very difficult work to do if you're not sensitive to, for instance, the organizations that have been doing, work in this area for quite some time. So, you know, I think those are the two things. You know, give them a little bit more time and then maybe to the people on the innovation teams, take the time to be cult not just culturally sensitive, but to, engage with partners in the neighborhoods that you're working in who have been doing this for some time. And that's really, you know, comes back to the Lauren Allen McCann's thing of, build with not for. I mean, that's something that I think is, very important and, we should continue to push.
Absolutely. That last bit, the build with not for concept is actually something that's come up a few times in these conversations. And I think it's something that we really can't hear enough. It's definitely a great guiding principle to go by.
Yeah. And by the way, when when I interviewed Lauren Allen McCann, she and this is in my book too. She kinda told me she was like, look. I wasn't trying to she was actually kind of excited that the term got picked up, but then she was also saying, you know, I didn't I wasn't trying to make the new Coke. I wasn't trying to brand what you were already doing, but I was trying to remind you, kind of constantly about this dimension of your work and what how you can do it better. So, yeah, I think it's something that we should always think about kind of in the back of our heads.
In a similar vein, I'd like you to look into a supposed future and give us an idea of how does the future of the innovation team concept look to you?
Yeah. I mean, I can give you the utopian and dystopian versions here. I think the dystopian version is that innovation teams kind of get absorbed into the organizational and bureaucratic structures of government. Right? And, so you don't really become about sort of, kind of problem solving or convincing people to adopt new courses of action, but you really become something more like the status quo. Right? So that that's something that I think you've already seen some innovation teams turn into, because after they're done and funding runs out, you either have to get support internally, and so you continue in some form or you just kind of dissipate. But I think ideally, I hope innovation teams continue, because I do think they are an important kind of political necessity right now. A way to, you know, beyond sort of the rhetoric of disruption, a way that plausibly institutes institutions can be reconfigured, a way that you can build some of these bridges between potential partners who may not otherwise collaborate. But I do think it it'll require both, kind of, you know, more funding, and it will require, frankly, refining a model of what innovation teams are and how they succeed. You know, one of one of my, you know, points of contention about a lot of innovation teams is that a lot of the time they don't share, you know, what really worked and why. Right? What we tend to get is a lot of stories about what works. But I'm not really convinced that we're getting closer to improving kind of the model of innovation teams themselves in a way such that, for instance, if you're a nonprofit and you want to create one and you want to engage with local partners, how you might plausibly plausibly do that? What are some of the pitfalls you should watch out for? What are some of the ways that, so far as best practices, you could achieve that? So, I mean, that's something that I would like to see a little bit more of is thinking about, you know, not just the business version of innovation teams and what makes that work, but in the public sector, how this work is kind of fundamentally different and, how we can work kind of together to improve it.
The nature of your work also involves a lot of research. Are there any areas within your field that are looking to be the most interesting to take a peek into?
I think one of the new areas is really how to you know, I think one of the nuts that we're collectively trying to crack is, how to use technology in an ethical way. And this really requires a lot of thinking about, not just technology itself and understanding that, although that's important, but also thinking about how we think about ethics and what an ethical framing of technical work can be. So I think if you've got a good head on your shoulders and you like doing either quantitative or qualitative work, I think there's a role for you right now, not just in the public sector, but in industry. I mean, in response to the, Cambridge Analytica event, I mean, one of the bigger things that happened today is Facebook's, stock just took a nosedive. So, you know, I think if there's one thing beyond sort of the, you know, moral imperatives that I think are we talk about all the time, the reasons why we should do better technology design. I think if it starts to hit companies in their pocketbooks, this is gonna be where they really start to, sit up and pay notice. And I think that's an opportunity for a lot of people to define an an emerging area of research and an emerging area, of practice, and potentially new positions inside of industry and academia on this topic.
You know, it sounds like there's a plethora of opportunity to come. And, of course, anything that's gonna drive the pocketbook like that is definitely going to, take that to the next level. So as we draw to a close here, are there any concluding thoughts that you would like to leave the listeners with?
So as one of my concluding thoughts, what I've been thinking a lot about lately is how we oftentimes think about techies as not organizing. Right? And that they need to organize. But in my work, I've really found kind of like with civic tech, a lot of the ways techies are organized organizing don't necessarily follow a lot of the same, recipes that we've thinking we tend to think about as organizing. Right? Particularly from, you know, a movement perspective or a social justice perspective. And in fact, kind of in in the last couple months as I wrapped up the book, I've been looking across history. And as it turns out, you know, over the last many decades, there have been a lot of organizations that, have not just captured a number of kind of devoted, people to work for better technology design, but have actually endured. So, one of my favorites is called, Radical Statistics, and they've been going in The UK since, I think around 1970 straight through. And they've always pressed for, responsible use of statistical analysis, you know, both in the sciences and in local governments. Report, they'd release a report to kind of correct and comment on the report. So they've always been sort of, a fourth estate to, the government in a way much as kind of journalists think of themselves. So, you know, I think rather than, as seems to be the style of the at at our time right now, rather than sort of say, geeks don't organize or geeks aren't politically savvy or aware, I think we should sort of look at both what is happening now, organizationally and what has happened in the recent past. Because I think, there is still a lot of lessons there, for us to draw on collectively in civic tech and beyond and other, areas. Like, I hear the phrase, you know, technology for the public good And, you know, it seems like they're looking at a lot of the same questions as well.
Andrew, thank you for joining us today. You've given us exposure to an area of the field that perhaps many of us aren't exactly very well acquainted with.
Yeah. Thank you for the invitation, and, I look forward to hearing the episode.
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