Nina Bianchi, Solutions Principal, Public Sector, Medallia
Nina Walia, Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Senior Adviser, White House Presidential Innovation Fellows
In conversation with: Jason Mayden, Co-chair, Fortune Brainstorm Design


Brainstorm Design 2022 - Redesigning Democracy 

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Brainstorm Design 2022 - Redesigning Democracy 


the federal government could be viewed as the ultimate design client given the tremendous scope of his activities and the fact that it touches every member of our nation. But it also presents a myriad of challenges, negative perceptions from those who find it hard to access government services, clunky technology interfaces and unresponsive silo bureaucracies but changes on the way a presidential order is enlisting designers to transform the way government services are designed and delivered with the goal of rebuilding trust in government. We'll hear from two designers at the center of this undertaking who are helping to solve the ultimate design Shannon's challenge designing democracy. Two point Oh, please welcome to the stage. Nina bianchi Solutions Solutions, Principal public sector of Medallion and Nina WAlia entrepreneur residents and senior advisers to the White House presidential Innovation fellows. Thank you guys welcome welcome. Welcome selfishly. This is special for me because these are two of my heroes. So I've known them for so long, they're phenomenal. So I'm excited to dig in and get a sense of your background and have you both share your story. So Nina B and Nina W welcome to the stage, the powerful to Nina's exponentially needed to the, to the second power. Um, so I want to ask both of you briefly to share your backgrounds, the organizations you work for and then, you know, coming at this challenge from from two different directions, you know, tell us a little bit about that work and how you got started on it. Um, so I usually direct uh, teams and experiences for emerging technology and I've had the pleasure and privilege of doing so at companies like google Nike ge healthcare startups. But now I'm bringing all that experience and build expertise to the government where um I am a White House presidential innovation fellow um acting as a senior adviser and thought partner to federal leaders so that we can better design, build and deliver public services. Awesome. And Jason, thank you so much for having us here today. I'm thrilled to be here and we're closing this amazing event out at Medallion. The solution principal and we're elevating the human experience of government by putting people's voices at the center of everything and I will get into more detail what that means, my history, my short history. I recently served in the federal government as well. So I was Chief of People and Culture at the U. S. Food and Drug Administration. That tour of duty coincidentally coincide with the global pandemic. So it was a grand challenge, an honor to serve our nation at that time and previous to serving as the FDA, I was also a White House presidential Innovation fellow where I was initially deployed on then Vice President biden's cancer Moonshot to really bring the patient voice at the center of personalized medicine phenomenal in his real life superheroes. Can you both discuss how the mandate to deploy designed to help transform government comes directly from the top from biden and if so you know what does it mean with the executive order that was put out for C. X. And the X. Policy that are changing the way that democracy is being designed today. Yeah I'm trying to stay calm because these are things I get very excited about that. I I was thinking about bracken yesterday he answered a question and I think the question was where to get started in the design transformation and I think he said um but it starts with the Ceo and I was like that's so true. We have our nation's Ceo gets it. And so President biden put out this executive order for transforming customer experience and uh delivery of services, public service delivery. Not only that but then it's also really important pillar of the presidential management agenda. So what all this means is number one for the first time the government is going to have to account for the for public like the public experience with with getting benefits and interaction with government. That's huge like someone once said that's a big freaking deal. Um so stoked about that. It means assessing performance, publicly reporting the performance and continuously integrating customer feedback and all of this will be on performance dot gov. There's already some pre information there but you'll be able to follow along, I no longer work for the government so I can speak a bit more freely. This is a seriously huge deal. Um on the record this is monumental. It is truly transformative and I want to say former President Obama did start this transformation part of that was designing the White House presidential innovation program to bring all of these amazing people into government to help fuel this change. But what we're looking at now is a moon shot of the greatest order. And uh, we hear a lot of federal leaders speaking to this moon shot and it's all of agency, it's all of industry. So everyone out there, you are part of this too. And our job is to take this Moonshot rally around the moon shot and make it a moon landing. And that's what I'm most excited about because we know how to make this work, right? We know how to take the idea and put it into action. Yes. And just to add to that, you know, like it's coming at a time of of crisis where multiple crisis, climate covid and this is not just to recover from those, this is exciting because it's about overcoming this on a, on a sustainable basis. So what's fascinating is that both of you have had government experience, you've had corporate experience. Are there many designers and government right now working on this that you believe understand the problem and how to actually get after the solutions. Yes. Um, and that and that's that's part of, I think the work that we're also doing, I think, you know, do you want to speak to some of them? I think, I mean it requires all to learn new ways of working out so a lot of agencies are going through tremendous learning curves and learning journeys themselves. So I'm really excited right now last week I just had a call about it this morning helping federal leaders at the top of all agencies learn design thinking, learn what is an experienced mindset, what does it take to really think in a systemic way and what does it take to put people's voice at the center of their decision making. So I'm gonna shout out to the White House Leadership Development Program working with that program to lead amazing labs. Really great and also the C. X. Fellows. It's a lot of training learning coaching. So you said something I think that's very important you said putting people's voices at the center of government what was there before. So I'm not I'm not like government for the people by the people they wrote it down, imagine you're having a life event which requires you to navigate a web of government services and every you know, they all talk to in different ways. There's a phone, there's an email, there's a letter um that's the current reality, right? And part of this mandate is to actually look at these life events as a customer journey which is so exciting. So so you know, introducing this concept um as we look at major life events that that have major impacts on people's lives and um have a large volume coming in and saying, instead of having to go to each one of these doors, let's anticipate and understand your needs. And so right now um there is an effort to begin research on a few major life events like um turning 65 and retiring. I mean there's so much their Medicare, Social Security housing considerations facing a disaster um having a child and early childhood of low income families and a couple others. I'll add a little to that as well and it's true the voice of the people have always been there and these life events have always been there. However, we're starting to look at them with the power of design and technology and I think sometimes the government The voice of the people in the ye olde days with like quills and inks and but yet we live in 2022. So being able to leverage data, machine learning. So for example the veterans affairs bringing the voice of the people through data parsing insights, making it actionable. All the things we do as designers. Right, bringing that straight up to the secretary's office and say, hey this is what our people are saying, how are you going to make a decision about it? And then on a micro level, let's say in a veterans hospital, being able to look at feedback from patients say, hey I don't think our physicians are sitting down long enough with our patients at discharge, let's make a change there. So macro micro people's voices in the form of data. You just reminded me of a fun fact which is I was just thinking about like how would speed back coming like back in the day. Oh yeah Lincoln has like an open door policy at the white house and you could just walk in and you could talk to him and like that that was that was true. Direct feedback, the user experience. It's true. It's like hey I'm not really happy with the government. Can we talk about it? And the fact that you're able to track that with data and we laugh. But the reality is this is a monumental shift in how we've seen the governance of our country. You know evolved because now we're considering that each data point is a human being. It's a life that it should be considered, that should be discussed, that should be accounted for us, not just for a census. You know, it's for actual improvement of our well being. So it is phenomenal important work. And I think you know, need to be for you being on the outside. Now how are you helping dozens of agencies that are contracting with the government be prepared to take on this type of work, taking the best from customer employee experience from industry and bringing it into the government and I decided to leave the government take a break join Medallion and we are really working at scale and helping many agencies. U. S. D. A. CMS. V. A. Work through this in an iterative process. So it's human centered design process to bring the voice of the people to those who need it when they need it within the agencies. And that's critically important because that's where our resources and our taxes get deployed when we know what problems are actually relevant to our society. And so for you, Nina, w how do you actually do the goal setting and what are some of the current goals of the work that you're undertaking? You know, with this new initiative around design and experience. So how this all came to be, why we're even seeing this um, happen Or around two major goals. one is to rebuild trust in the government. And the second is to enact equity. Really speaking to a few words you said earlier and I'm just gonna dive into those a little. Um, I mean government should just work right, every interaction that we have with anyone, you know, but especially with the government is a chance. You know, whether you're um filing your taxes and waiting for your return, trying to renew your passport. That is a chance to show, hey, you can trust me. This is just going to work and rebuilding that trust and that face in democracy is such a big part of how design is being used here. So rebuilding trust. Um, the second part and this is where I know like you have to keep time because I can go off on this one. Um, because it's amazing is to enact equity because every interaction again that you have with everyone and with the government is a chance to serve and treat people with dignity and respect. And I mean we all know what administrative burden is. We like with the government like be real, it's there, but we don't all experience it equally. And the truth is there are um, traditionally underserved communities who face a disproportionate amount of administrative burden. I mean we're talking about, we're talking about time tech. I mean we all have the most of us have the privilege of working from home now. I'm thinking about like there are people providing what are essential services, They don't have that chance and they may even be working more than one job. Where is that time is that time to deal with that all of this burden. Um, there's, there's the learning of, you know, if if, if you, you've had the understanding of how to navigate a system, you don't have to take all that time to understand how it works. And then one thing that I've been thinking about because of the discussions that we've been having around, um, for trauma informed design. It's also just the psychological burden that also comes and and like Rachel said, you know, we all have different ones. So imagine, um, you know, you know as a brown person, you know if I'm being asked over and over by the government um what's your name and who are all the people in your household? Well I'm coming with some other stuff like why are you, why do you keep asking why you keep checking on me? So I was kind of getting excited. Well I was getting excited by everything George was saying but all of those things are listed in um we have an office of management and budget and they put out all these government words, a memory a memorandum which charges agencies when they are doing this work, they have to account for all of those burdens. So in a way George it's building a code of ethics. I was getting really excited thinking about that, building kind of ethics and accountability because that like it's written in there, you'll have to address these burdens cities, communities. I mean because we those of us who worked on mobile apps, we understand the impact of you know cognitive fatigue and decision fatigue. Right and how many choices you have to make, how many swipes, how many steps And if english isn't your first language or you have an impairment, it becomes even more detrimental to your experience. And so a lot of what you all are doing is being discussed on the podcast solving for X. Like that type of work I would love to know like what is the goal of this project and what are you hoping to you know um you know get people to pay attention to these discussions. Yes. So we are working on a podcast called solving for X. And I think the core of the question like what is X, what is the future of experience? What is the future of government experience? I hypothesize hypothesize it is work experience. So really looking at what it takes again to make this Moonshot into a moon landing and really develop healthy, robust equitable, fair compassionate society in which we all are receiving and connecting and serving one another better. Um there is this strange tendency I think of the government to separate everything and create silos and I'm learning this is also a thing in big companies um but bringing I. T and HR and operations together two truly prototype the future of work with better experiences. Yeah. And so one of the last questions I have is the government is clearly making investments in design. So what opportunities exist today that are unfilled that people may need to be made aware of or any initiatives that you would like to highlight for us to be able to participate in the work that you're doing with the fellowship? Yes, so many. Okay, um first I want to say um where the administration is making an investment in creating a front door to government. So imagine a world where you would, you can just go to this one place, the usa dot gov and that's where you could find out about all the your benefits you're eligible for, do do all the work you need to, without having to go to all these different doors um, and, and, and, and proactively kind of understand what you are, you are eligible for. Um, the, the other plug I'm going to give is um, two that you can all do is to establish support, um, do whatever you can to bring forth civic leave programs at where you are now, a lot of uh, some big tech companies already have these in place, but it gives a chance for really practice leaders to come in and contribute. And not only that, I promise you just from like my experience, they will, they will come back better leaders. They will, they will learn a version of leadership which is servant leadership where you were in service of others, not in charge of others that it is. I don't know if you can get anywhere else. Um, so there's that and then I also want to put a plug that we are solving. I mean if you want to talk about scale, There's No, No 1's skills like the government. So if y'all are interested in in solving them, some like really impactful problems. We are hiring designers, we have created the actual position of designers were in the, in the midst of doing that, the levels, the language because right now if you if you were to go on usa jobs and search you would not find the word design. It's not well understood. So that's something that we're really investing in establishing this career path. So we're hiring. Um, I want one more plug on the Civic Lead programs. There's there's right now applications are open for the program. I'm a part of which is the presidential Innovation fellow. So they're open till I think June 24 or so. Um, and this is that this is sort of senior senior leaders to come be thought partners. But we also have opportunities for um early or junior technologists, designers, data people in a newly established program called the U. S. Digital Core. And I just highly recommend taking advantage of these programs. Wonderful. So hopefully you got all those names. If not we'll make sure that the information is distributed. But thank you both for having us in conversation. Thank you. Thank you.