Code for America Summit 2024 videos now available
19 videos ready to view on-demand
Readers of this blog may remember we sent a 4-person team to our first Code for America Summit earlier this year. We were so thankful to learn from our peers and we enjoyed being challenged to think differently about government tech and digital community practices. In fact, we shared our thoughts from each of the 3 days of the conference in Oakland:
#CfASummit 2024 Videos
Well, if you couldn’t attend the Summit, now you can get at least a taste of the event through a collection of 19 videos shared by Code for America within the last week. Here’s the full YouTube playlist:
My own favorite videos…
Unraveling the threads of algorithmic influence: A fireside chat with Dr. Safiya Noble (22 min)
Dr. Noble makes a convincing case for how algorithms underlying AI and other applications need much more scrutiny and oversight because they can create or re-create social problems like racism and sexism in code, making these kinds of problems ever-harder to solve.
Leading the way forward (13 min)
Anytime you can hear folks from the Beeck Center or U.S. Digital Response, you should probably do it. They are doing the best work in the country for those of us trying to apply modern digital techniques to government services. Lynn Overman from Beeck and Hillary Hartley from USDR address a variety of topics. Their points around AI are particularly important for government tech folks to hear.
Procurement for the people (7 min)
It’s not a long video, but it’s vital for folks in government to see and think about. For many of us, procurement is a god-awful mess in government because it’s an accretion of decades of “stopping bad things from happening” instead of enabling innovation with just enough controls to prevent waste or malfeasance. In this case Michael Owh shares a story from his time leading procurement efforts in big cities like New York and Los Angeles.
Making tax filing free and easy with Direct File (14 min)
It’s been a long time coming, but the work Code for America and others have been doing with the IRS has finally been launched in the first wave in 2024. And we already know it’s expanding for 2025 and will remain a permanent option. This is a triumph of innovation at several levels, both because it’s a new government program that solves real problems for millions of people, but also because the IRS did the right thing by developing this program in an agile, iterative way, launching small changes, testing, getting feedback, adjusting, and growing with each wave of development. I’m probably more excited at their success in the process than in the outcome.
Looking forward to 2025
We expect to see the Summit swing back to the east coast (D.C.) next year, and we’re already thinking about who to send. There’s so much more to learn, and this is such a great place to do it. We’ll register as soon as we can!