#hackyourbureaucracy — Public Fediverse posts

September 2 – 8

My “weeknotes” capture events, thoughts, and other items from the past week, mostly focused on work.

[1] Your ever-so-slightly-different writing style probably looks like you faked it with an AI tool (when scanned with AI tools)

We’re clearly on the back side of the AI hype cycle, rapidly sliding down that heady peak in the chart into a trough of despair (for a bit, anyway). That’s good. Because I just learned about another problem: AI tools cannot accurately detect AI-generated writing. (Which is funny, because I can.)

I was tipped off by this Bluesky exchange:

Thank God I’m not in college anymore. I’d get flagged as AI all day long. Meanwhile, Dr. Williams also posted this exchange, explaining the problem a bit more:

Bottom Line: AI tools have zero intelligence. They just have math. The LLM-based tools are good at statistically estimating which words likely come next in a sentence from macro- and meso-language indicators based on an ingestion of a huge corpus of text. But the source text matters tremendously, both for producing new statistically-likely passages and for detecting passages that may be statistically-generated by other LLMs.

And may the AI gods help you if you’re creating content for U.S. and English-speaking European consumers but you aren’t originally from this part of the world, as noted in this WIRED piece: “AI models were mostly trained on data from and for Western markets, and therefore can’t really recognize anything that falls outside of those parameters.”

I remain hopeful that there will be tightly-targeted uses for generative AI in a few areas. But I’m glad to see NVIDIA’s stock start to fall back to Earth and articles like these start to get recognition. The breathless “age of AI” will really just be some nice innovations around the edges, not a total re-think of technology.

[2] Miscellanea

• I was surprised to see the likes of Bloomberg take on the biggest player in local government software this week, in a piece titled: How Local Governments Got Hooked on One Company’s Janky Software. Bloomberg released this blockbuster report on September 5, pointing to lots of Tyler Technologies problems, like a checkered history of failed deployments, technical screw-ups (some of which put thousands of people in jail without justification), and lots of related lawsuits. I had no idea local government software woes could get national attention.
  • I have a lot of thoughts about this Bloomberg piece because Franklin County just killed a multi-year, multi-million-dollar contract with Tyler this summer.
  • I’m debating whether to share those thoughts publicly. But don’t get too excited—my comments are about software strategy, not the specifics of our experience with Tyler.
• As noted previously, we are hiring an Application Developer for our GX Development team. And in less than one week we completed 17 screening calls—a record. I was in some of the calls, but it was Eric Nutt that hit this high-water mark. Really remarkable achievement. We’re moving fast due to the weird process we use for hiring. We need a finalist by 9/27 or we can’t hire until December.
• Listened to a great podcast episode this week—Coaching for Leaders: The Habits That Hold Leaders Back, with Marshall Goldsmith. Goldsmith is the guy that wrote the bestseller What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful and he has plenty of good advice.
• Due to an unattended package found outside the courts building on Thursday morning (which was perceived as a potential threat) most employees were remote on Thursday, so we held our 5th Hack Your Bureaucracy book club via Teams and it was okay. Got to use the Breakout Rooms feature for the first time. Still prefer in-person, though.
• Joined the Digital Service Network‘s Chief Digital Service Officer call on Thursday afternoon and learned the State of Maryland is running into the same problems we are with website consolidation, rationalization, and long-term ownership. It’s good to know we’re not alone, and neither are they! Government across the country are dealing with this past proliferation and trying to bring it back together to build better services for residents.
• And Thursday night I made a final trip to see the Columbus Clippers with some colleagues from the office. Summer is truly at an end.
• Quickbase posted videos from their national Empower24 conference to YouTube this week, including the presentation that included yours truly, Eric Nutt, and Luke McCormac talking about our Unclaimed Funds software project. You can see it below:

https://youtu.be/oSae3eGtKBY

[3] Watch This

I hope Paramount keeps this on YouTube! Starring Archer’s H. Jon Benjamin it’s an exploration of what happens when Starfleet doesn’t do a great job hiring scientists. Anyone who’s been in a staff management role will cringe, and laugh, at this scenario. Stay tuned to the end for the hilarious Tribbles cereal commercial.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkDLgf2em68

[4] Internet Funnies

https://digitalpolity.com/2024/09/09/2024-weeknote-36-here-at-the-end-of-summer-ai-cant-see-ai/

#AI #baseball #Beeck #Bloomberg #bookClub #ColumbusClippers #court #courts #DigitalServiceNetwork #DSN #HackYourBureaucracy #Hiring #InternetFunnies #Leadership #LLM #Maryland #NVIDIA #podcast #quickbase #software #StarTrek #strategy #tribbles #Tyler #TylerTech #TylerTechnologies

June 3 – 9

These are my “weeknotes” to capture events, thoughts, and other items from the past week, mostly focused on work, but with some personal stuff thrown in.

As a post-Code-for-America-Summit week, this one went by fast, but still had a lot happening. As I started to write this update on Sunday, June 9 was in Tennessee, south of Nashville, visiting my sister and her new home. She just moved from Minnesota and I was called in to do tech support on the various TVs, computers, Wi-Fi, and so forth. As I’m finishing this update, I’m back home in Ohio, late on Sunday night.

65 years

This past week started on Sunday, June 3 with a visit from my parents, as we got lunch together in central Ohio. But this coming week (June 11) is their 65th wedding anniversary, if you can believe that. These two kids got married in 1959, the same year Alaska and Hawaii were admitted as the 49th and 50th states, Eisenhower was president, and a new car cost $2,200 on average (about $23,700 adjusted for inflation).

A full 65 years of marriage (and counting) is unfathomable to me, so kudos to them for making it work, one way or another. Personally, I’m unlikely to see 65 years of marriage, as I got married in my 30s instead of my 20s.

Meanwhile, back at the office, a few updates…

My critique of AI

I launched a post on the GX Foundry site that got some traction: AI is a tool, not a mission. This one was a little bit of a rant about the prevalence Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatter at the Code for America Summit and elsewhere in civic tech. I just couldn’t take it anymore and had to fire a shot across the bow, staking out the ground that LLM-based AI is not transformational, it’s just on a hype cycle, and we need to think long and hard about what use this tool has in our public service mission. Plus, how about we get some fundamentals right first? I shared the post on LinkedIn, where it also made some ripples.

Hack your LinkedIn mojo

Meanwhile, another post on LinkedIn made bigger waves, at least to me. While away at the Summit we got the shipment of Hack Your Bureaucracy books we’ll be using to run a book club where about 20 of us read the book together, discuss it, and figure out how we can improve our operations. I shared a photo of the stack and noted what we’re doing. This got noticed by one of the authors, Marina Nitze, and she even offered to join us for one of the book club sessions! It also got liked by Bob Sutton, author of The Friction Project, worthy of a future book club. Even Jennifer Pahlka dropped a like on the post.

This stuff on LinkedIn doesn’t really change the world, but it is fun, and a chance to read a book where the author actually joins us for a chat is pretty special.

Rebooting “projects” somehow

Back in the real world (but still shared via LinkedIn), we posted a Project Manager position to start gathering candidates. But I have to admit, I’m conflicted about this role. Classic “project management” isn’t getting the job done for us, and I’m not entirely sure why. We’re starting to explore some new thinking around this, but we don’t have an alternative model to share yet. If we figure out a new way of running projects, we’ll share it somewhere.

Chat with USDR

A U.S. Digital Response (USDR) contact I made at Code For America was kind enough to spend about 30 minutes with me this week to explore setting up a consulting agreement where we would get some volunteers from the USDR network to review our current staff construction, compare it to industry exemplars, and advise on how we could change over time to meet our intended digital service mission.

I know we are not currently setup for maximum success in the digital services space, but it’s hard to know where to focus next for improvements. For example, I know we need actual UX Research capacity, but is that the most important thing to hire next? What about an experienced Product Manager (or Owner) to teach us how to get that practice moving? Whatever the case may be, I just want another set of eyes on our current team capabilities, compared against our aspirations so we can prepare for the future thoughtfully.

Hopefully something comes together with USDR in the next month.

We need a national boot camp for government digital service teams

I have some notes and want to spend time writing this up, but in short I realized at the Code for America Summit that there’s no “boot camp” or other onboarding program to teach the fundamental concepts of developing digital services in a government organization. There are tons of resources out there, but they are not organized in a “teaching” mode where someone can get up to speed quickly on the basics. I think this is a problem to be solved.

Imagine: You’re working for a government entity that has not yet even thought about digital services, but to get started you go to the Code for America Summit. You’d be completely lost. I was able to keep up with all the presentations and ideas at #CfASummit, but only because I’ve been self-studying this stuff for the past 2 years.

Given how many government teams need to build digital capacity, we need to get something together in the industry that teaches the basics, points to examples, and builds a core set of resources to learn more. A “Government Digital Services 101” course, if you will. The raw elements are out there, they just aren’t organized.

I shared this idea with the Beeck Center and turns out Kirsten Wyatt was thinking the exact same thing! Indeed, she had at least one meeting last week to start some of those talks! So maybe something will come together, maybe even soon. I hope I can help out somehow.

Miscellanea

• My latest drive-to-Alaska photos post is live. Only one more to complete the set (coming next week).
• The Chief Digital Service Officer (CDSO) meeting, hosted by the Digital Service Network (DSN) at the Beeck Center was held this past week, showcasing a research report from students at UNC that looked at the structures, funding, and goals of digital service teams across the country. Can’t wait to see that published for everyone.
• Before the night is out, I will be filing my response to the Beeck Center’s request for survey responses for a new fellowship they are creating. I’m a little late, but hopefully I can help out.

Internet funnies

And now a random roundup of stuff that made me chuckle, most often from Bluesky.

https://digitalpolity.com/2024/06/09/2024-weeknote-23-back-from-the-summit-with-ideas/

#1959 #AI #anniversary #artificialIntelligence #BeeckCenter #CDSO #CfASummit #CodeForAmerica #DSN #HackYourBureaucracy #Hiring #LinkedIn #LLM #projectManagement #Tennessee #USDigitalResponse #USDR

I just bought Marina Nitze
& Nick Sinai
book #HackYourBureaucracy for a friend in #government. https://hackyourbureaucracy.com

After watching Marina at #FWD50 & at the IOG's #ELPdigi

I am convinced that any #CivilServant seeking to create change should read it.