Page 63 - FCW, March 2017

Discussion participants
Daniel J. Chenok
Executive Director, IBM Center for the Business of Government
Rick DeLappe
Recreation.gov Program Manager, Interior Department
Wei Ding
Consumer Engagement Product Team Lead, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Matthew Dingee
Lead UX Designer, USAJobs, Office of Personnel Management
Brian Dunbar
Internet Services Manager, Office of Communications, NASA
James Hammond
Director of Online Engagement, Operations and Media,
Internal Revenue Service
Ryan Hillard
Digital Service Specialist, Small Business Administration
Rosetta C. Lue
Senior Adviser, Department of Veterans Affairs
Janelle Smith
Public Affairs Specialist, U.S. Forest Service
Simchah Suveyke-Bogin
Government Customer Experience Lead, General Services Administration
Evagelia EmilyTavoulareas
Founding Member, VA Digital Service, Department of Veterans Affairs
V. David Zvenyach
Acting Executive Director, 18F, General Services Administration
Note: IBM sponsored the roundtable gathering.The discussion was
led by FCW Editor-in-ChiefTroy K. Schneider, and the recap on these pages is strictly an editorial product. Neither IBM nor any of the roundtable participants had input beyond their Feb. 22 comments.
The group agreed, however, that the model of highly technical teams deployed from the top has challenges of its own. The government might not need thousands of Google-grade engi- neers, but it does need more than it has. Agencies must have the right experts in the room, one speaker said, and “we may not have the experts who are on the cutting edge of what’s happening in the technology world right now.”
“If you’re trying to build a digital ser- vice here,” she added, “and then that person is not available to whoever needs [him or her], you’ve just thrown up another roadblock.”
Don’t call it a rescue
Digital services teams can come with another risk: reinforcing the idea that they have “special privileges that allow them to operate in different ways” and that only newly imported coders can effect change.
One agency leader shared a story of how 18F and the U.S. Digital Ser- vice “came to our rescue” — a framing that caused the participants who hailed from those groups to bristle.
“The way that I approach it, and I know that the team approaches it, is that the heroes have been in the gov- ernment all along,” one such speaker said. “We didn’t rescue you. Developers, designers and product managers are doing a role that needs to exist with- in the government, but it’s not like a rescue.”
He added that those teams now make it a point to invest “a little bit of extra time to sort of pave the road behind us so the next people don’t have to do a workaround. If Policy X is the challenge, then fix Policy X as you’re going through the process.”
Another participant with a USDS background agreed. “The narrative of Silicon Valley, Stanford kids coming in and saving the day is fun, but it’s really not accurate,” she said. “If that was a solution, then we’d be good. We’d just hire a bunch of those people and, ta-da,
everything’s fixed. But the truth is we’re talking about this highly complex orga- nization where there is no one entity that is going to fix the whole thing.”
The all-important ‘air cover’
The group’s general consensus was that citizen engagement and the digital teams to make it possible are now more valued across agencies than just a few years ago. Although there are certainly still pockets of skepticism, participants voiced optimism about what lies ahead.
The first step, one participant said, is simply getting leaders to recognize the gap in technical expertise. Few agency executives, he noted, would be “making decisions on economic policy or foreign policy in any way without the expert on economics and finance at the table. We’re making it clear to leadership that technology is no longer this fun, extra, shiny, nice-to-have thing. It’s the spinal cord of the way we operate.”
So far, most participants said, the new political leaders of their agencies seem to get it. “We had immediate, tre- mendous support and buy-in from the new politicals, who are very much into serving the end user,” one said. “That’s all they care about.”
“I would echo that,” another said. “Times of transition, no matter what kinds of transition it is, are always a little unnerving. But the experience, so far, has been incredible support for just doubling down on making sure that the agency is delivering effectively and efficiently.”
Even at agencies where huge poli- cy shifts are expected, speakers said, the results-oriented nature of citizen engagement can resonate. “For us, I think it’s too early to tell, but we’re optimistic for two reasons,” one partici- pant said. “One is our business-driven culture, and the other is one party.”
“It’s one party now, so you don’t have a reason to be at odds about moving forward,” that official continued. “What- ever the path is, they want to go for- ward. We’re seeing some good signs.” n
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