Page 39 - FCW, January/February 2021

“WE’RE IN THIS CURRENT REALITY IN WHICH TECHNOLOGY IS AN OBSTACLE TO GOVERNMENT BEING ABLE TO FUNCTION WELL. USDR IS IN
A POSITION TO SHOW THAT... TECHNOLOGY IS AND SHOULD BE AN ENABLER TO GOVERNMENT FUNCTIONING WELL.”
WALDO JAQUITH, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
2010. A 2019 report outlines the potential hazards of maintaining outdated systems: “As they age, legacy systems can be more costly to maintain, more exposed to cybersecurity risks and less effective in meeting their intended purpose.”
Technology as an enabler of
government operations
Yung said the government often funds technology the
same way it funds the building of a new office — by making all the investment at the beginning. But tech- nology is inherently more iterative, she added. In the private sector, smaller bursts of funding at frequent intervals allow developers to fix problems and update features in response to user feedback.
By contrast, the federal budgeting and oversight process ties funding to specific objectives, Jaquith said. That approach can prevent agencies from mak- ing adjustments once they’ve begun to develop and deploy a new technology.
“We’re in this current reality in which technology is an obstacle to government being able to function well,” he said. “USDR is in a position to show that... technology is and should be an enabler to government functioning well.”
In addition, although states typically use the same commercial software for unemployment insurance and other systems, they buy it independently of one another. “There’s no economy of scale,” he said.
Yung said USDR develops open-source solutions as much as possible so that other agencies can reuse templates and code and even scale them up to meet demands. For example, USDR created a template for a county’s elections website that within months had been customized by about 10 other counties to suit their own needs. “That’s a somewhat small example, but I think the potential is there for many other gov- ernment systems,” Yung said.
In another example, USDR worked with a state to build a tool that helps people understand what types of aid they qualify for, Levitz said. The main code for that tool can be changed to work for other states so they don’t have to start from scratch.
The team also built an interactive tool to help small- business owners identify what Paycheck Protection Program loans they are eligible for, and it quickly cus- tomized the tool for two other states using the same code, Yung said.
USDR plans to continue its operations in 2021 and has started a rotational program where technologists are embedded in city agencies in New York for two- month periods. The organization also recently released a website template for public health agencies to use for managing COVID-19 vaccinations.
Yung said a lot of technologists didn’t know how they could help with the magnitude of problems the public has faced since the pandemic hit. Most of USDR’s volunteers had never worked in government, but several of them have since taken full-time jobs in government or at civic technology organizations.
Many experts hope that the pandemic’s exposure of the challenges facing government IT has sparked renewed interest in civic technology at all levels of government. Weiss said he hopes USDR leaves a legacy of government technologists “leading from the inside.”
Jaquith said people who worked on technology proj- ects during the Obama administration are involved in President Joe Biden’s transition team and have a strong interest in promoting the importance of government technology. State and federal lawmakers have also shown high levels of interest in funding technology solutions, he said, adding that USDR has played a part by demonstrating what is possible.
“USDR is in a position to show up and help a state or local government in a way that they have never seen before,” Jaquith said. n
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