CA Civic Tech Corps

[patwater]

@vr00n starting a thread to build on your elan vital around replicating the inspirational energies of the Civilian Conservation Corps in the digital domain. Here is a great video providing context on the Civilian Conservation Corps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPbBFHDbanA&feature=youtu.be

The basic insight is that there's vast categories of digital needs in government that don't require a Google caliber software engineer or really even someone that codes so much as energy, hard work and basic digital competency.

The idea with the CA Civic Tech Corps would be to place persons with those skills in each of California's governments with a mandate to A) do the digital gruntwork to move from obsolete, often paper processes to digitally native workflows and B) source the problems that better public technology can address

The hope is that it'd be energizing to have retired librarians, young professionals and people of all stripes working together on a common cause. That could enable ongoing dialogue with the larger civic tech and broader community to move this important work forward. @vr00n curious to your thoughts on more tactical organization and tasks of the Civic Tech Corps.

[christophertull]

How would this differ from old CfA fellowship model (apart from desired scale)? What can we learn from the success and failures of that model?

[patwater]

Well the CfA model was about placing people who can code in cities. The latest iteration of the fellowship model focused on empowering brigade members to embark on community projects. https://www.codeforamerica.org/fellowship

The key differentiators here are the scope which aspires to encompass ALL of California's governments rather than just a handful. It's also in line with the new Community Fellowship model which is less about coding and more about digital services more broadly.

[christophertull]

Honestly, if we had a cohort of a few hundred diverse people funded to turn bad paper or PDF forms into good web forms for 3–5 years, that would have more direct public impact than all the innovation efforts currently running. (If well coordinated, it would lead to a deep shared understanding of government business processes too.)

https://medium.com/@cydharrell/civic-tech-as-a-tween-4cd780b971bb

[vr00n]

@patwater thanks for this.

From my pov, the CCC remains one of the boldest and successful mass-scale social, industrial, and environmental experiments this country has undertaken. The CCC practically terraformed continental America in the its 9 short years of existence. It was the largest and quickest mobilization of civilians to civilian causes in US history.

3 million unemployed men were put to work in 6 month tours across 49 states each earning $30 a month ($520 equiv to today) with $25 (80%) going to their families to avoid wasting on alcohol. Their housing and food needs were taken care of during their tour.

Here's a basic list of tasks, the CC undertook:

• Structural improvements: bridges, fire lookout towers, service buildings.
• Transportation: truck trails, minor roads, foot trails and airport landing fields
• Erosion control: check dams, terracing, and vegetable covering
• Flood control: irrigation, drainage, dams, ditching, channel work
• Forest culture: planting trees and shrubs, timber stand improvement, seed collection, nursery work
• Forest protection: fire prevention, fire pre-suppression, firefighting, insect and disease control
• Miscellaneous: emergency work, surveys, mosquito control

The outcomes:

• A complete reforestation of America: 3 billion trees planted
• The construction of trails, lodges, and related facilities in more than 800 parks nationwide;
• Infrastructure for rural America - at the time 50% of the entire American population.

---

Similarly the tasks of the Public Tech Corps could include:

• Structural improvements: Data ingest, storage, and retrieval standards ( ETL for America)
• Making all Government Data machine readable. (PDF conversion, learning how to publish government data in digitally native formats)
• Performing digital surveys of roads, bridges, and waterways for all local governments
• Auditing government operations using low-cost digital tools:
  • Learning how to implement traffic & pedestrian flows using computer vision
  • Instrumenting public transportation with real-time data data collection systems.
• Securely handling data in public health systems to improve access to care.
• Supporting local news organizations by implementing media stack.
• Using open-source technology to develop websites, and simple mobile applications.
• Security track (to ensure common-sense security practices while developing and deploying technology in the public realm)
• Cloud track (the ability to deploy and maintain lean cloud IT infrastructure)

A member of the public tech corps will leave with a "full stack" understanding of how to responsibly implement digital infrastructure for the public benefit

The program will need to:

• Provide for food, accommodation, and benefits.
  • A year long mandatory engagement.
  • Pays the Corps member.
  • Be inclusive and diverse across race, minority status, and gender.
  • Guarantee a place in any of the 4,426 municipal entities across California and placements should be based on merit.
  • Automatic enrollment of existing government staff.

*via 2012 Census, there are ~90,000 local government entities across the USA (State, County, Municipal, Township, School District, and Special Purpose).

The outcomes of such an effort:

• A new credential for digital skills suited for technology in the public realm.
• Standardized Data infrastructure across all local government.
• Unprecedented transparency in government operations.
• Eliminate rent seeking from the vendor class.
• Unprecedented self-reliance and digital nativity on behalf of government agencies.
• Service delivery that is digitally native and secure.
• Immense opportunities to reduce costs from inefficiencies stemming from digital procurement and 20th century clerical processes.

[patwater]

@vr00n so IDEA what if rather than just new CA Civic Tech Corps the focus was on connecting existing civic fellowships to accelerate the implementation of public technology issues.

Remember public technology is not a "slice of the piece but rather the pan" and should be a prism that helps improve public service delivery in many different domains.

• CfA Community Fellows
• Teach for America Fellows
• Fuse Corps Fellows
• Civic Spark Fellows (Climate Action and Water)
• Americorps Fellows
• Coro Fellows
• Capitol Fellows
• Gen 2 Gen Fellows
• California Conservation Corps?
• Others Fellowships that should be added?

Note all those have public technology connections. Many of those fellows are placed in government agencies where they can engage on these technology issues in specific domains.

For example Civic Spark Fellows are place in local government agencies and were hugely helpful with our water data work.

All of these fellows can advocate internally for better public technology practices, identify areas that need improved digital services etc

Even a civil conservation corps fellow could implement digital tools to track their work or implement a citizen science open data project.

Regarding a standalone civic tech corps, I'd be curious to your thoughts @vr00n who should run a civic tech corps specific fellowship. Should it be a new NGO? A university? How would it be setup? Who would fund it?

Note the advantage of connecting existing fellowships is that its something that a Governors office could do simply with its convening power. Then it's just a matter of via a catalytic conference to start the year and regular digital syncs (forum, hangouts etc) to coordinate action.

[patwater]

So @vr00n continuing with the art of the possible what if...

There was a roundtable discussion with leadership from these organizations in early 2019 to discuss how public technology fits into their existing fellowships and build commitments for action.

There was a key component of the CfA Summit in May inviting fellows from all these organizations and the brigades to pow-wow and strategize on accelerating public technology top to bottom across CA.

Really cool thing with the fellowships listed above is you have people staffing legislators, state agencies, local governments, NGOs, etc -- a true cross section of public service delivery.

That could also build into a California Public Data Summit ([UPDATED] generalizing from our water data summit into a series throughout a week on water, transportation, housing, energy, social services etc).

The thing that's really exciting to me about that is it just could be done without a huge investment of state dollars or tricky policies to navigate.

I'd also stress that this approach to connect existing fellows is more in line with the needs of this progressive moment than building an entire new corps from scratch.

The needs to improve public service delivery today aren't as simple as 250,000 people building trails and other improvements. Lots of local nuance and domain expertise needed. Good to respect that.

[christophertull]

Maybe a California Public Data Summit to make it stand out from other more private-sector events that may exist?

[patwater]

Yeah good call C

[patwater]

The other KISS idea would be to just integrate this into the existing CfA summit :)

[patwater]

@vr00n so I'm thinking the best idea would be to invite these various fellows to the CfA summit and then have an unconference / camp over the weekend to strategize and develop CA-specific collaborations. I added to the 2019 CA civic tech planning timeline here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P5wMslgnvOqdTla46QQLO0CmdDAB3LL7ViOhObP8CR8/edit#heading=h.49c7bo8ptoaj

Note also planning a climate action data exchange at LACI that'd be a nice follow up

We should also discuss how to package and pitch this civic tech corps and also your opportunity fund idea for the roundtable discussion.

[patwater]

UPDATE. Sent invites to:

• Fuse Corps Fellows
• Civic Spark Fellows
• Capitol Fellows
• NxtGov community

@roughani @vr00n I am thinking a short and sweet letter on this CA civic tech corps could help move the ball forward... start below:

"Members of our open collaboration of California CfA brigades have already sent invitations to Fuse Corps Fellows, Civic Spark Fellows, Capitol Fellows, and the NxtGov community to come to the Code for America Summit in May. Leadership from California’s Governor’s Office could help catalyze greater connection by convening a civic technology corps across those existing fellowships."