A Civic Technologist's Practice Guide

A working, data-driven prototype offered for live testing to hundreds of agency staffers with an assumption that the team will learn enough to get a second phase funded can degrade during a long budget process, or end up as the only thing that is ever delivered due to an administration change. Often, in order to move beyond a prototype, a team has to confront the legacy systems in place. Helping move a government agency away from a costly and clunky database architecture (for example) can be one of the biggest possible wins, but it requires long-term focus, significant tech and organizational skill sets, and usually work with procurement and other bureaucratic processes too. As you build any live prototype, it’s worth exploring the current system and starting to think about how—in the best case where everyone is excited to make the prototype real—you will grapple with these challenges.