Reflections on #Hack4Congress: Derek Pham, ‘Relating, Connecting, and Inspiring’
This post by HKS student Derek Pham is the fourth in a series of occasional posts highlighting #Hack4Congress, a not-just-for-technologists hackathon organized by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and The OpenGov Foundation to deliver crowd-sourced and innovative solutions to the impasse facing Congress and lawmaking. Three events in Cambridge, MA, Washington, DC, and San Francisco, CA (organized with PopVox) are taking place in early 2015. The winners from each hackathon will then be flown to Washington, DC in late spring to demonstrate their projects to members of Congress and senior staff. The first event took place January 30-February 1, 2015 at Harvard Kennedy School. Learn more about the events at hack4congress.org and keep checking the Challenges to Democracy blog for continuing coverage, individual reflections, and other highlights from #Hack4Congress.
In this post, Pham recounts the kick-off panel featuring both scholarly and practical perspectives on the challenges facing Congress. He also captures and highlights the insightful voices and ideas of some of the #Hack4Congress participants. Watch and hear more from participants in the video below!
By Derek Pham
During the weekend of January 30-February 1, over 150 participants from Cambridge, Greater Boston and beyond converged on Harvard Kennedy School to participate in #Hack4Congress. The event attracted technologists, academics, and students as they sought through collective effort to formulate solutions to Congressional gridlock.
The weekend featured a Friday evening kickoff panel of prominent experts and practitioners on the American legislative system. HKS Professor David King, Climenko Fellow and Lecturer of Law Maggie McKinley, and former Congressman Bill Delahunt (MA-10) shared their thoughts to a standing-room only crowd on the issues causing Congressional gridlock.
HKS Academic Dean and panel moderator Archon Fung summarized key themes that would become inspiration for many of the innovations developed during the long weekend. There was, as he noted, a need to determine how representatives could safeguard “truth and truthiness” in the lawmaking process, preserve Hill relationships, provide access and voice to constituents, uncover alternative methods of non-electoral participation, and address issues of time management.
Most importantly, Dean Fung challenged the participants to maintain their optimism and be forward thinking in the solutions they would ultimately pursue.
On Saturday, participants filled the JFK Forum to hear Seamus Kraft, Executive Director of the OpenGov Foundation, give opening remarks before setting the teams loose to start their projects. Kraft opened the event with a brief activity gauging participant perceptions on whether they believed Congress looked out for American interests and was capable of embracing technology as a conduit for change. The atmosphere, however, was palpably positive with individuals excited to share their many creative ideas on the hackathon topics.
Angelique Hrycko of Day Health Strategies chose to tackle the topic of ‘Closing the Representation and Trust Gap.’ To that end, her team of six worked tirelessly away to develop the online web and mobile application Participassion. As Hrycko explained, the app would help people feel more connected to their government and representative by helping to elevate citizen awareness of who their elected representatives were and what issues s/he cared about.
Photo credit: Ben Danner
Meanwhile, Nick Andris of the Yale School of Management and his team tackled how to improve communications between constituents and elected representatives. Their app oVote would “allow legislators to create hubs their constituents can get onto — like following Twitter.” In other words — as he described — if a legislator is wondering how she should vote on a particular agenda item or deciding what priorities to pursue, she can ping her followers via push notifications developed specifically for oVote. This provides real time feedback to the representative and critical data informing future votes.
Others took a less technological approach to fixing Congress, but which nonetheless resulted in extremely creative projects. Nicolas Miailhe (MC/MPA’15) led his team to develop The Candidate, which he described as a TV show and online platform that could galvanize citizen participation. According to Miailhe, “It’s American Idol meets Kickstarter meets Reddit.” The premise of The Candidate was simple — it would help launch the political careers of unengaged citizens by essentially crowdsourcing a legislator.
As Miailhe put it, “[The Candidate] empowers the next generation of public leaders to aspire to public office. The public is too polarized and citizens feel they are not represented, but through social media, representation is possible.”
The winning team under the ‘Improving the Lawmaking Process’ challenge was The Dear Colleagues whose project focused on improving Congress by enhancing efficiency in a Congressional office. According to the group, members of Congress often send letters to agencies or administration officials asking them to adopt (or reject) regulatory changes.
These Members often send a “Dear Colleague” letter to other member offices asking them for their support. However, with limited staff capacity, the Dear Colleague letters get lost in members’ inboxes and there are no systematic ways to document a member’s particular position on a policy issue. To resolve this problem, the DearColleagues team pitched the implementation of an electronic mailing system that would allow members to co-sign letters, be briefed on happenings on the Hill, and send voting alerts.
Photo credit: Martha Stewart
At the end of the day, the winning presentation for the entire Hackathon went to team HillHack, who pitched a platform they called Congress Connect to “improve meetings and connect citizens.” HillHack team member Jessie Landerman (MPP’15) described the unique purpose of their idea Congress Connect as reducing staff capacity overload while elevating conversations with constituents.
The platform would engage citizens by ensuring they undergo a level of quality preparation in advance of the meeting with their representative. Other features of the application included constituents being able to directly request Hill meetings and access tutorials where they could prepare for their upcoming meetings. On the member office side, Congress Connect would minimize time spent by staff members explaining the basics of Hill meetings to constituents while maximizing productive conversations on priorities of concern to constituents.
As the overall winners, Landerman and her team will have the opportunity to travel to DC to pitch their ideas to senior congressional aides and representatives including Congressmen Darrell Issa (R-CA, 49th) and Jared Polis (D-CO, 2nd).
The Hackathon was not only an opportunity to engineer creative solutions for Congress; it was a manifestation of the great power of participatory democracy. In the span of a single weekend, over 100 people imagined and developed thirteen meaningful projects that attempted to untangle the impasse on the Hill.
Photo credit: Martha Stewart
Though not all projects will be present for the final demonstration, they are testaments to a common desire for governance to be effective, to be efficient, to be responsive, and most importantly, to be adaptable to change.
For more information on the #Hack4Congress/Cambridge projects and presentations, click here. To register for the upcoming #Hack4Congress/San Francisco event in on March 20–22. 2015, click here!
Derek Pham is a Master in Public Policy Candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School and a research assistant for the “Challenges to Democracy” public dialogue series. He is interested in how governments can design local and state-level innovations to combat corruption in the development context.
Originally published at www.challengestodemocracy.us.
