How getting lost in Puerto Rico can help innovate democracy
What does a major federal agency with troves of data and a mission to reach the entire nation in 2020 do? Turn to the innovators.
That’s our team at the Census Open Innovation Labs, or COIL. Like most people across the country and world, we’ve spent the last few weeks getting accustomed to our new normal.
We’ve always been a distributed team (15 people spread across 8 cities), and with the recent shift to all virtual work, we’ve had to turn to more unconventional ways of bringing people together. But even with some adjustments, in the past few weeks we’ve brought together 200+ wildly different people — designers, students, techies, government agencies, NGO leaders and more — to work together on challenges ranging from sustainable energy to getting people to complete the 2020 Census in the wake of COVID-19.
We’ve been working on radical methods of collective problem solving for years.
After Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, we organized a 14-week sprint for 100+ techies, govies, and community leaders to help meet the call for community-driven tech solutions and help the island rebuild. One evening during a *wine-storm* (a brainstorm over wine, perhaps our greatest innovation), our Puerto Rico-native Director of Operations envisioned adding an in-person workshop in San Juan to our typically all-virtual process, to help the collaborators who have never even been to Puerto Rico understand the magnitude and unique nature of the challenges there.
A few months later, it was a reality, and it couldn’t have worked out better.
Imagine half the attendees being late to a workshop on the challenges of local addressing — because no one could find the address of the workshop location! It was the kind of thing that only happens when you bring diverse groups of people directly to a problem to give them that “a-ha” moment that helps them work better together. The 14-week virtual sprint that followed included people from Hawaii to Estonia (a 13-hour time zone spread!) — and together they produced over a dozen new products like apps, games, satellite data tools, and more that are still in use today, like helping the island with local addressing and disaster recovery.
Who’s the team that did this work? COIL’s team of human centered designers, tech developers, community builders, and social entrepreneurs. We work out of the Census Bureau office in DC and remotely across the U.S., and collaborate with hundreds of people in government and outside to serve the public better. We’re known for founding programs like The Opportunity Project and Census Accelerate that help solve problems facing communities nationwide, but it’s our core beliefs that bring it all together, make us succeed, and set a path for public sector innovation:
- People come up with better ideas together — and the more different the people, the better the collective genius
- Government can’t and shouldn’t try to solve big problems alone
- Humans should be at the center of everything we do
- Data is only worth a dime if it helps someone
- And maybe most relevant now…
It’s possible to build community remotely in the service of a common mission.
The core of what we do is creating new methods and opportunities for collaboration between government, industry and communities. We believe the best ideas are generated when people from different backgrounds and expertise join forces to solve a problem. We have also always believed you don’t have to be in the same place to make an impact with your work.
We consider ourselves intrapreneurs — rather than trying to improve and modernize the way government works from the outside, we seek to create lasting change from the inside. If we can help people feel more connected along the way, even better. Though some of us never saw ourselves working in government, we all share a passion for service, and have fallen in love with the ability to make people feel optimistic about the world by working together in ways they have never imagined.
We’re here to open our playbook
In the true spirit of open innovation, we want to share our unique experience working at the intersection of federal government, technology, design, and communities. We want to share our struggles, our successes, and the lessons we’ve learned along the way. Come back for more on:
Building civic tech that lasts
We’ve learned about product sustainability from catalyzing 100+ open data tools, building playbooks that provide a platform for creatives to generate grassroots content, and leading initiatives that are built with community voices at their core. We’ll share our best practices on how to build programs, products and content that last — and actually get used.
Pro tips on remote collaboration
Our quickly growing, remote-first team has learned a lot about creating an inclusive and supportive work environment that transcends time zones and physical space. We’ll share more about how we foster a collaborative team culture remotely, embed mindfulness into our work, use technology to enable our team to work effectively, and facilitate remote workshops and events.
How we bring people together
We’ll share case studies and success stories on new methods of collaboration we’ve prototyped and how our partners and collaborators have benefited.
Design & Digital Strategy
Our digital team is uniquely working to amplify how we deliver services and implementing best-practices within the federal space — building on the work started by teams like OSTP, Presidential Innovation Fellows and the US Digital Service (USDS). We’ll dive into what we’ve learned, from implementing universal best-practices to innovating in the world of civic tech.
We know there are others out there with the same spirit and mission, so we’re launching this Medium channel to connect with a greater community in civic tech, design, startups, big companies, universities, government, backyards, or wherever you find yourself — to inspire more people to innovate from within their own organizations — and in these extraordinary times, even from within their own homes.
Follow us to stay up to date!
Click the “Follow” button to see our upcoming posts and learn more at opportunity.census.gov/COIL.
