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<aside> 💡 See other units in the syllabus
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This is a detailed breakdown of how David Eaves, a Lecturer at the University College London's Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (UCL IIPP), teaches the contents of Unit 4 of the open access syllabus developed by Teaching Public Service in the Digital Age. Read how part two of Unit 4 is taught here.
It is the first in a series of twenty-five classes that David developed originally for the Harvard Kennedy School's master and executive education programs, where he taught for eight years, and are now taught at UCL's master and applied learning programs.
We believe presenting diverse ways to teach the syllabus will help others adopt and teach the material in various contexts. See here how Konstanz University's Prof Ines Mergel teaches the same unit.
This page was developed for university faculty who teach public administrators or master's levels students in public policy and public administration. This material may also be suitable for teaching to upper year undergraduates.
In the previous unit, we explored the difference between project management methodologies that emphasize planning (referred to in this course as waterfall-like approaches) and the ones that emphasize learning (referred to in this course as agile-like approaches). The agile-like approaches focus on learning by engaging with a product or services users throughout the development process, gathering data about effectiveness, compatibility with existing workflows and other information that might improve or limit the impact of the work. Central to this iterative learning approach is taking a user-centered approach to drive better policy implementation.
In this class, we will dive deep into a case about a website for applicants to California's food stamp program. The case - Hacking Bureaucracy: Reimagining California's Food Stamp Program In The Digital Age - illustrates how the process of scaling and expanding the scope of the service introduced complexities that hindered the government's ability to focus on users. Throughout the analysis, students are encouraged to reflect on how the Code for America team employed user-centered design to improve enrollment outcomes and the barriers they faced. In doing so, they examine the implications for public policy.
<aside> 💡 Context for the Hacking Bureaucracy: Reimagining California's Food Stamp Program In The Digital Age: In 2014, three former Code for America fellows embarked on a one-year skunk works journey to use technology to improve the enrollment process for California’s SNAP (food stamp) program, called MyBenefits CalWIN. Their hope was to simplify the process and increase the number of San Francisco residents receiving the benefits. The case describes a user-centered approach to identifying bottlenecks within the MyBenefits CalWIN enrollment process and the low cost, fast solution the group ultimately proposed and built. The case asks students to consider the opportunities, challenges and risks created by information technology in the public sector and whether taking a user-centered approach to policy implementation can improve social service delivery.
Although this class is focused on the MyBenefits CalWIN case, facilitators can alternatively present other cases of government systems which were considered hard to navigate and that went through a user-focused revamp.
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<aside> â›” The Hacking Bureaucracy: Reimagining California's Food Stamp Program In The Digital Age case study is sadly not open access. However a free copy for review can be downloaded from the HKS Case Store.
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By the end of this class students should be able to:
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<aside> 💡 This class has a specific focus on **Competency 1 - Users.** See all eight competencies here.
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Core Reading (Required)