Introduction

“I think people need to be more afraid of the status quo than they are of change. Maybe I am incredibly idealistic, but I think part of American values is being risk-tolerant, and being willing to do things differently. That's how this country was founded, it’s what it's supposed to be all about. There's a big difference between giving lip service to encouraging people to be individuals while at the same time forcing them to conform, and getting people to truly live up to their potential.”

Mayor Ethan Berkowitz, Municipality of Anchorage

Odds are the last time you had to interact with the government, it didn’t go well. It doesn’t matter if you were applying for permits to renovate your house, renewing your driver’s license, trying to track down your tax return, or applying to become a citizen. Too often, people’s experience with government is abysmal. Even worse: We expect it will be annoying. We expect we will get trapped in endless loops. There may be yelling.

The two of us have experienced this from the outside, as constituents, and from the inside, working in government as innovators and problem solvers. Between underwhelming service delivery and screaming headlines after a crisis, it’s hard to miss that lack of internal expertise and a lack of funds have led to spectacular failures. We go through our days ordering pizza and buying toasters with three clicks, but when trying to do some of the most vital and important things in life—securing early intervention for a child, getting married, requesting assistance to feed families—we enter a time warp where the internet and customer service often don’t exist. Some of the most basic ways citizens expect to receive services in the digital era don’t apply to government.

When trying to do some of the most vital and important things in life, we enter a time warp where the internet and customer service often don’t exist.

Government failures aren’t just annoying, they’re dangerous. When government websites fail, people can’t sign up for healthcare or pay their taxes.¹ When government fails to protect SNAP recipients from being cut off from their benefits info, families can’t plan their next meal.² When government fails to ensure the water is clean,³ communities get sick and children die.⁴ This disparity erodes trust in government.⁵ Government has no choice but to catch up.

In 2017 and 2018, we interviewed problem-solvers working across federal, state, and local government in the United States on improving the state of government services. This movement is small compared to the number of government agencies running business as usual, but it is growing. Innovation teams, digital service teams, technologists, researchers, policymakers, lawyers, funders, and service designers are rethinking how government functions, reshaping how people solve problems, and helping to restore citizens’ faith in governing bodies.

We had both worked on these types of teams at the city and federal level, and wanted a holistic view of the work, its successes, and its challenges. We knew there were efforts across the country focused on making government work, but less work connecting the field. We had a hunch that these teams knew a lot. They had tested out strategies, saw what worked and what didn’t. We wanted to understand what all of that knowledge added up to when taken together.

Our original plan was simple: interview people “in the field” doing the work of making government work. Or work better. (We were flexible.) Ideally, find great success stories. Aggregate and distill them into lessons learned. Maybe make a playbook. Maybe make a report like this. Definitely write some pieces for national publications, because this kind of work inspires and expands through storytelling.

We focused on people improving government services through technology and citizen-centered thinking. We interviewed people from major cities to smaller locales; chief innovation officers and city managers to service designers, product managers, and engineers.

But after we started to do interviews and synthesis, we realized we had been asking the wrong questions. We wanted tactics on how to get the work done from people who had everything figured out. As it turns out, no one has it all figured out. As a community, we are still trying to answer the most basic questions. What do we call ourselves? This work? Is this a field? What do we really mean by innovation? With so much work to be done, where do we start? What’s the best way to hire people? What’s the best way to keep them once they’ve been hired? How do we affect culture change? How do we get the work done? How do we know when we’ve succeeded? How do we know when it’s time to quit?

What we have compiled in this report is neither a playbook nor a document with all the answers. Instead, this report reflects many of the things people often wonder about at work, whisper in corners at conferences, save in browser tabs, or jot in the margins at meetings to think over later: Where are we seeing solutions? Where are we seeing pain points? Who else is doing this? How are they approaching it? How do I find them?

Ultimately our intention in putting this report out is to shine a light on different methods people are trying, share common struggles, or and create a gut check for the may people wondering, “Am I the only one feeling/seeing/thinking this way?” Take it from us: You are not alone. You are part of a wonderful, frustrating, thrilling, hair-pulling moment in time. Whether it seems like it or not, you are doing good work, and you are part of a national cadre of people who are right there with you, whether you know them or not.

One of the most important themes, which weaves into every piece of this report’s findings, is that people in government care. They want to make a difference, but often aren’t sure how. When given the chance to learn more, and to do better, they jump at it. We’re sharing this to lift up what many such people have learned about how to make change. We hope it inspires more people, cities, and government workers to follow suit.