What it will take to deliver for New Yorkers: transform how the city delivers

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The incoming mayoral administration has an ambitious affordability agenda and an enormous opportunity to shape the future of New York City, but in order to see the future they have laid out for us, they must address the backbone of NYC government - how the city delivers.

If we continue to work in the status quo, we will continue to get the status quo - great policies on paper that never quite achieve the impact we had hoped. We can no longer accept programs that never quite achieve their full potential, tech systems that don’t quite do what we need them to despite costing millions, or timelines that say it will take years to launch new programs. We need to center the experience of New Yorkers and city staff, and rethink how the city’s core functions operate in support of doing big things.

Changing the status quo will require a shift in the culture of delivery across the City. We have accepted a normal where falling short is an okay outcome - a program launched late, a new system that doesn’t quite work well enough. We don’t have to accept that as normal.

The Mamdani administration has an opportunity to make sure that the way the city delivers matches the ambition of its policy agenda. Do this by centering transformation of how the city delivers as a key pillar of how this administration gets things done. Here’s 10 things to do to make it happen:

1. Ensure city hall has a culture of delivery and agency leadership is committed to transformation. Leadership matters. Transforming how the city delivers needs to be part of the DNA of how City Hall approaches its work, whether it is through the lens of technology, civil service, procurement, finance or other back end operations. They all impact the ability to deliver on policy and ultimately deliver for New Yorkers. Leadership needs to come from the culture of City Hall as well as the individuals put into leadership roles across city hall and city agencies. Appoint leaders at every level who see opportunity in bureaucracy, not barriers. Commit to finding ways to remove bottlenecks and barriers that stand in the way of an affordable New York City so that the results serve not just this administration, but New York City into the future.

2. Empower the agencies and teams that work on back end systems and functions to be strategic partners in delivering on policy, not as a transactional step in the process. Tech and digital service teams, finance, procurement and HR need to be partners from the beginning of conceptualizing new initiatives or improving existing programs, and strategic partners in thinking about how to overcome challenges or work through barriers.

3. Look at every project and initiative through the lens of delivery. When we encounter bottlenecks or barriers that delay projects or change scope, seize those opportunities to rethink, streamline or transform the approach. City staff are well aware of the barriers and bottlenecks they face in getting their work done. Enable them to surface these challenges and ensure they have the support and resources necessary to begin to address them.

4. Grow the centralized technology capacity to deliver on policy goals. The City needs centralized capacity empowered to work across agencies to deliver on complex policy goals - fast and free buses, affordable housing, childcare for all. The teams and approaches exist but are small and fragmented. Align and grow the capabilities we already have in the NYC Digital Services team and Office of Data Analytics in OTI and the Service Design Studio and Products team at NYC Opportunity so that they can be a strong centralized capacity to partner with agencies to deliver.

5. Bring service design and digital service expertise to every agency across the city. At the scale of NYC, we cannot only work centrally. Every agency delivers critical services, but not every service can be city hall’s top priority. Agencies need to have the internal capacity for service design and digital services who can partner with program and policy experts to improve how they deliver and how they build, buy and maintain critical technology that allows them to deliver on their individual missions. While we have seen a growth in tech and data teams across the city, very few agency teams, beyond NYC City Planning’s Tech team¹, are taking a true user-centered, product focused approach.

6. Recognize when tech contracts aren’t delivering on outcomes and empower agencies to cancel them. Across the city we need to take an agile, user-centered approach to building and procuring technology that is driven and prioritized by agency staff who understand how technology is built and the needs of the program and its users. We should no longer be spending 10s or 100s of millions of dollars on technology that does not help teams deliver on their mission. The typical way of doing things means that the average government IT project costs 310% of the original price tag, with the major government software projects failing a significant majority of the time. We cannot continue in this status quo, outsourcing “projects so thoroughly that [governments] give up their ability to control the projects’ outcomes”². By taking an agile and user-centered approach and adjusting staffing accordingly, we can build better digital services designed to achieve the outcomes we want, owned by the city and often at a lower cost.

7. Ensure our civil service system is human-centered and designed to support public servants throughout their careers as well as the mission of agencies tasked with delivering. Civil service does not need to be a barrier to delivering and staff should not have to come up with workarounds to achieve their missions. The City can have a merit system that supports city staff as they progress in their careers, but is also a true mechanism for bringing new New Yorkers into public service and a key unlock in the ability of agencies to deliver on policy goals. The system needs to be more transparent and easier to understand for everyone who needs to engage with it whether they are a hiring manager or HR representative, or a New Yorker considering public service for the first time. Use the available data to understand and prioritize modernization. Create real titles and career pathways for technologists (we have puppetry titles but no data science or product management series). Partner with the state and unions to build a shared vision and approach for a modern civil service system system.

8. Build iteratively to deliver quick wins and set the foundation for the future. Break large projects down into their component parts and challenges. It not only makes it easier to see what is possible, but it also allows for New Yorkers to see change more rapidly. We may want to change how New Yorkers apply for all benefits, for instance, but improving a web form for one program that is confusing and difficult to navigate can benefit people immediately and shouldn’t rely on having all of the data sharing agreements and backend connections in place for a larger vision. Modern technology is built iteratively through two-week sprints across most modern companies leading to frequent updates and improvements, and an ability to respond to changing user needs. There is no reason why government cannot take this approach as well.

9. Create a safe space to learn from failure, understand what did not work and ensure it doesn’t happen again. Staff in New York City (and government at large) shy away from taking risks or trying new things because they don’t want to be blamed if it doesn’t work. We have accepted that there is a “right” way to fail - follow the rules and it doesn’t matter if we overspend or underdeliver, or if we have to throw more money at a vendor so they fix their mistakes of their own making. Create a culture of blameless post mortem - celebrate small releases and tiny wins, and bring teams together after projects to understand what worked, what did not and how to approach things differently on the next project. Learn from what doesn’t work, don’t repeat it ad nauseam.

10. Learn from other governments about what works. NYC has historically been insular—not attending conferences, not learning from other governments, not drawing on the local or national civic tech ecosystem and talent. Other governments are ahead of us in delivering using modern, people-centered approaches. There are dozens of jurisdictions implementing digital services across the county. Learn from Pennsylvania’s digital service team, CODE PA, who can deliver new digital tools within weeks, not years; from Boston’s dedicated digital service team that brings user and customer experience to services like applying for marriage licenses, from San Francisco’s Digital Service team, made up of more than 50 staff, working closely with departments to improve how residents apply for affordable housing and building permits, or from New Jersey’s Office of Innovation that has transformed how New Jerseyans apply for benefits.

This piece is inspired by the BetaNYC conversation I was a part of yesterday about the future of New York City’s government technology policy. Together with leaders from the NYC-DSA Tech Action Working Group, Tech Mayor Project, Pilot Pitchfest and Tech:NYC, we explored what the incoming NYC mayoral administration should consider about digital service delivery, data governance and the public-sector tech workforce. Thanks to Ruthie Nachmany, Jen Abrahams and Christina Blackston for their editorial support on this post.

1. Planning Labs at the New York City Department of City Planning was an early leader in digital services in NYC. They build and run products including NYC’s Zoning & Land Use Map, Applicant Maps, the NYC Street Map, GeoSearch and Population FactFinder.

2. Waldo Jaquith has written extensively about bringing agile procurement to government based on his experience in the federal government and working with governments across the country. I encourage anyone interested in the topic to take a look at his writings. He currently works at U.S. Digital Response helping agencies realign their procurement, budgeting, and oversight processes to take control over major software projects.