Reboot City Hall, Part 4: Technology
Read the rest of REBOOT CITY HALL here.
In 2021, all policies are pipe dreams without technology.
In government, the road to hell is often paved with good policy intentions, and the stakes have never been higher. Over 50% of adults are Millennials or younger, people who don’t remember life before the Internet, who have come to expect technology to represent how services and information are provided, with increasing convenience. It’s no surprise that COVID’s greater demands for government services resulted in a major drop in satisfaction levels. Old school technologies can’t meet modern expectations. We are going to have to build new technologies - a New York City Government-as-a-Service. You can’t just go to the Geek Squad or Genius Bar for this.
I have been arguing for a decade that this trend runs the risk of diminishing people’s confidence in democracy, since government is the instantiation of that democracy.
But technology transformation means a significant departure from the old ways of building technology. No better example of the importance and the risks of technology exists than the failed launch of the $1.7 billion Healthcare.gov website in 2013.
Healthcare.gov was the single website to implement the Affordable Care Act. It was to allow people to compare health plans, determine eligibility and enroll. On the first day, only six people were able to enroll due to technical issues.
The initial budget was $93.7 million. The final cost was almost 20x larger, $1.7 billion.
The failure of Healthcare.gov isn’t unique. Over the past 10 years, 94% of large federal IT projects were unsuccessful and 41% were complete failures.
New York City has had its share of large tech project failures, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars of lost taxpayer funding:
CityTime (was supposed to be a timekeeping system for city employees) - had a $65 million original budget, which grew to over $700 million - due to a “lack of expertise in management,” it FAILED
NYCAPS (civil service management system) - had a $66 million original budget, which grew to $363 million - it was only PARTIALLY ROLLED OUT
SESIS (special education system) - we spent $130 million on that and it FAILED (this was the second consecutive system to fail)
There’s a common pattern to these:
Lack of relevant experience in technology by government employees, including the office of the Mayor
Lack of leadership at the program level and lack of management at the Mayoral level
Outdated development and contracting processes
Over-reliance on outside contractors in an outdated procurement process
So it’s obvious. The next Mayor must have a deep understanding of tech. And the bar has been raised. A few examples of immediate potential uses of technology:
COVID passport. Secure immunization passport for COVID and other immunization records.
Elections app. Manage voter registrations, set reminders, make voting plans, find out where to vote, and who’s on the ballot, with all of this information auto-translated into every language New Yorkers need.
NYCHA maintenance app. Mobile app to report and manage NYCHA repair tickets.
311 as a New York City customer service app. A mobile app to report and manage 311 requests, with a customer service team that actually responds to you.
Leverage City tax information to automate eligibility for entitlements, starting with SNAP and WIC.
Affordable housing finder: An app that contains a database of all NYC housing under any of the City’s affordable housing programs.
Restaurant and retail app: Streamline and manage applications and inspections.
Childcare/Pre-K seat finder.
Citywide directory of agencies and contacts (for the public) and city employees (for other city employees).
Detailed, interactive citywide map, to the address level, that maps demographics, functions, environmental issues, etc.
Platform to manage relief distribution to undocumented communities.
A tech Mayor must also prohibit potentially abusive uses of technology, particularly by law enforcement, such as:
Facial recognition and other biometric surveillance technology
NYPD Criminal Group Database and use of fake social media accounts
Purchases of geolocation data
Warrants for geoFence and keyword searches
Drones and robots
Data-sharing with ICE, including through intermediaries
Predictive policing technologies like PredPol
What people expect from the government - or any other organization - today is fast response times, simplicity, personalization and a customer service approach. This is what we need to do not only for the New Yorkers we serve, but even more so for the New Yorkers in City government. Luckily, a new generation of practitioners, new processes, and new tools makes this far more achievable than ever. Because of this, technology is more than software and hardware. City government technology must have three essential elements (the “architecture”) to be successful:
Centered on the user -- in government, this often also means the frontline worker.
An agile process; it’s a flexible, iterative method of solving problems in continuous collaboration with users and stakeholders. It vastly reduces risk of failure and increases certainty of outcomes. But implementing this will challenge City Hall leadership and the procurement, finance, and legal functions to adapt.
A functional system: consists of what users see and interact with (the “view” or “application” layer); the behind-the-scenes software that fetches and delivers data to the view layer (the “services” or “microservices” layer); and the data sets that can feed data and accept changes from any number of applications (the “data layer”).
Organizations that succeed in building user-friendly, customer-focused services are often designed like software. I will create a new Office of Government Transformation to lead development of customer-centered technology. All the technology functions currently associated with the Mayor’s office will be rolled under this.
As the Mayor, I will establish citywide technology principles, policies and strategy through this office.
The Mayor needs to look at problems as opportunities. I will take a “portfolio” approach to them. My priorities among this portfolio will be:
First, easiest/fastest problems to solve with great immediate impact
Then, start on hard problems with great long-term impact
Deprioritize very hard problems with limited impact
Government as a platform. I will create a Technology Center of Excellence under the Transformation Office to enable the city to control its own technology fate, which means building its own software. This will start small and over time increasingly become integrated into IT organizations across the Mayoral agencies. The key capabilities will focus on platform and products:
software engineering using XP principles;
product design and management;
project management;
data engineering;
and User Research.
Culture of Transformation. This shift toward user-friendly, customer-focused services will be supported by technology, but must include frontline workers and management in order to be successful.
No top-down mandates.
Training will be offered across the Mayoral agencies.
Frontline workers and management must embrace these goals to be successful. Groups that share excitement will be the first chosen to participate as full partners in these initiatives, and will learn hands-on by becoming an integral part of the process.
Digital Bill of Rights
In collaboration with the Council, I will create a Digital Bill of Rights to be ratified by the Council and reflected in the Terms of Service provided to every New Yorker who accesses a City website or platform. Every New Yorker should have the right:
To affordable access to broadband and an internet connected device at the current commercial standard for speed and reliability to enable access to NYC government services and working and learning from home;
To user-friendly online access to NYC government services that prioritize fast response times, simplicity, personalization and a customer service approach,in your preferred language, accessible to the disabled and with a commercial grade search function;
To have offline access to all information and resources for those who prefer not to use the Internet;
To have reasonable expectations that the NYC government will protect your data and the City’s data from cybercrime and cyberterrorism;
To have access to and knowledge of all collection and uses of personal data by the NYC government (including vendors, contractors, etc.) including any use of biometrics, facial recognition, DNA, health, geolocation, etc.;
To opt-in consent to the collection of personal data by the NYC government;
Where context appropriate and with a fair process, to obtain, correct, or delete personal data controlled by the NYC government;
To have personal data held by the NYC government to be secured and to be notified in a timely manner when a security breach or unauthorized access of personal data is discovered;
To be free from warrantless search by the NYPD of your personal or public digital data and footprint;
To have the right to know about all uses of automated decision systems in NYC government, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, in common non-technical language;
Not to be discriminated against or exploited based on your personal data; and
To protect your privacy with industry standard or better business practices and accountability to protect your privacy.
It’s more than a year after the city shut down from COVID, and students still don’t have universal access to broadband or devices. As Mayor, I will implement broadband and internet-connected devices to all public school students within the first 90 days after taking office. Here’s how we will do this:
We will work with schools to conduct a comprehensive survey of all public school students and their families and compare this against data regarding homework completion and attendance.
We will first focus on homeless shelters, NYCHA and other residential buildings known to have limited broadband access and then continue to build out from there.
We can’t wait for city-owned fixed line capacity to cover the entire city; it will take too long. We will have to take the specifics of each setting and use mesh networks and 5G wireless as necessary to enable this to work.
We will also ensure that places where students can safely congregate, like libraries and community centers, will also be prioritized.
We will eliminate the hodgepodge of city-issued devices and standardize around devices that work best for different learning needs.
Procurement
As discussed above, IT procurement is large, risky and prone to corruption. Currently the large agencies - NYPD, DOE, HPD and HRA control their own IT procurement. I will oversee a review of the policies and practices:
We must pivot towards agile and user-centric practices within the first year of my administration
We must have a sensible migration to open architecture and cloud- and open-source based standards.
We must allow for testing and potential integration with new technologies, including those offered by startups and the civic tech community.
We must move away from massive single software contracts to smaller, more flexible contracts that re-envisions the role of contractors.
We must also bring our procurement policies regarding critical network equipment up to the cybersecurity and cyberterrorism regulations at the Federal level.
To support these transformations, I will oversee a substantial revision to how we finance and contract for technology services.
Financing for agile means changing how we budget, authorize spending and define the work.
To work with smaller and more innovative providers, the City will need to change its contracts to fit the requirements to the purpose. This will mean thinking differently about errors and omissions, warranties and indemnifications, and other provisions.
MODERNIZE THE CITY’S COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY
New York City’s communications must be brought into the 21st century. As the Mayor, I will create a 21st century communications system that meets every person where they live based on their preferences and their language:
Every resident should be able to opt-in, subscribe and set other preferences such as language for how they receive communications from the City, including via social media
Every communication must serve people who prefer not to receive electronic communications and the disabled
Every communication should be accessible via the Internet
All communications must allow for two-way communication; that is, every communication should allow recipients to respond. This will be integrated into a new customer service infrastructure integrated into the 311 service.