Alexis Wichowski – Deputy Chief Technology Officer – Innovation – The City of New York

On this episode of The 3rd Question we talk with Alexis Wichocski, Deputy Chief Technology Officer, Innovation,The City of New York, about the fellowship program with private sector technologists that is helping accomplish the city's technology goals.

Video Transcript

Ryan James:

Hello and welcome to The Third Question, a video interview series with public sector thought leaders from around the country. And today I'm excited to be joined by Alexis Wichocski. Alexis is the deputy chief technology officer of innovation at the City of New York, and also an author. I know you have a book that came out, The Information Trade: How Big Tech Conquers Countries, Challenges Our Rights, and Transforms Our World. So thank you so much for joining me today.

Alexis Wichocski:

Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

Ryan James:

So before we get into our three questions, why don't you give the audience just a bit of an introduction of you, your role there at the city and maybe a little bit about the city itself?

Alexis Wichocski:

Sure. Thank you so much. So, as you mentioned, I'm the deputy chief technology officer for innovation for the City of New York. Our team works on kind of four areas of technology really forward facing and future facing. So we're looking at universal broadband. So closing the digital divide, inclusive innovation, so ways that we can make sure that we are innovating in ways that don't leave people out. We have tech policies, so looking at things like artificial intelligence and IoT, how to use them responsibly, and then we have digital services, so how do we get government more online using more modern web strategies? I've been working in government for about 10 years, first at the state department then for the City of New York. And I'm still here, I still in government. I've also been teaching part-time for about 10 years at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. I teach about technology and government. So it's a good fit, the two of those. And then I do a little writing on the side, as you mentioned.

Ryan James:

Awesome. Well, thank you. Well, let's get into our first question. So I want to start with focusing on your current role and the focus for the City of New York. As someone who has obviously been involved on the technology sides of things for the largest or one of the largest cities in the world, talk to me a little bit about your current and future goals when it comes to technology for both, I guess, inward the city's operation side of things, and also the constituents. And I'm going to kind of add a second part to that. Knowing that the public sector tends to be a bit of a laggard when it comes to forward-thinking tech, how are you and the CTO's office really driving the change to hit those goals?

Alexis Wichocski:

Sure. So the first thing that we're trying to do is make sure that everyone's connected because until we can get everyone online in a city, we can have the best digital services for government in the world, but if people can't access them, that's not going to do them any good. So that's the first things that we're doing is really focusing on closing the digital divide, where we just released an RFP to try to expand market for ISPs and change the way that we build broadband infrastructure in the city. So that's number one. The second piece that we're really focused on is modernization. So how do we get government web services really into the modern era so that when you access government services online, it doesn't feel confusing, or antiquated, but it's more seamless and intuitive experience like you might have on any sort of modern services?

Alexis Wichocski:

And the last piece is focusing on user centered design. So a lot of times government technology tends to be built just silo indoors and there's not a lot of interaction with potential constituents or consumers. So we want to change that. We want to start with making sure that we testing everything that we're building with users in mind, so that we can make sure that it's inclusive and understandable and intuitive and a seamless experience. So that's sort of what our current goals are. Our future goals are a little bit more of the same, but I would add to that focusing more on agile. So both in the procurement area. I know procurement sounds like a really boring thing to talk about, but if you can't fix the contracting process then we're never going to become a more modern operation. So having smaller contracts that we can test and get it on before we release big funds for these large IT contracts.

Alexis Wichocski:

So that's one thing. And then we also want to have assessments. So we want people who do build tech products to understand what are the standards that they have to meet for something to be considered a usable product for our constituents. We have people who speak hundreds of languages in New York City. We have people with different levels of education. We want to make sure that our web services are accessible to everybody. So that's sort of where we're going now. You're right, government is a little bit of a laggard when it comes to change. We're a little behind the times. So one of the things that we're doing to change that is by partnering with folks who are at the cutting edge. So we created this fellowship program recently called the NYC[x] Innovation Fellows partnering with this all volunteer organization called U.S. Digital Response.

Alexis Wichocski:

And what that allows us to do is bring in technologists who are working at places like Google, and Amazon, and Facebook and Microsoft bringing them into government for these 10 weeks sprints do kind of a tour of duty where they work on some sort of technology problem at an agency part-time so they still have their day jobs, they don't have to quit to volunteer for civic tech. And it gives us two things. One is it helps bring that expertise from the private sector into government and show us how they're doing things. So that helps with the culture change. But it also just brings in really talented folks to be laser-focused on a problem without any of the bureaucracy to worry about. We take care of the bureaucracy for them and they can just focus on the tech problem. So we've had two rounds of these fellows thus far, the program just launched in August and it's been tremendously successful. So we're looking forward to the next cohort coming in.

Ryan James:

So here's what I guess a follow up, that's fascinating and I love that kind of innovative approach, but there's a lot of people that probably watch these interviews on The Third Question that don't have organizations the size of the city of New York. So I'm curious how you think that kind of approach could be done to smaller cities that are out there or other counties, at a state level, perhaps that's possible, but where you can be inviting these forward-thinking technology thought leaders into there... how did that transpire, how did that whole process happen?

Alexis Wichocski:

Well, it really came about because of the COVID pandemic. New York City got hit really hard in the Spring and we were looking for extra capacity to help us deal with some of the needs that the city had. And this organization, U.S. Digital Response was formed specifically to help cities, states, counties, government at all levels connect with volunteers in the tech sector. So that's how we were able to create this fellowship. So to smaller cities or smaller jurisdictions what I would say is, it's absolutely possible to replicate this kind of fellowship program. Part of it is just about getting the word out there. There's a real great hunger in the tech community to give back.

Alexis Wichocski:

And the civic tech community is I think, all over the country, the fact that we're working virtually means that we have fellows who are from California and then Arizona volunteering for City of New York. You could be a small city in Arizona or California and have New York City tech folks volunteering. So I think the key is that matchmaking and that's really where we're relying on our partners USDR to help us out. And I think that smaller jurisdictions could do the same thing.

Ryan James:

I love it. I think that's great. Thanks for sharing that. All right. So I'm going to go to my second question for you, as you look at the public sector vertical in general, and in talking with, I'm sure your peers all over the country, what do you see as some of the opportunities, but also some of the challenges that are coming in helping drive that technology change? I've heard justification's everything from, "Need to have a strong RLI to, we need to provide better services, to COVID, we just had to do something quick." But in general, what do you see as some of those best justifications that organizations should or can focus on to get those changes to happen?

Alexis Wichocski:

So I think that one of the things that all government across the board have right now is a justification as cost savings. We've been hit hard by the pandemic and we all need to make sure that we're delivering services and reaching our constituents digitally because we just don't have the capacity to do things in person in the way we used to. So if we can figure out a way to modernize our digital services and we're going to be providing better services to our citizens, but we're also going to be saving money because we're not wasting so much time with antiquated systems. And I'll give you an example. We worked with our fellows that I was just referring to to overhaul the interface for the city pay website. So this is how you pay for things like parking tickets and permits and any kind of transaction you do with the city.

Alexis Wichocski:

And it brings in billions of dollars a year, but they were losing a lot of people through the process of going through its form, because it was just a little bit confusing. So we did some user research, we redid the form, and now it's a streamlined experience. It's going to save the city a lot of money because revenue that would have been lost in the past will now be collected. So I think cost savings is really everybody's best bet to justify modernizing their services and making things more intuitive and streamlined for users for the citizens that we serve.

Ryan James:

Do you think that that some of that modernization tends to be more, not that it shouldn't be because your core mission is serving the people that live in your cities, or counties or states, but how often do you think it's looked at on the internal processes with the actual employees of the city?

Alexis Wichocski:

I think inn the past I don't think it's been thought of really as something top of mind by city officials or government officials, but I think now everybody's really feeling it because when we put in our budget requests, our budget office is coming back and saying, "We have to make cuts. We have to be really smart about how we're spending money. We have to justify every dollar we spend." So I think that's trickling down to all levels of government officials to be more of a focus that, if you can't justify the cost, but if you can't justify how it saves money, it's just not going to get approved. So if want to get anything done, you got to think about cost savings.

Ryan James:

Got it. Well, we're already at the third question and it's a nice segue because I've shown anyone who's interviewed, I kind of pull up props for my third question. And today I bring out the blank check or the infinity dollar check for the City of New York. I'm not sure how far it'll go. But if I was to give you, Alexis, a blank check for what you could do in any way for the City of New York, your current organization, to either innovate technology, I've read that you're pushing the broad band to really help connect everybody there. A blank check's a lot of money, ideally, what would you use it for and why?

Alexis Wichocski:

So I love this idea. I would use it to hire small digital services teams with user researchers and embed one in every agency in New York City. And I'll tell you why. Right now we have IT shops in every agency, but they're really just running the operations making sure that the websites are up and functioning. We rarely, even though we're delivering services, that's kind of government's job is to deliver services to citizens, we rarely bring them into the process of service design.

Alexis Wichocski:

How does this impact you? How do you need to access services? Can you do this online or do you need a phone call? Do you need a person to come visit your home? So if we had experienced user researchers working with digital services teams hand in hand, every agency that delivers services could deliver services better. And I think do it cheaper too. So it would be an investment. It would mean hiring a ton of folks. But I think with these small agile teams doing user research, figuring out how to better serve citizens and modernizing the way that we deliver services online, we would ultimately save money in the end.

Ryan James:

I love it. I love that every time I ask this question, I get a completely different answer depending on the role of the person I'm talking to or the focus itself. That's a really interesting IT user research, user approach, UI, the whole... I love that. So thank you for that. Well, that's it. That's the three questions and it's short and sweet, but I really appreciate you taking a little bit of time to join me today and share with this. I'm sure some of the things you shared, especially as it could potentially impact a lot of other cities as they look at changing the way they do things in a digital environment in their user interfaces, et cetera, will be looked at. What was the name of that organization again?

Alexis Wichocski:

U.S. Digital Response. And we're creating a do it yourself guide to replicate that fellowship model so we can share with other cities. So that's something to look out for. We'll be sharing that soon.

Ryan James:

And people can be looking for that through the City of new York's website?

Alexis Wichocski:

Through NYC CTO on Twitter or through our website, which is nyc.gov/cto, or you just Google us and we'll point you in the right direction.

Ryan James:

Awesome. Well, thank you, Alexis. I really look forward to watching how you guys continue to push your agenda there at the city. And I appreciate the time spent with me today.

Alexis Wichocski:

Thank you so much.

Ryan James:

Bye-bye.