April 8-14
This is my ongoing attempt at producing “weeknotes” to capture events, thoughts, and other items from the past week, mostly focused on my professional work. You can subscribe if you’d like to receive these via email or via Substack notifications.
My notes will be a little abbreviated this week due to 2 big events…
2024 Total Solar Eclipse
I was off work on Monday to view the eclipse out on the western edge of Ohio. I didn’t end up going to Texas due to weather—clouds in Ohio were predicted to be about the same or better than Texas, so why make the drive and pay for all the gas, hotels, and so forth?
I’ve posted photos and videos over on my updated weekly photo blog photonic teleportation. It was a great experience, and I’m so thankful the weather held out well enough to make it work. I’m not one of those people that claims it “changed my life” or anything like that — I just enjoy it a lot. What’s so crazy is that I saw the 2017 total solar eclipse, too. Didn’t think I’d experience two in such rapid succession.
The next eclipse to cross a big swath of the U.S. is in 2045, a full 21 years from now. I plan to still be alive then, but you never know.
CDSO conference in DC
The day after the eclipse I traveled to Washington, DC to attend a conference hosted by the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation, focused on a handful of Chief Digital Service Officers (CDSOs) from federal, state, and local governments. Indeed, this conference was put on specifically by the Digital Service Network team at the Beeck Center.
With only about 25 of us in attendance, this was a pretty intense conference. It was also expertly hosted on the Georgetown campus by the DSN team, with a side-trip to the United States Digital Service (USDS) in their home base — the very secure Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB) directly next to the White House.
Honestly, I’m exhausted by this week and have to prep a bunch of stuff for two days of off-site leadership meetings starting tomorrow, so I can’t recap the conference with too much detail right now. But there are a few brief takeaways I can share:
I don’t know how the Beeck Center / DSN and the U.S. Digital Response teams are funded (I just haven’t explored this yet), but wow… they are funded. They are all running very well-organized, well-resourced teams with top-tier talent calling the shots. It’s impressive. I hope the funders keep the money flowing because the impact produced by these organizations is vital.
All the problems / challenges we are experiencing in the GX Foundry are typical. Limited resources, too many demands on our time, inherited tech and policy decisions that blunt service effectiveness… all of it is “normal.” That doesn’t mean it’s right, it’s just that we have plenty of company.
The public servants working on developing digital government practices are the vanguard of government service generally. The quality of talent, the dedication to improving public service, and the relentless self-imposed pressure to improve is astonishing. I knew there were good people working hard to make a difference, but I didn’t realize it was this intense (and heartwarming!).
Digital Service Standards are not new, but they are not as widely deployed as I would have expected in the American government space. Even USDS doesn’t have them today. Danny Mintz from Code for America came in to talk about Standards, and there’s a lot to do here—this is a rich area for exploration. The Brits have had it forever now. We need to do something similar.
The difference between State and Local governments is substantial when it comes to digital services, and the needs of those two levels are more divergent than I expected. The only State that felt like it was close to my own large County experience was Delaware, probably because it’s only got about 1M people — the same as Franklin County. Future efforts to share resources and ideas across digital government teams may need to stratify by size and complexity of team.
DC is a character in the American story
When not in a charged-up conference session, I was enjoying being in DC in the spring time, before the heat and humidity chokes the city for months on end. I walked a lot, used the Metro, took in a White House East Wing tour, and attended a concert at the Kennedy Center.
There’s a lot of corruption in DC, and all too often lately it feels as though our entire political system is melting down. But if you walk around our capitol and see these structures, the monuments, the statues… it feels timeless and there’s a patriotic sensibility that bubbles up, even in my cynical heart.
DC feels as though it represents the best of our intentions. It’s why the January 6 insurrection felt like such a slap in the face—it defiled a place trying its best to represent our hard-earned mythology.
I need to go back more often.
Internet funnies
AI is now routinely becoming the butt of online jokes. And, I would argue, it’s earned the derision and skepticism.
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