Finding Purpose, Connection, and Courage at San Jose City Hall
By: Michelle Thong
Tags: Government Innovation, Digital Government, Digital Service, Service Design, Local Government

Finding Purpose, Connection, and Courage at San Jose City Hall

Last week I served my last day as Digital Services Lead for the City of San Jose, marking the end to an exhilarating and defining chapter of my career. I’ve had the privilege to be a founding member of San Jose’s Office of Civic Innovation, and to pioneer user-centered practices for digital services in America’s 10th largest city. I’ve found purpose, connection, and courage, working with and for colleagues in the City of San Jose to serve our 1 million residents and 60,000 businesses.

Here are some of the things that have mattered most to me during this time, that I will take with me into the next chapter.

One final #CityHallSelfie in front of San Jose City Hall on my last day of work

Purpose

Six years ago, when I walked into San Jose City Hall for the first time, joining government was a major pivot from my previous career in the computer hardware industry. It was a bit of an experiment, the culmination of several years of soul-searching and refining my own career hypotheses about how to make positive change, influenced by the growing civic tech moment and Code for America in particular. Luckily, my hunch that I would find purpose working at City Hall proved 100 percent correct.

If you’re looking to make impact, it’s hard to beat the scope and scale of government. No matter what issues you believe are most important to quality of life, be it recreation, safety, equity, urban development, environmental protection, or economic opportunity, government plays a critical role.

In San Jose, we like to remind ourselves that we are responsible for a staggering range of services, literally from A (airport) to Z (zoo), and everything in between. This keeps us motivated, and disciplined. The diversity of these business lines and the ever-present constraints in staffing and budget mean that if we care about outcomes, we must be exceptionally good at prioritizing, executing, and iterating to improve.

In my mind, San Jose is a particularly special local government to work for, because it represents the future of California. San Jose is diverse, ambitious and forward-looking. It is a city committed to addressing the hardest problems facing our community including housing, transportation, and emergency management.

As a member of San Jose’s Innovation Team, I’ve internalized my role in this mission as a multiplier. Our team, like most similar teams at the federal, state or local level, is tiny compared to the scale of the broader organization. To scale user-centered approaches across government, teams like ours must embrace our role as enablers who help department partners build their own capabilities.

One of my favorite memories in San Jose: Getting senior executives to watch a video of a user trying to find street closure information on our City website. It was quite an “a-ha!” moment for everyone.

Connection

An unexpected joy of being a “multiplier” has been getting back in touch with my inner “camp counselor,” the part of me that loves to convene people, spark connections, and create space for playfulness. Connecting to others and building community has been one of my favorite parts of this journey, both inside and outside of City Hall.

Code for San Jose: There wasn’t a civic innovation community in San Jose when I started working at City Hall, so Kalen Gallagher and I started Code for San Jose. It was our way of putting up a flag that said “hey, come to talk us if you’re excited about using tech and design to make government work better!” And it worked. Of course, we weren’t the only ones with these kinds of ideas, and pretty soon we had lots of friends, including Mayor Liccardo, a Chief Innovation Officer Shireen Santosham, and dozens of local designers and technologists.

Open Data Day 2016: Code for San Jose member Stacey Lee shares her progress with San Jose Mayor Liccardo, Chief Innovation Officer Shireen Santosham, and City Data Analytics staff Erica Garaffo and Kevin Miller.

Code for San Jose turns six years old in March, now driven by a new generation of captains with their own vision and initiatives. (Sign up for their newsletter to learn more.) These days, I only attend hack nights occasionally, but when I do, I’m always buoyed by the sense of optimism and energy, just as I was six years ago when I walked into my first hack night ever, at Open Oakland.

City Hall Innovators Network. Likewise, inside City Hall, some of my most fulfilling moments have been with our “Innovators Network,” a mostly organic and low-key forum for organizing brown bag lunches on topics like agile, streamlining processes, and using data effectively. Like Code for San Jose’s civic hack nights, the simplicity of these lunches belies their power. Convenings like these inspire and sustain City staff at all levels who are championing new practices, by helping them to find like-minded practitioners in other different departments, or discover a new tool that solves a problem they’re working on.

Agile coach Alvina Nishimoto explains agile principles to a room full of City staff

A Community of Practice. In addition to connecting locally, I’ve found it invaluable to tap into a national and even global network of practitioners, like the International Design in Government community. By building relationships with peers in other governments, I’ve heard success stories that informed my sense of what’s possible and deepened my understanding of San Jose’s strengths, through others’ eyes. Most importantly, I’ve found a group of people that helps me celebrate the small victories and shore up my resolve to face obstacles.

Courage

Best practices and other people’s playbooks are great, but let’s be honest: they only get you so far. There is widespread agreement in the civic tech community that putting users first and delivering in increments is good practice. But, your specific strategy depends a lot on the size and budget of your organization, what the enterprise priorities are (or if they are even articulated), whether you have a mandate, how centralized vs decentralized your org is, and where your team is located in the org chart. (I can tell when I’m talking to people who’ve worked in government before when they ask for the org chart before they start discussing best practices.)

In other words, the hard part is figuring out how to operationalize user centered practices in your organizational context. And most days, that usually feels less like this:

And more like this:

Embedding user-centered, agile practices in government takes leadership, patience, and grit. It can be lonely and slow. You need to commit to making progress one step at a time. You need to be pragmatic about what to fight for and when to let things be.

I’m proud to say that by finding the courage to do things differently, by pulling in other people, San Jose has moved the needle on how we deliver services to our residents.

And while it has been essential for me to find my personal courage, our achievements have only been realized when I’ve also succeeded at aligning on purpose and connecting with users and colleagues.

Gratitude

The entire Office of Civic Innovation, December 2019

It’s hard to let go of work that has mattered so much to me, as much as I know the team in place will continue to take the work to new and greater heights. In the end, it’s the influence we’ve had on each other that matters most, more than any specific product or service I worked on. This quote from Joseph Campbell says it well:

We’re not on our journey to save the world but to save ourselves. But in doing that you save the world. The influence of a vital person vitalizes.

As I close out my six years in public service, I am grateful to all the people who have vitalized and influenced me on my journey at San Jose City Hall:

My dedicated colleagues who have championed and embraced new approaches to centering our services on our users;

My fellow civic hackers who have energized and sustained Code for San Jose;

Peers designing better government in other agencies and firms; and,

Teachers, mentors, partners and guides who’ve walked alongside our city on our journey.

If you’re interested in joining this amazing team, they are hiring a Digital Transformation Lead. This position is an evolution of my role with an expanded portfolio that encompasses business process transformation as well as management of the West San Jose Innovation Zone.

What’s next for me

I’m leaving City Hall much wiser about the ways of government, more informed about what’s needed to improve government services, and more convinced than ever of the potential for human-centered, iterative approaches to make digital services work better for people.

In March, I’ll be starting as a Senior Product Manager at Nava Public Benefit Corporation where I’m excited to continue the mission of improving government services, on a national scale.

How have you found purpose, connection, and courage on your journey?

I’m going to miss this view of downtown San Jose, and the privilege of serving the City of San Jose.

Parts of this blog post are adapted from my track keynote speech at the 2019 Code for America Summit.