To attract tech talent, cities need a better story

By: David Doyle, the author of Ask What You Can Do — Why local government needs more technologists and how you too can serve.  

Doyle  served as the open data manager at the City of Seattle from 2016-2018. Before joining local government, he worked at Microsoft. He is now a program manager of strategic initiatives at Facebook.

Many technologists volunteer their time to help improve local government. Major philanthropic efforts, such as Bloomberg Philanthropies ‘What Works Cities’ programme,  are dedicated to the same goal. Yet the pipeline of technical talent flowing into government isn’t yet operating at full capacity. What can be done to address this deficit?

As someone who left the tech sector to join local government as Open Data Manager at the City of Seattle, I saw firsthand the challenges that state and local governments face, such as a lack of data analytics capacity. I also saw the opportunity that having more technologists within government could have in addressing those capacity issues. This led me to ask the question — how can government leaders make local government a more attractive proposition for talented technologists?

Based on my experiences, and my recognition of the importance of growing that pipeline of technical talent from the private to the public sector, I wrote a book that in part outlines changes government leaders can make to create the space for more technologists to serve and have impact. Let’s examine two of those proposals — changing the narrative about local government, and viewing data analytics as an investment.

Change the narrative

The story of government, from state and local to federal and everything in between, is not being told. There is no West Wing for local government. Instead, the vast majority of the public typically read and hear stories that reinforce negative stereotypes about local government. Stereotypes are enormously difficult to change, but not impossible. How? By changing the narrative. Technology, and technologists, can play a leading role in making that happen.

One way to start this process is to change how local government thinks of itself. It’s a safe bet to assume that if any government at any level was to describe itself, the words “technology”, “data” or “innovation” wouldn’t appear in that description. Instead, the language would include references to services, people, community, diversity, inclusion, and so on. This is not unlike how major private companies also publicly describe themselves. Let’s look at one example that everyone reading this article will be familiar with: Starbucks. The company’s mission statement is “to inspire and nurture the human spirit — one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.”

As mission statements go, it does a great job of giving us a warm feeling about the place where many of us spend time. However, if you pull back the curtain and examine what Starbucks really is, you’ll discover that in fact it is a technology company that sells coffee. Starbucks has an enormous technical capability, from software engineering to advanced data science. Think about how many innovations have been added to Starbucks’ app during recent years, such as mobile ordering, and how these extra conveniences have improved the experience for its consumers. Continually improving the user experience in small but subtle ways makes it more likely that we’ll return as customers.

Let’s examine another side effect of the company’s technology, one that the public is less aware of. Millions of Starbucks customers also preload their Starbucks virtual “cards” with money, often in an automated fashion when balances reach a certain threshold. By doing this, Starbucks customers are essentially giving the business an interest-free loan multiple times a year. In addition to having millions of customers whose coffee spending habits are known to them, Starbucks can accurately predict how much those customers will spend in the future — which makes future financial modelling easier. In fact, Starbucks has more money on deposit as a result of its app than many major U.S. banks. In any given quarter, Starbucks may have somewhere between  US$1.5 and US$2 billion on hand as a result of customers preloading their card balances. In effect, Starbucks is one of the largest banks in the United States as a result of having more customer money on hand than many banks have in deposits.

Now, what if local governments were to attempt to reimagine the role technology could play in helping to completely change the experience that their customers, i.e. the public, could have? What would that look like? What if local government was to think of itself as a technology enterprise that provides services to the public as one of its personas? What if we had the chance to go back to the drawing board and reimagine and redesign government from scratch, but this time with our modern technology and data systems as the baseline? What could be possible?

The ‘1 percent rule’

One internal narrative that governments can change is how they think about their most valuable asset: data. Governments at all levels should view data analytics as an investment — not as a cost. Current expenditures on data analytics capabilities are simply nowhere near what’s required, as evidenced by the huge investments being made by philanthropic efforts such as What Works Cities.

This led to the formulation of what I call ‘The 1 Percent Rule’. It is a rule of thumb that local governments of any size can employ to begin the process of transforming their ability to effectively use data. The rule is this: At least one percent of total headcount should be specifically dedicated to data science and/or data analytics work.

Why one percent? It is an order of magnitude larger than current local government investments in data analytics, yet seems like a goal that should be easily achievable by any organisation. If we take existing IT department sizes into account, this one percent goal becomes even more reasonable. For example, the IT department at the City of Seattle where I served has around 700 staff at the time of writing, which roughly equates to 5.8 percent of the total number of employees. It is likely that this ratio is repeated in many local governments. As IT departments continue to consolidate and migrate more services and infrastructure to the public cloud, opportunities to reassign existing IT headcount into data analytics headcount will become available. This means that in some cases local governments may be able to reach the one percent threshold without having to create new headcount, or without having to fund many new positions.

What is the rationale for making such an investment?

• One percent is a straightforward way for both government leaders and the public to think about, and speak to, data as an investment.
• One percent is not a large number, especially when the potential return on investment (ROI) can be significant.
• Even as the number of staff in government fluctuates over time, it will be easy to adjust data analytics operations and staffing using this rule.
• For smaller governments, these staff could form a central analytics unit.
• For larger governments, these staff could form a central analytics unit, plus have dedicated data staff in every department that act as a hub-and-spoke model. For example, many state and local government departments already have data officers or data stewards in place. This rule could help formalise these structures and their funding models.
• Ideally, a chief data officer (CDO) would lead the central analytics unit and oversee the development of a strategic plan for how the government will collect, store, analyse, and share data. They could also partner with chief information officers/chief technology officers (CIOs/CTOs) to develop holistic approaches to service delivery and the data analytics needs within specific departments.

Thanks to some great research by the team at the Harvard Kennedy School for Government, we have some insights into the scale of the impact that is possible through investing in data analytics. Their report states that in terms of monetary ROI, “research shows that efforts to apply data analytics to eliminating waste fraud, and abuse in government can have returns as high as  10 to 15 times their cost.” Additionally, when factoring in non-financial benefits, “as governments improve efficiency and decrease waste, fraud and abuse, their esteem among the public grows and faith in government improves.” The report outlines several examples from state and local governments that highlight the efficiencies, operational improvements, and elimination of waste and fraud made possible by their investments in data analytics.

Ask what government can do

The ongoing pandemic is already challenging government leaders to think more creatively. It is also an opportunity to tell the story of local government and the incredible impact it has in our society, and by extension the importance of preserving those vital public services being impacted by budgetary pressures. By asking what governments can do to attract and retain more talented technologists, and empowering them to use existing government assets (i.e. data) and emerging technologies more effectively, government leaders can help accelerate the development of an exciting next-generation local government.