Civic Technology: Assessing the Factors that Impact Sustainability

My graduation consulting project for Microsoft. Enjoy! Civic Technology - Assessing the Factors that Impact Sustainability, by Kellen Pead

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Guest Blog Post for Microsoft

After sending the final version of my project to Microsoft, they asked me to write a guest post for their blog. You can view the original post here.

Three Observations after Researching Civic Tech for Seven Months

Civic tech has been shown to improve efficiency, economic equality, and government transparency. Before Code for America, applying for food stamps in California was a 45-minute process that prevented 60 percent of those eligible from enrolling. With a user-centered approach, Code for America redesigned the digital application process, reducing the average application time to eight …

Increasing Terra West’s Digital Capacity

Terra West has a digital problem. If you don't believe me, look at the copyright date on the user account page below.   Issue Identification This insufficient digital service is impeding on Terra West's ability to provide a user friendly customer experience. Unlike healthcare.gov there doesn't seem to be much of a foundation that can …

Feedback for the MBTA

  Here are my thoughts after listening to MBTA CTO David Block-Schachter. I believe that MBTA CTO David Block-Schachter is doing the right thing by focusing on a user-centered approach when dealing with MBTA problems. I specifically appreciated that he was thinking about solutions while being cognizant of all users, such as those in deep poverty …

Actions to build TerraWest’s Digital Capacity

Before we start, lets recap the problems: Can’t find the link to manage the properties Have to create a new account for every property Transferred to a different website for making payments Need to create a separate user account to make payments (or fill out the long one-time payment form and pay the $14.95 fee) …

Barriers to an Unofficial Transcript

When you apply for a job or graduate school, the initial application often requires you to submit a transcript. The wording goes something like: "submit a transcript from the academic institution you attended (unofficial is fine for now)." The first time I ran into this was when I started applying to graduate school. It made …

Current State of the RFP

Summary RFPs There are typically four steps in the procurement process for getting a request for proposal (RFP). This process typically applies to procurement at the federal, state, and local levels, although the types of vendors that compete for these projects are quite a bit different. First, conduct any necessary research to identify the type …

Three lessons from Healthcare.gov Creator Henry Chao

  Chao Debrief The first lesson is that when an IT project is under a firm deadline, project delays can cause failures because they may not allow a sufficient amount of time to be spent developing and testing the product. Politicians shoulder most of the responsibility of this problem. Because the Obamacare rollouts were pushed …