How Two Latinas from the Obama Administration Bring Tech Directly to Changemakers
Cecilia Muñoz and Vivian Graubard lay out their vision of exploring how technologists can reengineer systems that aren’t working.
By Cecilia Muñoz and Vivian Graubard
Failure. It’s a frightening word — anathema to most who work in Washington, and especially to those of us who craft policy. And yet it is among the most productive forces in the world — the necessity that births invention. It is impossible to fix a system until you admit that it’s broken. This level of introspection is almost revolutionary within federal institutions, but became the quick and constant task of the United States Digital Service (USDS) in 2014. USDS is a tech startup hatched within the White House. This “SWAT Team of Nerds” was deployed throughout the bureaucracy to reengineer old processes and reimagine public service for the modern age.
As the former Director of the Domestic Policy Council (DPC) and a founding member of USDS, we saw the power of this approach first hand. Whether it was creating a college scorecard or digitizing the immigration application process, the lesson was clear: when people solving big problems collaborate with technical thinkers, paradigms can shift, and the world can change.
Observe: in 2015, President Obama directed federal agencies responsible for refugee processing to raise the number of Syrian refugees welcomed into the country by 10,000 people. With no additional budgetary resources, agencies like the Departments of State (DOS) and Homeland Security (DHS) faced a daunting task.
Enter USDS. That year, the USDS deployed a team of technologists, including Raphael Majma, then director of the State Department Digital Service team, to work with State, DHS, and others to quickly evaluate the convoluted process of refugee applications. This includes comprehensive security screenings, complete health screenings, and a host of agency reviews. Not only was it nearly impossible to track an application’s position in the process, but final approval was done in person, via paper stamps and signatures.
After only four months partnering with federal agencies, technologists at USDS offered a simple process-hack: the digital stamp. Instead of traveling around the world to sign and stamp applications in person, reviewers can now access and approve applications remotely. By the end of the year, DHS and DOS had beaten the President’s goal of processing an additional 10,000 refugees. In 2015, it admitted 12,587 additional Syrian refugees into the country, without a penny of additional funding. Agencies involved in the process started requesting digital teams to help solve other problems.
Organizations outside of government, the ones that serve people’s needs every day, can also transform their work by integrating technology into their approach to public service. As women of color, children of immigrants, and public servants, we believe our community of practice can and should start to use tools of the digital age to solve our common problems. At a moment in which technology is changing the ways we live and work, we must harness the tools that technology provides to make our country a better place for all people.
For us, that means bringing together people who serve vulnerable communities with those who are building innovative tools and processes. That’s why we’re launching the Public Interest Technology Initiative at New America. Together, we are developing a community of practice that includes engineers, programmers, academics, and advocates — all willing to learn, grow, and fail as we explore new ways to partner with those whose daily work is to uphold the dignity of human lives and transform local communities for the better. Issue by issue, community by community, our primary tasks will be to listen and collaborate.
We hope, with these efforts, to contribute to developing the field of public interest technology, much like the field of public interest law was created through intentional efforts a generation ago. We witnessed transformational change in the federal government. We have cheered organizations like Code for America as it enlists technologists in the work of local governments around the country. We hope to create the same capacity for the NGO sector and to partner with others in building an ecosystem for public interest technology, creating pathways for technologists to build vibrant careers as public servants.
To be clear, we do not expect technology to solve every problem, nor is our strategy about sending in outsiders to “fix” local problems. On the contrary, our task is to build partnerships with local leaders in a way that provides them with new tools that make sense for the new realities they face. By integrating technology into the toolkit that NGOs use to solve problems, we can help our partners deliver better services to more people, and often at a lower cost.
Last month, our immigration team began their first project by traveling between Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas to better understand the needs of immigrant communities and the organizations that serve them. They spent four weeks meeting with hundreds of refugees, undocumented immigrants, community-based organizations, volunteers, and local government officials. Their findings will drive the team’s ongoing work to focus on the key issues facing immigrant communities.
Our team of fellows, recruited from public, private, and academic institutions, will embed themselves in the work of those providing key services at the local level. In addition to immigration, they will focus on issues like improving the foster care system, mapping interventions across the country that are being used to address the opioid epidemic, reducing the prison pipeline — all by exploring how technologists can reengineer systems that are not working.
It is our sincere belief that through curiosity and partnership, communities can meet any challenge they face, and we intend to help them develop new tools to do it.
Cecilia Muñoz is the former Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, and current VP for Policy and Technology at New America. Vivian Graubard is a former founding member of the United States Digital Service, and current Director of Strategy for the Public Interest Technology Initiative at New America.
