31:T2334,transcript1Raw = `13:19 All right, we've got them back. [I am Thad Kerosky,] 13:26 -##_Introducing_Code_for_America_Brigades [I’m on the Core Team at the brigade called Code for Boston. I'm here with Ananda Bhatia from Representative Seth Moulton's office. We're here today because we've seen the possibility and alignment between the 80-some Brigades and the 435 Congressional offices, especially district offices. In the Code for America network,] 13:30 -... Thad Kerosky [CfBoston]: The, not top ten but, large brigades have about 13:34 80 or 90 people coming each week or month. 13:42 The projects that we work on at Code for Boston, are generally socially or civically oriented. 13:55 All are about addressing technology challenges through coming together as volunteers and so, 14:07 -###_Two_Stories_from_US_Governments_at_Brigades I want to share two stories today about how this kind of tech collaboration with our government 14:18 has been used throughout two of our experiences. 14:25 One in Dayton in Ohio, at Code for Dayton a couple years ago. 14:30 One at our brigade at Code for Boston. 14:33 Hopefully that will give you a quick sense of how we in Boston like to work on projects. 14:41 So uhm, Janet over, there, can you wave? 14:51 -####_Michael_DeWine_Opens_Tech_Doors_In_Dayton She has, has had, their brigade, reached out, at an event like this, 14:59 to then, Attorney General, Mike DeWine, and was able to open a door to criminal expungements 15:08 criminal record expungement project that they had been working on. 15:19 They struggled to find out whether there was a technical limitation or technical solution. 15:30 They were able to an event like this to reach the Attorney General to 15:32 really enable that project to move forward. 15:43 -####_Salem,_MA_District_Office_streamlines_Social_Security_cases_with_app Then we have our story out of Boston where we have been working together 15:50 with Congressman Seth Moulton’s office for the last 16 months or so, on the 15:57 Windfall Elimination Provision of Social Security, which some people in this room already know about, 16:02 but basically, creates frustration for state and local government workers when they find out on their 62nd 16:13 birthday that they've been misled and suddenly had benefits money reduced by up to half from what they’ve been told every birthday before. 16:21 -#####_Caseworkers_are_the_heros_here One of the caseworkers, and I think caseworkers are the heroes here, 16:27 These workers came to our brigade. 16:31 And for the first time, there was a major connection between a congressional office and a brigade. 16:41 With an inkling of an idea, they had heard of some of our projects, like Cliff Effects 16:49 which involved visualizing when people might fall off the "benefit cliff." 16:52 They wondered: "Well maybe we can work on this other sort of tricky experience for constituents 16:58 that they had spend thousands of hours talking to consitutients and turn that into something better than what they have. 17:06 It would save a lot of time for the caseworkers. 17:08 That was a start. 17:13 They came, very generously came, on their way home from the office in Salem, MA, they stopped in Cambridge in 17:24 Massachusetts and joined our brigade. 17:27 -#####_Caseworkers_learned_the_technology_as_they_went,_we_helped_them What that looked like was: they sat down, they were not a technologist. 17:33 They learned the technology as they went, and we helped them. 17:38 Every week we would sit down, in other cases it would be every month. 17:43 We talked through what the challenge of the day was. 17:47 Different volunteers came in and solved the parts they could help on. 17:55 It is a very organic process but it makes very clear progress. 18:02 -
**Go_over_to_[ssacalculator.org](https://ssacalculator.org)** And now if you go to ssacalculator.org, 18:05 - you can see what the 18:08 volunteers, coming from many well known startups and technology companies around the Boston area, 18:15 have put together, to serve this special constituent group 18:20 which amounts to millions of people. 18:22 And we have recently partnered with the MassRetirees group, a 60 year old organization 18:28 that has, that has, the website on the internet that everyone who googles this issue goes to. 18:34 So anyway, now the code that we’ve developed reaches all the people that need this solution. 18:45 -###_Encourage_this_across_the_country We just think that this kind of collaboration is what we want to encourage around the country 18:53 All your district offices, even the legislative counsel. 18:59 Can potentially partner with the Code for DC brigade here. 19:12 -####_Code_for_America_Brigades_are_Federated_Groups_of_Volunteers Basically we have federation of volunteer groups, to recap, 19:19 Coming together, every few weeks, and 19:24 have a wealth of experience with technology, 19:30 would be very excited to connect with you, to sit down with 19:37 you at your district offices and help you to understand technology constraints 19:45 that you are facing. 20:05 Another benefit that we have working with our team 20:14 is that, because we are coming from a broad range of backgrounds 20:19 we are fairly versatile and can speak to exactly what your needs are. 20:27 -####_on_Select_Committee_for_Modernization_of_Congress And particularly as a network we are very supportive 20:32 of the modernization committee, and Ananda is going to tell 20:39 you about that in a minute, and what her staff association 20:44 is putting together on that. But ah, We 20:47 are looking forward to rallying our network to support the modernization 20:51 efforts in whatever way we can. 20:53 I don’t know how many of you are connecting 20:57 with the modernization efforts [show of hands?]. 21:0 -![Junior_mints_candy_for_Massachusetts](https://www.dropbox.com/s/z3ua6hggmprzzu0/?raw=1) Thad Kerosky [CfBoston]: But ah, let’s hear more about that from Ananda. 21:05 -###_The_Representative_Perspective Ananda Bhatia [MA-Rep.Moulton]: Okay, so yes, how Thad mentioned, 21:08 I work for Congressman Seth Moulton. I am our LC. 21:12 Our office has already been working 21:15 together with Code for Boston 21:16 on this Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) program, which went really smoothly. 21:20 It was a great way for our district office to connect 21:22 with a local Code for America brigade, and create around 21:24 something that our constituents have really been struggling with. 21:26 -####_Introducing_the_Modernization_Staff_Association. Our Staff Association. the Modernization Staff Association, 21:29 Is a group that Jared and I lead, of Junior staffers, 21:33 it is totally bipartisan, and its goal is 21:37 to work on issues that don’t necessarily rise to the level of the Select Committee. 21:41 -####_What_is_Select_Committee? The Select Committee, if you don’t know, is doing amazing work around 21:44 again bipartisan issues, finding ways to bring Congress into 21:48 the 21st century. But there are some issues that junior staff 21:51 often deal with that never get looked at and just really don’t rise 21:55 -####_Some_Technology_Issues_are_felt_by_Staffers to the same level. These are issues 21:57 that staffers deal with all the time. They’re all issues 22:01 that could really be solved easily, in my opinion, through better use of technology. 22:05 A great example that I was talking to Thad about is 22:08 It is really difficult to reserve a room on Capitol Hill. 22:11 And it doesn’t need to be that difficult. 22:13 And I was telling him. 22:15 If we had a coder in charge, someone could come in and build really easily and make reservations a lot better. 22:21 -####_Today_We're_Connecting_Hill_Staffers_and_Brigades So that’s the kind of thing we’re hoping to do today. 22:23 Is to connect hill staffers who have knowledge 22:25 of what does and doesn’t work in congress and 22:27 what does and doesn’t work in their districts 22:29 And all these coders from across the country who have expertise 22:31 in these areas and technology: to see 22:33 what are ways we can modernize congress, what are ways 22:36 we can partner together and how we can bring connections into the future. 22:40 So if you are interested in learning more, feel free to find either of us afterwards. 22:46 -###_Three_Breakout_Discussions There will be a table here that I will be leading at, 22:52 - Ananda Bhatia [MA-Rep.Moulton]: and a table there that Thad will be leading at. We'll start the discussions. 23:04 - Ananda Bhatia [MA-Rep.Moulton]: Everyone who is online will also be having their discussion in the Zoom chat. (Shown next) 23:08 -![In_Person_Breakout_1](https://www.dropbox.com/s/o0athpexar08czq/?raw=1)_*Photograph_from_closing_moments_of_breakout* Thank you all so much! (Code for America Discussion with Seth Moulton's office next)`32:T43a1,transcript2DialogFirstHalf=`23:16 -##_Online_Discussion_Breakout:_First_Half Christopher Whitaker [CfA]: All right, so what we're gonna do is move into breakout groups, I'm actually gonna mute 23:23 Janet so we don't hear 23:26 some of the background noise 23:27 so at this point 23:29 we're going to 23:31 move into our breakout groups 23:34 So I'm going to put a 23:41 Some notes the note doc in the chat 23:49 In the chat 23:52 So we're going to do a couple of questions the first question that work at a cover is 24:02 What problems do you face in your everyday job 24:05 That could be solved through technology. This was a question that was mostly aimed at congressional staff 24:13 But if you're in a constituent service role or have ideas on how we can better 24:22 Tackle some of those challenges of everyday legislators. We'd love to hear about it 24:27 So at this point we can I'm going to unmute everybody 24:31 so I would be happy to 24:34 Have some people jump in 24:45 -... [Video shows view of the Rayburn Foyer and large Brigade Display with regional candy] 25:02 All right, does anybody have any thoughts on this first question or a better question is anybody here? 25:09 Congressional staff or works in a legislative office. I 25:16 -... Henning Schulzrinne [OR-S. Wyden]: I do 25:19 -... Christopher Whitaker [CfA]: Oh cool. Who do you work for? 25:25 -###_Introductions Henning Schulzrinne [OR-S. Wyden]: You talking to me? Yes, okay, so I don't know who's up. I work for Senator Ron Wyden 25:34 -... Chris [CfA]: Awesome 25:36 So if if you could could you tell us a little bit about your your day-to-day work? 25:41 To kind of give us a better understanding of what it's like to work in a legislative office 25:45 -####_Henning,_Technology_fellow_in_Senator_Wyden's_Office_from_Oregon Henning Schulzrinne [OR-S. Wyden]: Yes, so my role was somewhat unusual since I work as a 25:50 Technology Fellow. I have a portfolio that's related to technology and I'm not a long term staffer, so to say. 25:58 And sort of two major 26:02 issues that I see that where technology is, really 26:07 not helping is: just tracking projects that last more than a day or two. 26:13 So it's really hard to keep track of longer-term 26:16 activities. And people come up with all kinds of ad hoc solutions. 26:22 And the process for approving things "up the chain" as they say is 26:28 laborious. And it all seems to fall back to email chains, which means that the people who are in that position 26:34 Have to slogged through 26:36 hundreds of unrelated email threads and then miss things that are of a timely nature and so on so. 26:44 Much of a management of the project side is done by email and on occasional Spreadsheets and Google Docs 26:52 and so on but it's very unstructured 26:56 And doesn't always work very well 27:01 -... Christopher Whitaker [CfA]: Thank you for sharing does anybody here have any reaction to that right away 27:14 Ben are you trying to say something? 27:19 -####_Ben,_Staffer_In_Representative_Seth_Moulton's_Office_from_Massachusetts Ben Rutan [MA-Rep.Moulton]:Hold on just one second. I'm trying to find a spot in the room 27:22 -... Ben Rutan [MA-Rep.Moulton]: So I'm actually here live for a lot of the event I was on 27:24 -... Ben Rutan [MA-Rep.Moulton]: Helping do the a/v, but yeah, I'm I work with Ananda in Representative Moulton's office 27:30 -... Ben Rutan [MA-Rep.Moulton]: I would say Ananda kind of "hit the nail on the head" when it comes to the operationalization of the office. 27:38 Congressionals do a pretty good job in terms of policy. 27:40 I think, I mean, all the people who come to the hill or 27:42 obviously geared towards the policy side when it comes to the actual day-to-day. 27:46 That's where we really hit stumbling blocks, and [we] talked about scheduling 27:50 Simply scheduling rooms in Congress. I think he'd be very surprised how long it takes us just a schedule a room. 27:57 And you'd be surprised at [that]. We use a CRM, called 28:01 IQ. Which can kind of be a bit of fumbling around at times and 28:06 So I think when it comes to like the small day-to-day stuff 28:09 even people like simply walking into the office and asking to meet with various staffers and us like 28:15 manually looking at those business cards and input into a system and not really having an efficient way to do a 28:20 Day-to-day... those day-to-day tasks 28:21 I think that's where we really spend a lot of time. 28:25 But it's also a place where no one really wants to be spending their time. So it lacks the attention that I think it deserves. 28:32 -... Chris [CfA]: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense 28:35 Is there anybody here who wants to react to that before we kind of move on to the next question 28:47 -###_What_is_the_State_of_Project_Management_inside_the_State? Michel Deeb [CfDC]: Hi, this is a Mike speaking 28:50 now I'm just trying to get in this and been turning into civic tech and I work for I 28:53 Work like go to code for DC events. I'm just wondering if what other CRM or 29:00 project management style applications like your offices have tried to use like has anyone tried to use JIRA or any kind of like a 29:08 app-based Project management for software, but applying it in other capacities or what products have you used? Or tried to use. 29:18 -... Ben Rutan [MA-Rep.Moulton]: Yeah, sure I can speak that a little bit: I know we don't used JIRA. [unintelligible] 29:25 We do have things like COS. We looked like things like Envoy 29:27 which helped with just setting up meetings with folks are coming in and there's typically associated costs while those 29:34 the solutions. So I think there's an aversion to some of those paid solutions. 29:40 There are some that offer free, you know a free package, but they're pretty minimal 29:44 so 29:46 We don't use too many. We do a product management tool: the name of it escaping me right now. 29:51 It's just the dashboard where you can drag, you know, from no progress to in progress to complete. 29:58 I forget the name of it, but 29:59 -... Ben Rutan [MA-Rep.Moulton]: We do some small product management tools, but not in a large capacity 30:08 -... Henning Schulzrinne [OR-S. Wyden]: Yeah, and I maybe add to that that one of the 30:13 Difficulties is that you have a relatively high turnover in most offices 30:18 So and a relatively high number of people who are not 30:22 technologists or at least don't think of themselves as off technically pretty skilled, but they think of themselves as 30:28 liberal arts majors not engineering majors or computer science majors 30:34 And so some of these techniques like tools like JIRA. And Trello and others 30:40 Because they come out of a software environment. 30:44 -... Henning Schulzrinne [OR-S. Wyden]: Generally speaking, I don't see that they're all about suitable for my kind of in 30:51 non-technical office. 30:56 -... Christopher Whitaker [CfA]: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense does anybody else have any other comment on this question, otherwise we'll move on to the next one 31:08 Okay. 31:11 -###_Using_Apps_in_Congress:_Free_or_Paid? Michel Deeb [CfDC]: so actually, This is Mike again. I just have a question. You're referencing 31:14 free or like the cost of these product platforms? 31:18 Is that really that much of a factor when they would increase efficiency or 31:24 really increase the quality of the management of these offices? I didn't know 31:29 Such a factor in that capacity 31:32 -... Ben Rutan [MA-Rep.Moulton]: Yeah, I mean it's it's really dependent on the chief. 31:35 So it's it's a matter of convincing the chief whether that tool for that cost is worth it 31:41 It's it's so it's hard to generalize across 31:45 I think in Rep. Moulton's office we're pretty technologically forward 31:49 So we do use items like Trello and you know looking into expanding [Omble] and stuff like that 31:54 But it really is dependent on the chief 31:56 So if you encounter a chief who isn't 31:58 You know technologically forward then any cost I imagine is gonna be pretty you know 32:05 Make it office pretty averse to implementing that change. 32:13 -... Christopher Whitaker [CfA]: Yeah, I 32:15 feel y'all might be able to clarify something that most most of us wouldn't be aware of but 32:21 My understanding is that legislative but legislative offices don't actually have a lot of budget is 32:27 That can you shed some light on that part 32:33 -... Ben Rutan [MA-Rep.Moulton]: 32:34 I'm not aware the actual budget figures maybe the the gentleman who was working the senator's office could shed some more light there 32:40 But I think you are right. We are a pretty budget conscientious 32:44 Especially you start talking about you know, the small line items that might sound small, you know 32:49 100 bucks a month here and there, but that 32:51 does stack up. And when you're playing around with a pretty small budget you have to be pretty 32:56 strict with it. But I don't know if the gentleman in the Senate office could shed some more light there. 33:00 -... Henning Schulzrinne [OR-S. Wyden]: I don't have any budget insight but one of the difficulties I think is that many of these tools are 33:08 tools are budgeted on a per seat basis and there's often a fairly large staff that needs it intermittently. 33:14 As in: everybody needs to be on but if you have, like 33:19 a typical Senate office has on the order of 25 and then committee staff, and probably additional people 33:25 So you're talking easily a hundred people that uh might be for somebody a more senior senator 33:31 and so if those have when a per-seat cost of $10 a month. 33:37 Then you're suddenly talking bigger amounts of money and and the other 33:42 The other concern I think is for those type of ones is that unless 33:47 The more senior management is familiar with those tools 33:51 then a risk of introduction and getting everybody into a new process 33:58 is relatively high. Unless as, Ben Rutan [MA-Rep.Moulton] mentioned, is unless the 34:06 Chief of staff is himself or herself 34:09 very much into technology. 34:11 -###_Getting_Tool_Adoption:_For_Tech,_Legislatives_are_like_middle—tier_companies_not_tech_companies There isn't really a mechanism, since most offices don't have a 34:15 CIO or anything close to that 34:18 to introduce to test new tools, to see if they work on a small scale, and not 34:24 again, most of those tools are only useful if everybody uses them consistently. They're not useful if they are one person or 34:32 subset tools. Simply because a lot of it involves 34:36 kind of flexible teams that get together on short-term projects and then move on to something else. 34:43 They're always involving senior leadership that needs to be involved approval and access and so on. 34:49 -... Henning Schulzrinne [OR-S. Wyden]: And so I think that makes it much harder than it would be in a more traditional kind of tech office where you have 34:57 the leadership itself often 34:59 has a technology background or they have designated staff 35:03 like even a sysadmin, formal sysadmin, 35:06 who can 35:08 kind of customize the tool and 35:11 maintain it over long durations: all of that doesn't typically exist, you know, not even in a Senate office. 35:19 -... Ben Rutan [MA-Rep.Moulton]: Yeah, the other thing I would add is so I can use a case example 35:23 We were looking into the possibility of using KnowledgeBase or Confluence to do knowledge management across offices. 35:30 But we hit two, two main stumbling blocks. The first was security. 35:35 We don't really know. I mean, we don't really know who to go to to say: is this tool okay to use across offices? 35:42 The second issue we hit was: well if we're gonna pay for confluence 35:46 but every office is using it, we need every office to pay for it. 35:49 But coordinating 435 offices to all pay for the same product 35:54 that just is not going to happen in Congress. 35:57 So you actually have more of a centralized authority that's gonna put that forward and pay for it. 36:02 Because getting 435 offices to separately coordinate on paying for knowledge management management system is 36:08 It's just simply not gonna work. 36:10 So that's the other stumbling block. Both the security angle and the payment angle of some of those more common solutions. 36:18 -###_Explaining_How_Congress_Works_Today Christopher Whitaker [CfA]: Yeah, so continuing on kind of that same track for the the rest of the audience 36:26 -... What do you not understand about Congress? 36:30 Like: in terms of how it works or hard functions things like that? 36:44 - So to kind of start us off: you both mentioned 435 congressional offices. 36:51 So in our heads, we all grew up with the School House Rock 36:57 Jingle, that you know, the bill, He gets started here in Senate, 37:01 It goes to the other side, and then it gets signed by the president. 37:03 But in the real world, it doesn't always work like the the schoolhouse rock song does. 37:11 -... Can you talk a little bit about how, sort of, the sausage is made and how things actually roll out of Congress? 37:20 -... Henning Schulzrinne [OR-S. Wyden]: I don't want to dominate the meeting, but I'll happy to speak from the Senate side 37:25 I'm a little bit for my, I'm relatively new, so to say, 37:30 but I think I've seen a fair amount of it. What I've been surprised by how relatively little 37:38 time is spent on bill-drafting even at the staff level. I mean at percentage-wise 37:45 And how and on the other side, how much is inter-office. So first I'll give you an example. 37:53 -####_4_Big_Everyday_Practices_in_the_Senate One of the most common activities for I think every office is to 37:58 sign on to, or author, or co-author 38:01 letters to external entities: federal agencies, companies, 38:07 individuals, in some way of cases, but typically, mostly federal agencies, and I'd say companies as a second entity. 38:13 -... So that's typically multiple offices often House and Senate officers. 38:19 Internal drafting by staff and then approval by 38:23 senior staff and then is a rigmarole where an intern gets send around to get actual signatures of 38:31 the member or designate, for that. 38:34 So that is a lot of people pushing, literally, 38:38 that that goes on! 38:43 -... Then if you look at a bill writing, like somebody else mentioned, 38:45 a lot of it is actually talking to various interest groups or individuals about a topic, 38:52 alright, and that can drag on for months and sometimes longer. So that's another big activity. 38:57 -####_Constituent_Services_and_Media_Outreach And there's obviously the whole constituent service one, which other people have mentioned. That probably take a 39:06 significant, if not the largest fraction, writing letters to 39:10 constituents who wrote in or emailed in or 39:13 spoke 39:14 to the office or whatever. So just simply correspondence management. And I should say most offices 39:20 use... And then there's obviously the whole media relations aspect 39:23 so usually offices have a fairly large fraction of their staff dedicated to dealing with media: both generative and 39:32 responsive, if you like. 39:34 -... Henning Schulzrinne [OR-S. Wyden]: Those, I would say, were probably the four biggest activities, 39:37 besides kind of more member management itself, 39:41 dealing with floor appearances, speech writing, and some of the other things have go on. So bill writing: I 39:46 don't have a good estimate, but I would estimate that most I probably spend less than 10% of a day 39:52 on 39:54 that type of activity, 39:56 averaged out. 39:57 -####_Committees_and_Activities_of_the_House_Side Ben Rutan [MA-Rep.Moulton]: Yeah, the I mean that's true on the house side too, but I would also add that what most people don't realize 40:04 Is that a lot of that 40:06 nitty-gritty takes place in committee. So you have the actual offices themselves, which most people understand. 40:12 -... You know, you have your rep: you can kind of put a face the office. 40:15 But the things less easy to put a face to, is the actual committee. 40:18 -... So if I'm looking to do the transportation bill. 40:21 Then, I'm actually talking to the transportation subcommittees that are relevant to that bill and there's professional staff who are just on a committee. 40:27 They're not tied to an office. They're just tied to the committee. 40:29 -... And those are real experts who are gonna be able to really bear down on that policy help with the drafting. 40:36 -####_Role_of_Advocacy_in_Bill_Drafting You're right. We are reaching out to various 40:40 advocacy groups who 40:42 once we reach out to them, find people who are passionate about that bill. They actually look for co-sponsors for us. 40:47 -####_A_Bill_is_Interoffice_Coordination Ben Rutan [MA-Rep.Moulton]: So while these bills aren't just being advanced by one office, they need to be advanced by number of offices 40:52 so we need to get 40:53 co-sponsors on those bills and you often go through advocacy groups and say "Hey, we have this bill." 40:57 -
"Would you mind reaching out to X number of Congress people to see if they'd also be interested in it?" 41:02 And that's where you see a lot of of their outreach 41:06 gaining traction.`33:T51ad,transcript3DialogSecondHalf=`41:07 -

_What_Can_the_Network_Do_For_Congress?

_![Brigade_Map_from_Event_Hex_Stickers](https://www.dropbox.com/s/we9jcp35yx0dtda/?raw=1) Christopher Whitaker [CfA]: I'm gonna go off script just a little bit here. Obviously our group 41:13 is interested in good government. We're interested in 41:17 the advancement of the 41:20 government's use of technology in a way that works for constituents. 41:27 -... And while the sort of the conventional wisdom is "call your Congressperson", a lot of our Congressional 41:34 Representatives don't sit on those those technology committees. 41:38 -###_What_is_our_best_way_in? For a national group like ours which is full of technologists who have 41:44 been at the intersection 41:47 of government and technology for quite some time, 41:51 what would be the best way for this network to 41:54 help participate in that process and really help make an impact and assist modernization efforts 42:03 with regards to Congress? 42:14 -... Ben Rutan [MA-Rep.Moulton]: Yeah, I'm happy to jump in. Also 42:16 I'm interested to hear what the Senate side is. But I would say obviously there's the normal answers: going through your own representative. 42:24 - And you can, but I mean there's a couple different routes you can go to. 42:28 You can, I mean: if you call an office and say within an organization you're interested in legislation 42:35 and you know that office is heavily concerned with you know 42:38 that particular area, such as in this case technology. 42:43 -... If you call and say "Hey, do you have the email for the 42:45 tech staffer?", that's all we really have to say. Most offices are gonna give out that that information pretty readily. 42:50 -###_What_the_Home_Run_Looks_Like:_The_Email Ben Rutan [MA-Rep.Moulton]: So find an office that you think cares about that issue, you know, if it's in your district, great!, 42:55 that's a home run. 42:59 -... If you can't that's okay, too, but just ask the tech staffer in their email and send them, you know, a quick email saying: 43:02 -... First thing: the the organization you're with, and if you can find out if that organization 43:07 also has ties that district, that's also a plus so say "I'm with this organization." 43:11 "We have ties to district through XYZ. I'm interested in exploring..." 43:17 you know, "this kind of legislation. Would you be open to a phone call or a meeting or something like that?" 43:22 -... You might find some headway. 43:23 So I would definitely say the route is to try to find that tech staffers email and kind of go through that. 43:32 -###_Staff_are_accessible_but_do_homework_to_pass_their_"BS_detectors" Henning Schulzrinne [OR-S. Wyden]: Yep, I mean that's 43:34 I was surprised how accessible our staff is in general, I mean for outsiders. 43:41 -... But it helps to be prepared if time allows: if you go in with just some 43:46 pitch to solve some random big problem and without 43:50 saying, 43:51 without some awareness as to what has been done and why it hasn't been solved so far. 43:56 Then, it [unfortunately] leads to the 43:59 tech staffer leaving the meeting 44:02 eye rolling with their fellow tech staffers or other staffers who happen to be there. 44:08 -... So you'll get 44:09 probably half an hour, face time or these days, Zoom time or phone time. 44:16 -... So you have to be really prepared to 44:20 to use that time well: by being prepared, by having materials, by being aware of what the member has 44:27 done, what his or other interests might be outside the tech area. 44:31 -###_Find_a_Way_To_Relate_in_a_Realistic_Way So for example, if the particular member is interested in health care or education and has a non technology issue. 44:38 Find a way to relate that technology topic to those in some realistic way. 44:44 The other thing I'll say in terms of tech staff, but most tend to be, or tech staff in general 44:52 Even though it might be relatively young they tend to be, I 44:57 say seasoned in the sense that they have pretty good BS detectors. 45:01 -... So 45:03 don't expect to snow them with stuff that you think you can just kind of pull a fast one! 45:08 They will check you on that and they won't come back to you if they feel like you haven't told them... 45:16 If you've given them a completely one-sided spin of the issue or 45:21 withheld information that they should have known or not. There's nobody likes to be embarrassed in front of a boss. 45:27 -... Henning Schulzrinne [OR-S. Wyden]: And so 45:29 particularly, if you were represent a not-for-profit, as opposed to in a company where that's a little bit more expected 45:35 honesty helps. And preparedness helps double. 45:42 -... Christopher Whitaker [CfA]: That is fantastic advice, thank you both. 45:46 -###_What_would_you_do_with_many_tech_volunteers? So, now we're gonna switch gears and kind of turn it around. Let's say you had an army of a hundred two hundred 45:54 tech-savvy volunteers 45:56 that were available in your congressional district. 46:00 What are some of your thoughts on? 46:02 How you would use them to aid in either the mission of your individual office, or Congress in general? 46:15 -... Ben Rutan [MA-Rep.Moulton]: I think the, we, I think 46:21 the DC offices benefit pretty well from a pretty strong staff. 46:27 -####_Send_them_to_our_District_Offices_and_Streamline_the_Constituent_Work! Most DC offices are pretty staffed out. I don't think that it's true widely across district offices. 46:34 Especially because those offices are dealing with the casework. So okay: I have an issue in my Social Security benefits 46:39 I'm actually called the district office not call the DC office 46:42 all those 46:44 Routed through the district office and those caseworkers are working real hard with a bunch of folks 46:51 And it's hard to keep track of it's hard to keep track of in an organized way 46:55 -... You can try to keep track of metrics like your [Net Promoter Score] NPS and then how you're doing as an office, but it's tough. 47:02 I think, in the in that vein, district offices are under-served, especially because they're the ones helping out 47:07 individuals with pretty complex problems. So I mean personally speaking, if we had a bunch of tech-savvy people 47:13 -... I'd put them with the DO and say "how can we enable your casework team to just do more of what it's doing?" 47:18 "How can we organize you to facilitate,..." 47:21 "you just, reaching out to these constituents and helping out with their Social Security?" 47:25 "Is there any task you do over, and over, and over again, in service of these constituents?" 47:30 -... Ben Rutan [MA-Rep.Moulton]: When it comes to, you know, Social Security disability benefits, 47:32 or what-have-you to make sure they can just do more of what they're doing 47:38 -####_You_Must_Cope_with_Turnover. Henning Schulzrinne [OR-S. Wyden]: I'll just add to that. 47:40 Like I said earlier is there's a fair amount of turnover [both in congressional offices and with volunteers]. 47:43 -... And there's also a concern that if you start a system that is 47:50 useful, beyond just a single type of short term use of some special event or something, then 47:56 sustainability matters. 47:57 -... I mean: can you actually 48:00 sustain that? Is it like a one-off thing that when that volunteer or a group of volunteers loses interest 48:07 the office is stuck and 48:10 has to start some new system and go back to spreadsheets or something? 48:15 So thinking about sustainability of any technology development efforts is crucial. 48:20 -#####_They're_Right_to_be_Wary I think simply: A) because no smart office will just take something and then worry about 48:26 half a year from now that person moves on to other things and what are we going to do then? 48:32 After they've committed a fair amount of time 48:35 training people and moving data into the system and all of that. So one with things that I would, 48:42 this is just a very rough random thought, is 48:46 combining things where you take existing tools that are likely to be A) affordable and B) long term sustainable and 48:55 customizing those for, like a district office or some specific tasks. 49:03 -#####_Minimize_Code_Writing That might be more effective than just doing, I mean, scratching your open-source itch and developing something from scratch which then 49:08 because it is specialized can't be sustained long term. So I'll just give an example of a tool that seems fairly common. 49:14 -... I don't know if it's on the House side, called InterTrack. 49:18 It's a commercial tool that offices certainly mine, pay for 49:22 that's used for correspondent management and meeting management and a bunch of, kind of, management's tasks. 49:29 It's apparently, as far as I know, not cheap. 49:32 But there is some perception that this company will be around for a while. 49:37 There's actually a staff person for that company, that shows up in person, trains new staff or 49:43 answers questions, may literally show up in person for each office, and so on. 49:49 -#####_Use_Common_Tools Henning Schulzrinne [OR-S. Wyden]: And replicating that for tech volunteers is going to be hard. So thinking about 49:55 how can you do templates? How can you do 49:58 customized tools so that they're not so overwhelming 50:03 because the general purpose tools? And can be seen as sustainable. And can be handed off to somebody else, a year from now 50:10 is probably a more productive than doing writing custom code and then 50:17 leaving an office high and dry when some minor change occurs. 50:23 -####_Clarification:_Net_Promoter_Score Christopher Whitaker [CfA]: That makes a lot of sense if I can just get a clarification: what is NPS? 50:29 -... Ben Rutan [MA-Rep.Moulton]: Yes, sorry, yeah, I meant Net Promoter Score so that's like a small example of a metric and office might track. 50:36 Everything the survey is how how much do you enjoy this product on a scale of one to ten? 50:41 That company what they were doing was they're tracking their Net Promoter Score or how much you enjoyed that product 50:46 -... It's, it's graded on a scale of negative 100 to 100 50:50 There's kind of some weird metrics about how it works within those numbers 50:54 but basically, you know, if you have a 60 or 70 NPS: you're doing pretty great. 50:58 -... I can tell you the health care industry average is like at 10's because people hate their health care, but 51:03 yeah, it's something used by various 51:07 industries just a track how much people enjoy the products. 51:11 -... For our district office, for example 51:12 we track were we helpful in that scenario, by tracking NPS. We send in whenever we close out some casework we say 51:19 on a scale one to ten 51:20 -... Ben Rutan [MA-Rep.Moulton]: How would you rate us anything we can do better? 51:23 People provide that number right there, which gives a better sense and pulse check on on how our caseworker is able to operate. 51:31 -... Christopher Whitaker [CfA]: That makes sense 51:32 um, so I want to pause here to see if anybody else in the on the zoom has any questions or comments or just 51:40 Reflections they'd like to throw out 51:47 -###_What's_the_deal_with_Congress's_CTO? Michel Deeb [CfDC]: Yeah, this is Mike again, it just seems like there would be a group that seems like there's a great need for someone to centralize 51:56 technologists or make some kind of like centralized office managing technology for the 52:01 individual offices did that ever exists or has it ever been talked about? 52:06 Like in terms of upcoming bills or anything like that. 52:15 -... Henning Schulzrinne [OR-S. Wyden]: I mean both the House and Senate have separate IT organization 52:19 but but their IT support organizations that make sure that PCs are 52:25 updated or the newest version of Windows and so on. So they provide 52:30 some sort of support for staff. 52:33 -... But they, I might at least speak on the Senate side, 52:36 I don't think they have enough resources to actually be more forward-looking. So 52:42 when they do offer 52:45 Software evaluation 52:47 Licenses, for example. There's a small a lovely small set of content management systems. It seemed to be at least used on the Senate side 52:54 that 52:55 somehow 52:56 approved by the Senate IT operation or CIO is a CEO and I mean on 53:02 The Senate side certainly. And I believe it's true in the house side as well 53:07 -####_It's_Been_IT_Maintenance,_not_Strategic_Tech But my sense is that these are like IT organizations 53:13 almost everywhere, except in the most forward-looking organizations. 53:18 Those are 53:19 maintenance organizations and 53:22 infrastructure organizations. 53:27 They deal with cabling, and routers, and MS Word licenses, and that type of stuff. Not necessarily, providing, would be 53:35 exploratory in the sense that they don't have a 53:39 CTO that has time and staff to 53:43 write code, or to customize stuff or to 53:47 do tryouts of new things and see if they would actually be helpful. And all of that type of more 53:54 longer-term strategic stuff as opposed to a more tactical stuff 53:59 [pause] 54:06 -... Ben Rutan [MA-Rep.Moulton]: When it comes to a lot of the technology there is a lot of contracting out. 54:10 So offices we all obviously, we all web sites, but I 54:15 forget the exact number of hours. But basically each office is allocated a set number of hours per month 54:21 that they can use a contracted out service to update their website. So, you know, it's a big bug on your website 54:26 you add to a list and then you get your three hours per month that you 54:30 can bill to this outside outside 54:34 firm to fix your website. 54:38 -... So most of this is going to be contracted out to some extent. 54:42 Is there an internal office that actually looks forward on tech, in terms of like product management tools? No, 54:49 it doesn't really exist. 54:52 As 54:54 You know as you saying that most of it is maintenance, for existing 55:00 hardware infrastructure. But there's no real advancement of the software infrastructure going on. 55:07 -... Ben Rutan [MA-Rep.Moulton]: And the little that is, is only because an individual office might want to use their contracted 55:14 hours to fix or update some on the website. 55:33 -... Are there any more 55:35 questions or reflections that people want to give before we close up? 55:39 -###_How_do_offices_look_at_help_from_CfA—like_groups_vs_contracted_companies? Mohith Rao [CfStLouis]: Yeah 55:43 -... Mohith Rao [CfStLouis]: Hi I'm Mohith from St Louis, 55:48 -... You guys say that you contract out. One of the things as a Brigade Leader that I was looking into 55:55 for [] 55:58 -... Our brigade is I mean, what do you, like, 56:02 I guess, your offices or or any type of government office, look at that 56:09 these type of organizations 56:12 working on politics 56:15 And helping out 56:18 You know, compared to that was contracted out companies 56:30 Sorry, so we'll just be the question I'll do is pretty bad so I could hear it 56:34 yeah, so I mean I 56:37 How do, like government offices look at non-profit or for-profit organizations 56:44 That that kind of like want to help out 56:48 With any technical tasks compared to like larger contracted out [] 57:04 -... Christopher Whitaker [CfA]: Mohith, could you 57:06 type the type your question in the chat. We're having a little trouble hearing you. Okay? 57:14 -... Henning Schulzrinne [OR-S. Wyden]: Yeah, so I'll I'll try to as much as I could I 57:19 followed acoustically say two things and we've one is: 57:23 -... Like I said staff time is scarce. So 57:27 people eager to help: I always welcome them. 57:30 But there has to be a relatively, well 57:34 as far as I can tell at least here: 57:36 nobody has time to coach a, even an eager and willing group of volunteers for 57:43 hours, simply because it 57:45 might be long term good payoff 57:48 just not 57:49 just time resources available. And then second why there's concerns and those might be both legal and 57:56 ethical there Senator and House ethics rules are that you have to worry about that if 58:01 you get something which is seen as a gift. 58:05 And issues of 58:07 Senate and House Ethics get involved. So you have to be somewhat careful on on just simply making sure that you don't entangle yourself 58:16 by way of those rules, because those are quite strict. 58:21 No office wants to get into trouble 58:25 particularly for something relatively mundane. 58:29 -... Christopher Whitaker [CfA]: And I could just repeat the question 58:32 Mohith's question was how did government offices look at groups wanting to help out compared to larger contracted out companies? 58:42 Ben Rutan [MA-Rep.Moulton]: Yeah again, I would also say it's like much in the same way that we were talking earlier about how its kind of up to the individual chief. 58:47 This decision's going to be left up to the Digital Director of each office 58:53 Also double down on the ethics concern 58:57 you'd be surprised how many individual ethics rules are out there that are 59:01 Constantly circulating a special around the the mind of the digital director 59:04 -####_Form_a_Relationship_with_the_Digital_Director Ben Rutan [MA-Rep.Moulton]: And the chief, so I would say that your best bet is to: reach out to the digital director at each office and just ask, 59:12 "How you can help?" 59:15 -... Again say the organization you are with. 59:17 -... Say that you're interested in looking into how you can help with various solutions 59:22 and it's gonna be largely up to their discretion and and I'm just not sure if there are ethics rules for 59:28 for engaging with groups outside of the designated list that is approved for contracting. That's 59:34 a question, I just dunno the answer to. 59:38 -... Henning Schulzrinne [OR-S. Wyden]: Yep. And I mean again, it probably helps also in that case 59:41 just people coming in and saying "oh I 59:44 I'm kind of the opposite and not "I'm from the gov't, I'm here to help". I'm from a volunteer group, and I'm here to help 59:51 It would be helpful to have like was done during the initial presentation. However hard it was to follow acoustically 59:59 Having some examples of what has been done before 60:04 Is often a good way to say hey, we've done this for this other office or we've done it for a state office 60:10 for example, a state 60:12 legislature, or we've done it for a large City Council or 60:17 something like that. 60:20 And "Would that be something that would be applicable to your problem set?" is much better than just a generic 60:26 "How can we help you?" because my 60:29 digital director won't know what the capabilities are 60:33 of the organization, they won't know whether there are kind of entanglements involved or not, 60:41 that might be problematic. 60:44 They won't know if they have to worry about, besides 60:46 ethics, about privacy concerns: that data leaves the building, so to say. And why is it that they may be they may not be able to control, and which 60:53 could get them into of a non ethics trouble if you like. 60:59 -... Henning Schulzrinne [OR-S. Wyden]: But more specific ideas you have that are based on 61:04 existing 61:05 kind of 61:07 solutions or successes as a starting point is 61:12 Probably more helpful than in a generic "I can code and I'm here to help you" type of entry. 61:23 -####_Follow_on_Code_for_Boston's_Success Ben Rutan [MA-Rep.Moulton]: I am going to make definite reference to the brigade work in our district. What made that initiative so powerful is 61:28 they worked with the district office to determine a need of that constituency. 61:33 -... And they built an app that was put forward by Moulton's teams. So know the district. 61:39 -... Try to find a problem that's pressings and salient to that district specifically. And go through both the digital director and perhaps the district office 61:48 to try to see if you could build you know, a small app. That can go a long way for some of these districts 61:56 -##_Closing Christopher Whitaker [CfA]: Great 61:58 So that's all the time and that we have for 62:03 today. 62:04 -... I want to thank everybody for coming especially since we sort of threw everything in a loop by having a virtual event rather than 62:12 everybody meeting at the DC Summit 62:15 -... If you are DC based, I encourage you to check out Code for DC, which is our local brigade 62:22 otherwise we have 62:24 -Go_to_[brigade.CodeforAmerica.org](https://brigade.CodeforAmerica.org)_now Over 80 brigades all across the country and you can get more information about those at https://brigade.CodeforAmerica.org 62:32 Thank you so much everybody and have a happy us the week 62:38 Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you everybody. 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