Imagining a Public Technology Corps
On a chilly Wednesday morning, Jessie wakes up in their San Francisco apartment overlooking the Embarcadero. They’re getting ready for Easy company’s, sprint planning, which includes:
* Digitally survey Ingleside's streets and bike lane quality.* Troubleshoot issues from Public EV Charger infrastructure.* Convert Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFRs) from the 2000s from PDF to XBRL format.* Convert SFPUC water rates into digital format as prescribed by California Gov Ops.* Review results of the PEN Test for SFUSD and recommend strategies to harden web services.* Implement Multi-Factor authentication for Secretary of State to ensure hardening of electoral systems.* Implement Real-Time Bus Time Sensors & BUSWatcher for Alameda Contra-Costa Transit.* Attend a crypto-economic workshop at Berkeley to pilot ConservationCoin, a new way of applying behavioral research in conversation.* Digital tools to assist social service agencies quickly issue housing vouchers based on eligibility and mapping tools for voucher recipients to help them use the vouchers quickly.* Explore the automation of assessments of licensing exams taken by registered nurses, massage and physical therapists.* Team meeting re: routing algorithms for autonomous vehicle to assist social workers getting to outer neighborhoods with ease.* Moderating digital conversations between district leaders and members of the public on community issues using open-source decision making tools.
Jessie is part of a bold new initiative, the Public Technology Corps.
After completing an intensive course administered at CUNY and San Francisco State, Jessie and their peers are graduates of a proud and growing community of public interest technologists on a mission to improve the delivery of public services and the preservation of the civic social compact.
The Public Technology Corps (PTC) is part of a renewed New Deal narrative to fundamentally re-think the how local government and public administration can be more effective in responding to the daily needs of the American public.
Inspired by FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, the quickest and largest mobilization of civilians for civilian causes that terraformed continental America away from a permanent dust-bowl-state, the PTC creates and operates public interest digital services to respond to decades long distrust and erosion of the potential of government to change people’s lives for the better. What led to it were:
- A radical shift in expectations of what constitutes core public services.
- An invisible yet dramatic takeover of public assets by private equity.
- The risk of not only foreign hackers but a hostile central government defunding key local services.
- An erosion of social capital.
These threats led to the creation of a permanent digital skill talent pipeline that offers anyone the opportunity to engage in constructive impact within government operations.
Upon signing up to the PTC , Jessie receives rigorous training in digital skills taught by the best instructors the country has to offer. Far from the days of endlessly scrolling through and posturing on social media, Jessie endeavors to deploy digital solutions wherever the need is most present.
The Public Tech Corps is also offered as a track to all publicly funded colleges where students can opt in for the 1 year course and find themselves serving local government anywhere in the country.
(or the world).
Jessie’s previous job was a bartending in the SF area serving exorbitantly priced cocktails to venture capitalists and newly funded startups working on the next iteration of “changing the world” obfuscating the real agenda capturing, commoditizing, and eventually compromising human psychology and personal data.
While growing up, they witneseed their community come apart at the seams — a housing crisis that forced the family close down the local store and succumb to the travails of the gig economy, one that left them vulnerable and forced to live in their cars for months.
In the 1930s, the CCC mandated that up to half the earned income be sent directly to families. The Public Tech Corps offers Jessie free housing, healthcare, job training, a monthly stipend, and auto-enrollment into a savings plan that invests in whole market ETFs. These benefits require Jessie to serve in the PTC for a minimum of 3 years.
The PTC ensures diversity by design. It’s curriculum is designed and taught by some of the best policy-makers, technologists, and academics in the world who emphasize the responsible implementation of technology in the public realm. An entire semester is devoted towards ethics of technology.
The PTC embodies a manifesto that values radical transparency, restoring the social compact, and conservation through technology and in the public’s interest.
It provides an inclusive pathway for not only young people but also public servants at the end of their careers, or nomadic retirees who administer workshops and offer remote sessions to those who do not have access to supportive human connections.
The completion of Easy Company’s sprint has led to the following outcomes:
- Getting SF Public works prioritize street and bike lane construction and maintenance.
- Unlocking participatory budgeting between communities and government
- Ensuring that water rates are in-line with comparable communities.
- Securing the personally identifiable data of SF’s public school going children and the local elections from malicious activity.
- Improving Bus service in Oakland.
- Pioneering new ways to incentivize water conservation.
- Helping those without homes find vouchers and rapidly guide them towards permanent housing.
- Enhancing manual clerical work with digital tooling.
- Empowering social workers serve more people.
- Community engagement and decision-making in virtual space.
I am thinking of you as a visible token of encouragement to the whole country. Through you, the nation will graduate a fine group of strong, young men, clean-living, trained to self-discipline, and above all, willing and proud to work for the joy of working. That, my friends, must be the new spirit of the American future. And you are the vanguard of that new spirit. — FDR
Notes:
An overview of the Civilian Conservation Corps.
3 million unemployed men were put to work in 6 month tours across 49 states each earning $30 ($520 today) per month, $25 going to their families.
The CCC performed 300 types of work projects within ten approved general classifications:
- Structural improvements: bridges, fire lookout towers, service buildings.
- Transportation: truck trails, minor roads, foot trails and airport landing fields
- Erosion control: check dams, terracing, and vegetable covering
- Flood control: irrigation, drainage, dams, ditching, channel work, riprapping.
- Forest culture: planting trees and shrubs, timber stand improvement, seed collection, nursery work
- Forest protection: fire prevention, fire pre-suppression, firefighting, insect and disease control.
- Landscape and recreation: public camp and picnic ground development, lake and pond site clearing and development
- Range: stock driveways, elimination of predatory animals
- Wildlife: stream improvement, fish stocking, food and cover planting
- Miscellaneous: emergency work, surveys, mosquito control
The outcomes of the CC included:
- The completion of several, massive public works projects across the nation.
- A complete reforestation of America: 3 billion trees planted.
- The construction of trails, lodges, and related facilities in more than 800 parks nationwide.
- Road and Physical Infrastructure for rural America — at the time 50% of the entire American population.
