A Note on Terminology

We conducted this research as recipients of the inaugural New America Public Interest Technology fellowship. Public interest technology is a field funders and foundations are trying to build.¹ The inspiration for the name “public interest technology” comes from public interest law. By investing in “public interest law” in the 1970s, civic-minded people who attended law school built careers, using law degrees, to serve the public good. Forty years later, many are interested in a parallel playbook for people with technology expertise in and around government, nonprofit, NGO, university, public sector, and social services spaces.

The phrase “public interest technology” is fairly new, and most often applied in the context of career paths and creation of a specific field. Needs and opportunities to do this work and explore this field were captured in the 2015 A Pivotal Moment report,² which focuses on how to improve the quality and number of technologists working in civil society organizations and government at every level.

Public interest technology overlaps with “civic tech” or “civic technology”––related phrases used by practitioners and the media over the last decade––particularly in reference to people working in or around government with a focus on incorporating technology, technology practices, and “technologists.” In the 2010s, the government-adjacent organization Code for America and new federal organizations like 18F, the Presidential Innovation Fellowship, and the United States Digital Service (USDS) became champions and faces of Silicon Valley technical talent doing “tours of duty” in government to improve how it delivered services.

Today, however, both “public interest technology” and “civic technology” stand at odds with the first theme we discuss in this report, something we heard in virtually every interview: It’s not about technology. Or, rather, not only about technology. Or always about technology. And thus, neither are the people doing the work.

“For me, ‘technology in the public interest’ brings up associations of like open data, hackathons, and easy and useful greenfield projects,” said one designer. “‘Civic tech’ brings up a lot of similar associations. I occasionally use it as a hashtag on my tweets. But the real thing underneath it is organizational and procurement change inside government. That's not sexy. That's not easily consumable by the public. So, I say ‘government digital transformation’ is the space I'm in.”

The complexity of innovating in government is mirrored in the complexity of how people self-identify. Over our many interviews, one of our favorite questions became, “What do you tell people at a party you do?” We got an array of answers. Community technologist. Civil servant. Designer. Entrepreneur. Digital expert. Hustler. Community advocate. Data-lover. Policy nerd. Problem solver. User of technology but not a technologist. Plus dozens of others, including but not limited to project manager, librarian, fixer of things, web manager, hacker, engineer, developer, social worker, community outreach coordinator, comms person, university researcher, chief innovation officer, policy expert, and founder.

"The real thing underneath it is organizational and procurement change inside government. That's not sexy. So, I say ‘government digital transformation’ is the space I'm in."

Rather than what people called themselves, we saw common language around what people said they do: solve problems. Not how-to-fix-the-printer problems. Policy, process, and people problems. They actively avoid using the term technologist because it can separate them or their work—with the danger of being framed as loftier or more specialized—than other civil servants. This has lead to shifts even from those who once identified with earlier phrases. Code for America, which is routinely summarized as “a civic tech” group itself has moved away from the phrase “civic tech.” Instead, Code for America now describes its focus as: “making government services work for the people who need them most.”³

Expanding the language used welcomes more diverse people, with broader skill sets, to sit at the table, get invited to the table, and see themselves as belonging to the table of problem-solving how we do modern problem solving in the public interest. Doing this research helped us see where there is terminology that sits at odds with how people doing the work currently identify the work, see themselves, or see space for themselves.

As in government itself, user adoption of words and identities takes time and iteration and end-user feedback. It’s an ongoing process. Therefore, throughout this report we chose to use the language adopted by those we interviewed, with a focus on problem solving, innovation, and service delivery. While recognizing five years down the line, this, too, may no longer be the words of choice by those doing the work.