In Show of Progress, Two PIT Professionals Asked to Testify Before Congress

On April 29, 2021, two public interest technology (PIT) professionals testified before Congress. Tara Dawson McGuinness, fellow and senior advisor at New America’s New Practice Lab presented before the Senate Finance Committee at their hearing on Social Security during COVID. Travis Moore, Founder and Executive Director of TechCongress and Co-Founder of #CongressToo and the Congressional Staff Alumni Council, testified before the House’s Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress.

In his testimony, Moore, who pioneered a Congressional fellowship for technologists, urged the importance of continuing to build on these fellowships and expand technologist infrastructure and pipelines. He stressed that it could help fellows and other professionals get recruited in great numbers and from a diverse set of backgrounds. Moore describes his organization as building “21st century government with technology talent,” in contrast to Congress, which he characterizes as a “19th century institution.” Though Moore argued in his testimony that Congress had made significant strides with its implementation of some technology fellowships, his overarching message was that there is significant work to be done: Congress needs more fellows, he argues, and fellowship infrastructure needs to be improved and have staying power.

Speaking on the committee hearing’s topic of “Social Security During COVID: How the Pandemic Hampered Access to Benefits and Strategies for Improving Service Delivery,” McGuinness, who is also the co-author of Power to the Public: The Promise of Public Interest Technology, looked at how the Social Security Administration (SSA) handled service delivery during the pandemic, and presented four broader key lessons for improving service delivery moving forward. McGuinness argued that simplifying government forms is the first step towards better service delivery, that the user experience must be mapped end-to-end, that monitoring data in real time is key, and that a broken process cannot be made whole through digitization.

For two PIT professionals to testify at two different Congressional hearings on the same day marks significant progress. Not only do public interest technologists finally have seats at the table, but their work has already started to have a noticeable impact. Moore’s and McGuinness’s testimonies allow us to put our finger on the pulse of the state of public interest technology in Congress, in multiple ways.

Moore’s and McGuinness’s testimonies give us hope that Congress has already taken some measures—albeit preliminary ones—to introduce PIT principles into its work. Moore specifically praised Congress for steps taken to bring technologists into the pool of Congressional staff, such as establishing a Technology and National Security fellowship and piloting a Congressional Digital Service, the latter in the very same committee before which Moore testified. McGuinness discussed the SSA’s use of data to understand how different subgroups were impacted by the pandemic, which she characterizes as an important first step in using data to make measurable changes.

In addition, more frequent testimonies from PIT professionals point to increasing attention paid to public interest technology by Congress. Bipartisan groups of representatives and senators on key committees recognize the existence of problems in government service delivery, and demonstrate a drive to learn more about what needs to be done; PIT professionals are driving these policy changes forward.