Harvard Student Teams Hack the Bureaucracy — And a Global Pandemic
This past spring semester I faced my first crisis of confidence as an instructor.
(It was my fifth year teaching DPI-663: Tech and Innovation in Government at the Harvard Kennedy School, a milestone I’m proud to reach.)
In the span of one week in March, COVID-19 forced many of my students to leave Boston, transforming my field lab into an online class. As I sat at my desk typing out a mid-semester course announcement, I couldn’t help but wonder if we should even continue the class.
I wondered if the work of DPI-663 even mattered anymore, especially given the suffering and loss of life here in the Boston area. Should we — as a teaching team and a group of talented students — pivot to focus on helping the COVID-19 response?
(As context, the class pairs student teams with government clients to solve real-world problems. The student teams conduct field research, prototype and test possible solutions, and present their findings at a Demo Day at the end of the semester. Students learn teamwork, human-centered design, product management, storytelling, and public sector entrepreneurship. Check out the class website.)
With the new COVD-19 challenges facing our government clients, would these student projects even matter? Was this really the most important thing we should be working on? And as a practical matter, could this class function in a remote-only format?
The class is designed to get students out of the Harvard bubble and engage with the Boston community. Typically, students spend time with real people in the community to understand their needs — and test proposed solutions with those people. I was skeptical the class would still work.
Weighing these concerns, I thought of one of the concepts I want the students to learn: public sector entrepreneurship.
Every year I argue to the class that students should “hack bureaucracies with empathy” — build momentum for their work, and get creative, impactful things done in government. If the students could be scrappy, still somehow create forward momentum, and help solve real-world challenges in the face of a global pandemic, this may be the best applied lesson in public sector entrepreneurship yet.
I also called our government clients, asking for their opinions. They said that these projects, and the students’ experiences, matter now more than ever — given how essential digital government is during a pandemic.
So we pushed forward as a class. I knew it was going to be harder for me and the teaching team, for the clients whose priorities were changing, and most critically, for the students. Some of them were working from their homes many time zones away. But I was re-energized and, after some experimentation, confident that we could make it work.
Seven weeks later, on May 8th, DPI-663 hosted its 5th annual Demo Day. Over 90 students, clients, and supporters of the class watched five student team presentations, after my brief introduction to the class and a keynote from Matt Lira, Special Assistant to the President in the White House Office of American Innovation.
Despite the pandemic, each student team delivered an impressive presentation. They found creative ways to build and test products with real people and produce remarkable results for their government clients. And they came away with a learning experience that I hope they carry with them throughout their careers.
Here is a snapshot of Demo Day 2020:
Team VA: A student team — Jeremiah Hay, Taylor Thomas, and Lien Tran — partnered with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to improve the digital experience for Veterans. Through 64 interviews and surveys with Veterans, the team discovered that many Veterans weren’t aware of their eligibility for benefits and couldn’t always find the answers they needed on the VA website. Moreover, an increasing number of Veterans were accessing the VA website via smartphones. The team designed a broad mobile app that simplifies common tasks for Veterans, like making a medical appointment. The team designed 6 different iterations of a mobile app based on 38 prototype feedback sessions. They used Balsamiq and Figma to build prototypes, and used Zoom and UserTesing to test their ideas with Veterans. See the team’s mid-semester presentation, final presentation, their story, and Demo Day talk.
Team HHS+SSA: A student team — Melia Henderson, Gwnedolyn Lee, Mia Li, Rob MacGregor, and Christina Wu — partnered with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Social Security Administration (SSA) to help improve the Medicare enrollment process. During the course of the semester, they conducted 94 interviews with prospective enrollees and subject matter experts. Recognizing that many seniors struggle to understand the process of enrolling for Medicare, the team developed prototypes of a plain language guide, a chatbot, and a search tool to suggest local help. The team refined the guide — the Medicare Enrollment Online Roadmap — after feedback that indicated this would be the most helpful tool for Medicare enrollees. See the team’s mid-semester presentation, final presentation, story, and Demo Day talk.
Team U.S. Air Force: A student team — Lauren Lombardo, Kyle Witzigman, Danny Ragheb, and Carra Wu — partnered with the Kessel Run unit of the U.S. Air Force to help them deliver software better and faster. Over the course of the semester, the team interviewed over 40+ Airmen, DoD officials, and others to understand Kessel Run’s rapid growth since 2017. Based on their research, the team focused on strengthening culture and ongoing learning, re-imagined the onboarding process and developed an “out of the box” hackathon — including a guide, selection rubric, feedback surveys, and other materials — to enable Kessel Run to conduct an annual hackathon. After testing these artifacts with 15 Kessel Run employees, the team produced “ready to deploy” versions of these deliverables along with a series of broader recommendations. See their mid-semester presentation, final presentation, story, and Demo Day talk.
Team Boston Elections: A student team — Joanna Bell, Dasha Metropolitansky, Sunaina Pamudurthy, Paul Rosenboom, and Molly Welch — partnered with the City of Boston Elections Department to help improve turnout in municipal elections. After over 40 interviews with Boston residents, the team developed multiple election mailers accompanied by a series of recommendations for the city to improve turnout. When COVID-19 spiked in March, the team focused on their ideas for mailed materials, developing mailers with reminders grounded in behavioral science — known as “nudges.” After tests with Boston residents, the team created two different versions of their mailer: one for active voters and one for inactive voters. Each includes information about where and when to vote, the past voting turnout of the person receiving the mailer, and trends in turnout in the voter’s neighborhood. See their mid-semester presentation, final presentation, their story, and Demo Day talk.
Team Boston Inspectional Services Division (ISD): A student team — Emily Chi, Ian Cutler, Nicolas Diaz, Gavin Jiao, and Amy Villasenor — worked with the City of Boston ISD to improve the registration and inspection process for restaurant owners in Boston. Through initial field research with restaurant owners, the team heard about frustrations with the process of opening a restaurant. Owners often hired consultants to deal with the city of Boston, and those owners that couldn’t afford a consultant just blindly hoped they had followed all of the rules and procedures. The student team mapped out the entire restaurant process — something that hadn’t been done before — and created a restaurant opening guide for new Boston restaurant owners. After conducting 21 user and expert interviews, they presented their final guide with a series of recommendations to the city of Boston. In the context of COVID-19, this opening guide could also be helpful for the struggling restaurant industry. See the team’s mid-semester presentation, final presentation, story, and Demo Day conversation.
Students
Similar to past years, students brought a variety of experiences and perspectives to their teams. They had experience in government, non-profits, consulting, tech, design, public health, medicine, and many other fields. Students hailed from countries all over the world, including India, China, Vietnam, Chile, Canada, and across the United States.
Though DPI-663 is offered through HKS, I make an effort to recruit and include students from across Harvard University. This year, about 60% of enrolled students were at the Kennedy School. The remaining students came from the Business School (HBS), Graduate School of Design (GSD), Chan School of Public Health, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and the College. I’m a big fan of the One Harvard approach — it makes for a better and more interesting field class for the students.
What Did the Students Learn?
Teamwork
Every year students tell me that the team dynamic is one of the most difficult parts of this class. This year was no different, especially since half of the class took place remotely.
By design, this course gives students an entire semester to develop as teams. Each team develops group norms with guidance and mentorship from the teaching team. They work together on a variety of tasks, drawing on their wide range of skills and experiences. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of bumps along the way. I intentionally create diverse teams, academically and demographically, to ensure each group has the necessary skills and backgrounds to tackle these complex problems. But each of these very different people needs to learn to coexist among a team of other strong-willed Harvard students!
“[Our] different backgrounds and interests made it … more challenging than other HKS client and group projects I have been a part of, but was also great practice in listening to and integrating different approaches to the project. I think in the end it led us to a stronger final product too.” said Joanna Bell, a member of the team working with the Boston ISD.
Some teams even became stronger after the class went remote. “I feel that the somewhat chaotic events were a blessing in disguise as the team became more communicative and productive. It was a memorable lesson on handling team dynamics and unexpected circumstances,” said Lien Tran, a member of the team working with the VA.
Human-Centered Design
The class is fundamentally about diverse teams using design, technology, and innovation to solve real government problems.
The first part of the class, where students scope their problem and conduct field research, is where students learn about human-centered design (HCD), also called user-centered design. “Users” generally refer to the end-users of a product or service, but for internally facing tools, users can be internal employees.
Leading designers guest lectured in class, sharing their experiences and best practices. Angel Quicksey, a design manager at Nava and a co-creator of this class, guest lectured and wrote an excellent article about the challenges of students learning to embrace ambiguity in the design process. (Also, check out how the students learned human-centered design in the first half of the semester.)
Even with great instruction from leading practitioners, there is no substitute for actually practicing a skill — like interviewing people without asking leading questions. Emily Chi, a student working with the Boston Inspectional Services Department reflected, “What is the best way we can navigate being honest and ethical with interviewees without creating bias (since interviewees may have strong opinions about the inspector’s office and their past experiences)?” Each week, teams improved their interviewing skills, finding more people to speak with. In total, students in DPI-663 conducted over 250 interviews.
“One of the most important lessons that I will take away is how powerful user research and testing is; not just because it leads to good results — but because it gives people the opportunity to be heard and excited about building the solution,” said Emily Chi on team Boston ISD.
Product Management
Students learned introductory product management in this class — taking their insights, brainstorming ideas, and turning them into paper and low-fidelity digital prototypes, to test with users. They quickly prioritize features based on what they learn from people reacting to and using their prototypes, and in some cases, develop a product roadmap.
(As I’ve written in the past, HKS, and policy schools more generally, should have more product management courses. Government desperately needs more people with product management skills! Kathy Pham teaches a great product management class that I also highly recommend to students.)
Rob MacGregor, a member of the team working with HHS and SSA, noted, “I am certainly leaving the class with a much better understanding of product management and technology/innovation in government, but most importantly, I am proud of the tangible product my team and I have put together over the course of the semester.”
While most of my students will not become product managers, a few do! But I think having some hands-on exposure to product management will serve them all well.
Working Openly and The Power of Storytelling
Throughout the class I stress public communications skills, requiring the student teams to blog publicly four times and post their interim and final presentations. I want the students to practice telling the story about their projects — at the same time creating a public portfolio of their work. Students also learn about the limits of what a government agency can (and should) say publicly, and how to navigate the communications clearance process inside of government.
I also believe transparency is an important tactic used to get things done in government. If done well, it can help projects gain followers, build momentum, and eventually create real change.
It’s not easy to write short and compelling blog posts! Often, students are tempted to write reports or lengthy memos, but we provide them tips for writing blogs and explain the power of concise narratives. Practicing what I preach, I wrote 10 reasons why Harvard students should blog. Check out the student blogs on the class website — and clients, guests, and alumni are always welcome to add to this collection of reflections about the class!
Over time, students realized that these narratives helped engage their clients and build consensus around their ideas. “The impact that storytelling can have on our relationship with our client was something I had not thought of beyond our day-to-day communication with them. For example, how framing the user’s problem a certain way can get us on the same page,” said Amy Villaseñor, a student working with the City of Boston Inspections.
“The course’s emphasis on storytelling, can-do attitude, and the idea to start building from day one empowered me to believe that everyone can be a service designer, an innovator, and a problem solver to leverage the power of technology and design thinking to “hack” the bureaucracy,” said Mia Li, a student working with HHS and SSA.
Public-Sector Entrepreneurship
One of my favorite quotes painted on the wall of the Harvard Innovation Lab, where I teach, is from retired Harvard Business School Professor Howard H. Stevenson:
“Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity beyond the resources you currently control.”
I want my students to realize they can unleash the power of entrepreneurship — setting a vision, recruiting a team, understanding the problem, rapidly building and testing solutions, telling a story about their progress, and generating excitement internally and externally — if they are not constrained by the (often limited) resources they immediately control.
In this class, I stress the concept of public sector entrepreneurship — the idea of intense focus on solving an immediate problem while telling a story of a larger vision, building momentum, attracting supporters and allies inside and outside of the organization, and ultimately creating lasting change. Credit to HBS Professor Mitch Weiss who has popularized this idea — and buy his new book, We the Possibility!
There are a lot of great examples of public sector entrepreneurs — including friends and former colleagues who have started new organizations, like the U.S. Digital Service, the Defense Digital Service, GSA’s digital unit 18F, the Air Force’s Kessel Run, the Defense Innovation Unit, and colleagues that turned around high-profile failures like healthcare.gov. Many of them are also incredibly successful private sector entrepreneurs too.
Public sector entrepreneurship requires creativity in the face of constraints — and given the unfolding pandemic, the students had to be more resourceful than usual. Christina Wu, a student on the Medicare enrollment team, noted that the pandemic “will affect how we are able to recruit and engage with participants since our target users are among the more vulnerable age group.” She noted that her team was “already having challenges recruiting a diverse set of users, and our inability to actively recruit in public places has made this harder.”
Still, students found ways to adapt and help their clients. “The pandemic now gives us a chance to be more creative and adaptive so our solutions can be employed especially when more governments are forced to function digitally,” said Sunaina Pamudurthy, a student working with the City of Boston on municipal voting.
Public sector entrepreneurship is also about understanding an organization’s history, structure, and mission. As Kyle Witzigman, a member of the team working with the Air Force said, “I began to see the social chart as different from the hierarchical organizational chart. I realized how both are important for processes and pushing policy change through at an office.”
Student Reactions
I frequently ask for feedback from the students — which includes a quick “one-minute test” at the end of each class. As the end of the class in 2020, I also asked them what they learned and what surprised them, and here are a few responses:
- “I was surprised by the prototyping process…something as simple as literally drawing an idea on a piece of paper and then receiving feedback from real users on that paper prototype can yield helpful insights.”
- “It doesn’t take someone with advanced design or technological skills to create more user-centered and user-friendly products and processes”
- “How little tech matters sometimes. It’s tempting to go with the app/cool online tool, but sometimes the easiest solutions and processes are the simplest. Listening to actual user needs and feedback was so important to coming to this realization.”
- “When I signed up, I thought our final products would be tech-driven (“tech and innovation in government”). It turned out that we did use prototyping tools like figma and ours was a tech-driven solution, but I was surprised that some solutions that we brainstormed in this class could actually be analog and effective.”
- “We implemented the whole cycle (research, user interviews, prototypes, testing, final product) in just a few months as an elective class! It only pushes me to imagine what one can do in a full-time role in government!”
- “This class was an incredible experience and I benefited from it hugely in terms of skills, perspective, and network — the trifecta. It wasn’t easy, but that’s the point.”
Jeremiah Hay, Taylor Thomas, and Lien Tran present to senior VA executives, including CIO Jim Gfrerer, CTO Charles Worthington, Chief Veterans Experience Officer Dr. Lynda Davis, Deputy Chief Veterans Experience Officer Barbara Morton (original client of the class!), Presidential Innovation Fellows C.C. Gong and Clarice Chan, and Executive Director Drew Myklegard.
Impact
The class is designed to create an intense learning environment for students, first and foremost. But in the course of their hands-on work, we aspire for them to create real impact through their research, prototypes, and recommendations.
It’s ambitious to think the students can have a meaningful impact in just a semester, but I want them to have audacious goals. While not all their projects and ideas will be immediately implemented, I’m confident they are creating long-lasting impact. Check out the project with the City of Boston last year, where a student team helped the city design a violation envelope that is easier to understand.
Here is what government clients said about the student teams this semester and their impact:
- “The Harvard student team did amazing work, especially during the pandemic, of spending time with a broad group of Veterans to learn about their digital experiences, and exploring what could be improved, especially as more Veterans access services via their smartphones. Their recommendations and early prototypes for a multifunctional mobile app, grounded in research about what Veterans need, is something I’m excited about making a reality for our Veterans.” — Charles Worthington, CTO, VA
- “The students blew us away with the in-depth user research they conducted with over a hundred veterans. Their research insights were timely and actionable, and their presentation to VA executive leaders was instrumental in garnering support for the next phase of our project as we move to implement the recommendations the students delivered.” — C.C. Gong, Presidential Innovation Fellow, VA
- “Nick and the leadership of the DPI-663 cohort provided a unique opportunity for a large public-facing agency like the SSA to explore creative solutions to complex problems that we face in delivering our mission to the nation. Despite the COVID-19 situation, the team did a remarkable job in delivering seriously good recommendations that we will try to incorporate into our roadmap. Kudos to the team!” — Rajive Mathur, CIO, Social Security Administration
- “A memorable and rewarding experience for our Federal agency, the Social Security Administration, to interact with the enthusiastic, smart, and hard-working future leaders of the public sector.” — Robert Teller, Social Security Administration
- “The quality of the work produced by the CMS/SSA group was beyond what I expected in a semester. I would pay people for this level of professionalism and speed of delivery!” — Misu Tasnim, Executive Director of the Digital Service at HHS
- “The Harvard team was a pleasure to work with. They rapidly adapted to changing priorities, limited access to us as a client, and an inability to directly observe processes due to COVID19. Their flexible approach resulted in great feedback and ideas we will revisit in the future. Thank you!” — Kelly Mackey, Assistant Commissioner, Boston Inspectional Services Department
- “Working with Nick’s classes over the years provided a healthy dose of fresh opportunities, while providing exposure to the challenges. We strategically aligned the students with budding new projects and we made smarter investments as a result. If every city had this kind of partnership: the exposure to civic service, and access to fresh thinking, our country would be better for it.” — Jeanethe Falvey, Chief Digital Officer, City of Boston
- “The DPI-663 team impressed me with their commitment, talent, and ingenuity. Despite the challenges brought about by COVID, the team worked hard to meet virtually with the members of Kessel Run and still conduct high-quality interviews and design sessions. When the semester started, I had my preconceived notions about what my unit needed, but in a matter of only a few short weeks, they were able to dive deeper into the root causes of our scaling challenges and generate viable solutions that my leadership team and I never considered. This course and curriculum, semester after semester, solves real-world problems in the public sector and introduces a new cohort of emerging leaders to public service.” — Col (ret.) Enrique Oti, co-founder and former Commander, Kessel Run
- “I truly appreciate the students’ work exploring new ideas and ways to innovate our organization. Kessel Run prides itself on values like “continuous evolution” and sees itself as a learning organization. As a pathfinder unit in the Air Force, we can never be done challenging the status quo or demanding that we rethink, redesign, and re-imagine possibilities in how we do our work and build our applications. Thank you for such great collaboration and ideas.” — Col Brian Beachkofski, Commander, Kessel Run
DPI-663 Alumni
Students join an all-star group of DPI-663 alumni! Past students have gone on to work in the U.S. Digital Services, 18F, VA, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the City of Boston. They join next-generation government contractors, like Ad Hoc and Nava. They’ve continued on in military careers in the Air Force and the Army. They’ve run for Congress, served in the Cambridge Police Department, and advised national governments around the globe. They’ve joined Microsoft, Facebook, Palantir, and Twitter. And they’ve started high-impact nonprofits like UpSolve and Coding it Forward.
Chris Kuang, an alumnus of the class, writes about his experience in DPI-633, and how it influenced Coding it Forward.
Ayush Chakravarty, a product manager at Ad Hoc, writes about how DPI-663 prepared him for his first job out of graduate school, working to improve Search.gov — the search engine that powers many federal websites.
It’s incredibly rewarding to hear from students about their careers and lives — I hope it continues for years to come.
Thank you!
It takes a village to produce DPI-663. First, a huge thank you to the teaching team this year: David Leftwich, Bobby Wang, Ariana Soto, and Miro Bergam, and faculty assistant Karen McCabe.
Thank you to the amazing people in government agencies who partner with us. They trust our students to take on real problems that matter. These busy government officials, already working full-time jobs, take time to mentor and assist these student teams. Thank you to Aaron Capizzi, Enrique Oti, Brian Beachkofski, Hannah Hunt, C.C. Gong, Clarice Chan, Charles Worthington, Misu Tasnim, Benno Schmidt, Jessica Weeden, Bob Teller, Rajive Mathur, Lisa Timberlake, Kelly Mackey, Dion Irish, Emily Quinn, Eneida Tavares, Alex Lawrence, Jeanethe Falvey, and Reilly Zlab.
Thank you also to the amazing guests we had this semester:
- Mary Ann Brody, Head of Member Experience at Devoted Health, former U.S. Digital Service
- Stephanie Nguyen, Research Scientist at MIT Media Lab, former U.S. Digital Service
- Angel Quicksey, Design Manager at Nava, co-creator of DPI-663
- Dana Chisnell, Adjunct Lecturer, Harvard Kennedy School and co-Executive Director, Center for Civic Design, former U.S. Digital Service
- Cori Zarek, Director of Digital Service Collaborative at Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation, former U.S. Deputy CTO at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
- Andy MacMillan and Janelle Estes, CEO and Chief Insights Officer at User Testing
- Erie Meyer, Technology Advisor for Commissioner Rohit Chopra at Federal Trade Commission, former U.S. Digital Service and White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
- Kumar Garg, Managing Director, Schmidt Futures, former Assistant Director for Learning Innovation at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
- Mina Hsiang, VP Policy and Government Affairs, Devoted Health, former U.S. Digital Service and White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
- Lauren Knausenberger, Chief Transformation Officer, U.S. Air Force
- Matt Lira, Special Assistant to the President, White House Office of American Innovation
This class draws on alumni and active members of the U.S. Digital Service (USDS), and I’m grateful for the close collaboration. While we weren’t able to get the students down to their headquarters this year, USDS Administrator Matt Cutts and Deputy Administrator Eddie Hartwig spent time with the class remotely.
2021 and Beyond
I’ve been extremely privileged to have this opportunity, teaching this class, for the past five years.
While my primary affiliation is with the Harvard Kennedy School, I’ve had students from the business, law, engineering, design, and public health schools, as well as strong representation from the College. I learn a tremendous amount from each student and am excited to have had a chance to influence their education and careers.
I’m excited that my class — and others across Harvard — are equipping students to become the future leaders of companies, foundations, non-profits, and government agencies. Harvard students are highly motivated to achieve, but occasionally get trapped in the Harvard bubble. Success in my class means navigating the real world and serving the community, not having a well-written report sitting on a shelf.
I’m not teaching this class in the next academic year (2020–2021) but definitely hope to teach it in future years. Meanwhile, I’ll be a senior fellow at the Belfer Center, working with former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter’s Technology and Public Purpose Project (TAPP), and also working on my first book project — stay tuned!
