Podcast: Civic Technology and Public Service with Cyd Harrell

Posted on March 23, 2021


Cyd Harrell - GovLove

Cyd Harrell

Cyd Harrell
Civic Design Consultant & Author
Bio | LinkedIn | Twitter


Move carefully and fix things. Cyd Harrell joined the podcast to talk about her new book, A Civic Technologist’s Practice Guide. She shared her perspective on working in civic technology as a volunteer and as part of the Federal Government for 18F. She discussed lessons for government and civic technologists as well as the importance of user research.

Host: Kirsten Wyatt

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Episode Transcription

Kirsten Wyatt  00:09

Coming to you from Portland, Oregon, this is Gov love, a podcast about local government. Gov Love is produced by ELGL, the Engaging Local Government Leaders network, we engage the brightest minds in local government. I’m Kirsten Wyatt, the ELGL co founder and executive director. And today I’m joined by Cyd Harrell, the author of A Civic Technologist’s Practice Guide, the April ELGL book club City Hall Shelfie selection. Cyd, Welcome to Gov Love.

Cyd Harrell  00:38

Thank you so much, Kirsten.

Kirsten Wyatt  00:40

Today we’re talking about Cyd’s book as well as her civic technology work with city, county, state and federal government. But first, let’s get started with a lightning round. What is your most controversial non political opinion?

Cyd Harrell  00:55

Yogurt is the worst thing on earth. 

Kirsten Wyatt  00:57

Wow. Even like frozen yogurt, or just like-

Cyd Harrell  01:00

Can’t stand it, can’t be in the same room with it.

Kirsten Wyatt  01:03

Wow. Even if you put toppings on it, you’re still like a hard No? 

Cyd Harrell  01:07

Hard no. 

Kirsten Wyatt  01:08

Okay. What book are you currently reading? And would you recommend it?

Cyd Harrell  01:14

I’m taking most of this week off. So I’ve gone full space opera. So I’m reading A Desolation Called Peace, which is the sequel to another space opera called A Memory Called Empire. And yes, I would definitely recommend that if you’re into that sort of thing. 

Kirsten Wyatt  01:28

Perfect. All right, what is the first app or tool you look at on your phone when you wake up in the morning?

Cyd Harrell  01:36

Oh, gosh, this is embarrassing, but it’s Twitter.

Kirsten Wyatt  01:41

Not embarrassing at all. And, again, for our listeners, make sure you’re following Cyd on Twitter. Definitely a must follow. And then lastly, if you could give advice to your 21 year old self, what would you say?

Cyd Harrell  01:55

Number one, do something about that hair. Number two, hang in there. This is all gonna make sense and another 15 or 20.

Kirsten Wyatt  02:04

Great advice, I think for for all of us to reflect back on. Alright, before we begin, I do have some exciting news for our listeners, tickets for ELGL pop ups are now on sale. ELGL pop ups are our approach to regional conferences, and this year are hosted virtually on May 21st. These events are a great way to learn more about regional local government topics. Tickets are $10 for students $40 per person, or $80 for an all access pass, to attend any region sessions. We also have volume discounts. If you want to sign up your whole team. Visit ELGLPopUps.com to save your spot. Alright, let’s get started. Cyd, tell us about your career path.

Cyd Harrell  02:46

Right. So starting back in 1992, which wasn’t a great year to graduate. I first actually volunteered on Senator Murray’s political campaign for the Senate. But I really needed to get some paid work. So I ended up taking a crummy customer service job at a tech company that doesn’t exist anymore. It was called Aldous, and they made the original pagemaker. So you know, doing 100 phone calls a day, that sort of thing. And that was fairly miserable, though I now really appreciate some things I learned from it. And went back to the book publishing program at the University of Denver, and decided to go into publishing and wanting to be out of tech. So I looked for jobs in publishing. And lo and behold, got a job at a tech publisher. And one of the things I got to slash had to do while I was there was build their first website. So I got involved with an organization called SF Web Girls, later, San Francisco Women on the Web. Eventually left, the publisher and decided if I was going to be in tech, I would be in tech, and got a job at Charles Schwab at the time when trading was just a few months past going online and things were very exciting. So I was in QA there and thought of myself very much as part of the tech industry. But I was a poet on the side. Stayed at Charles Schwab for eight years after starting as a temp, and then got laid off in the wake of, the long wake of the 2001 crash. So I think it was 2006. Went to a user research consulting company because by that time, I had discovered that I was a UX person, little company called Bolt Peters, which was a wonderful, small place that did a lot of interesting things. And it was while I was there that I started to get interested in what was going on in civic tech. So around 2010 or so I started attending hackathons on weekends, trepidatiously, because being a researcher and designer rather than a coder, I wasn’t sure if people would want me but everybody was always actually pretty welcoming. And when that company was bought by Facebook, which was on an absolute spree of buying design companies around 2012, I decided that that wasn’t where I wanted to be. And I went full time into civic tech. So then I did some project work with the Center for Civic design and joined up at Code for America. And at Code for America, I was originally head of UX, and then head of product. And then I did a federal term with 18 F, which is one of the two agencies that President Obama started to modernize tech and the federal government. I left after one term in 2018. And now I’m an independent consultant, one of my most exciting assignments right now is working with the California Courts, on digital services for people who are representing themselves in civil cases. And here I am.

Kirsten Wyatt  05:44

And for listeners who may be unfamiliar with this world of civic tech, how do you, how do you define civic technology?

Cyd Harrell  05:54

So I say that the desire of, the motivation of civic tech is that we want public digital goods and public digital services that are as good as the ones offered in the private sector, probably different, of course, but just as good. We want to be able to exercise our rights and pursue community and take care of each other, you know, with the ease and respect that the best digital products can afford. And I think there’s an explicit piece in there too, that we want to help build the capacity of government to do all of those things.

Kirsten Wyatt  06:31

And thinking about your career path, you obviously had a chance, and you work in private sector, probably experience, you know, the benefits and the excitements excitement that comes from that. What What made you decide, you know, once that company got acquired, yes, I’m going to go civic tech, I’m going to, I’m going to move over to the public side of things, and, you know, leave leave the private sector.

Cyd Harrell  07:01

Honestly, in many ways, it’s more interesting. I think, if you’re in the design field, broadly, the problems to solve are bigger and at a sort of a broader scale and require a lot more of you. And I was, you know, I was reaching the age of 40, when that happened. And I had a seven year old kid, and starting to think about, you know, whether me helping make a better car configurator was really doing something for the world that she would live in, versus maybe me helping make a, you know, food stamp application or something. Although, I have to say civic tech in 2010, hadn’t quite earned the trust to work on those bigger issues as much yet. Yeah, so I, you know, I came to it at a fairly senior point, having achieved some success in a private sector field and feeling like I had really useful skills that I could maybe put to better use for my community and my kid and, and the rest of everybody.

Kirsten Wyatt  08:01

I like that you use the term meandering path. And I feel like a lot of our listeners will be able to relate to this idea that sometimes life takes you in some different directions, and then it leads you to where you should be. And so, you know, you volunteered first, you know, you were at hackathons, and, and, you know, doing some of this volunteer work, and then stepping into government full time. How did that help you, I think, become as effective as you’ve been in working with government? And would you recommend that approach to somebody listening?

Cyd Harrell  08:35

I do recommend that approach, I think, you know, it’s always good if you’re making a big change to be able to dip a toe in the water. But it’s also good to have a chance to learn about the environment where you’re going, and the colleagues that you might be going to and kind of take account of yourself, and whether you’re ready and what you’re up for. I met a lot of different city officials at hackathons and at Code for America and got to hear a lot about what they dealt with. And so when I went to the federal government, which was my first officially official government job, there were a lot of things that I wasn’t surprised by, although, of course, the federal government’s its own ginormous entity and has its own particular culture. You know, I think a lot of civic tech careers actually go back and forth between lighter and heavier modes. One of the problems in the field as I know, its a field in, a problem in a lot of government fields is burnout. And so having some capacity to step back for a bit, keep doing some volunteer work, take a full time gig for a couple of years. Do something like a rescue project. I know a lot of folks, for example, have worked on support operations as part of United States digital response in the pandemic or what those journalists from the Atlantic did with the COVID tracking project or healthcare.gov, rescue, sometimes those are the things that call a private sector technologist into the field. And they’re very, very intense. And so then sometimes it’s great to be able to step back. But I also like to say if I’m ever given career advice that you can make a coherent story out of my career now, but I probably took until 20 years into it for that to actually work and, and my philosophy, and I’m somewhat privileged. So you know, I’m lucky to be able to do this, but to just take an opportunity that advanced something I wanted, in some ways, whether it was a field that was closer to my heart, or sometimes, you know, promotion or better pay. And that’s how it ends up mattering is because I didn’t know a straight line that I was going on.

Kirsten Wyatt  10:51

You talk about burnout in the book, which I think was a really effective section. Talk to us about how you’ve managed that for yourself, but then also for people that you’ve worked with, or or people that you’ve advised.

Cyd Harrell  11:10

Yeah, you know, I am pretty transparent that I experienced fairly serious burnout in the second half of my term at 18F, when I was chief of staff and things were really challenging. And the federal government at that point in the organization was, you know, on a precarious footing as far as whether it was going to survive through various budget negotiations. And I have experienced it at other times, but not quite that badly. And in thinking about what to tell mission oriented people who can always see how much work there is to do. The two things I think about a lot are to think about it as a relay, where if you can do whatever you can do, and write down what happened and what you learned, and get that to the next person in the relay, then you can rest on the sideline for a bit. And because of that, because it is a relay and a team sport, and all of these athletic metaphors, it’s really, really important to have community broadly, and I think it can be harder than I expected, I was actually surprised when I started working with local governments, how difficult it can be for people who do the same thing in different cities or different regions, to connect with each other regularly and hear about what they share and, you know, commiserate, and also celebrate what they’re all doing. Civic tech has sort of come from private sector tech and build this little infrastructure of conferences and slack teams and and some expected community like that. So that’s great. But I think also more intimately, I kept a diary, a not daily diary, but like a weekly reflection, during that time when things were really difficult. And I asked my husband, to read it every now and then. And just double check, you know, do I sound okay? And figure out, you know, how we could shift things, if I was really at the edge.

Kirsten Wyatt  13:20

One thing you say about that concept of community and checking in on one another. And then, you know, I feel like a theme that comes up often in these podcasts is just reminding folks, you know, that you’re not alone when you’re going through these really intense times. So I’m glad that you mentioned that. And again, glad that you include a section in the book, for readers to learn from your experiences, and perhaps take some of those lessons back to their own teams. You also dedicate a chapter to equity, and you recognize that both government and tech are not truly equitable. Talk to us about this, why it’s important and why why you focused on it in the book.

Cyd Harrell  14:06

So, you know, I hope it’s fairly clear that, you know, we haven’t succeeded at the whole American project of democracy in every way, and for everybody in America as of yet, and that plays out on on macro and micro scales. And of course, the technology industry does a really poor job of reflecting the American population. And this is documented in a number of surveys and a number of, you know, appalling incidents where technologists of color or technologists who are both women and of color, in particular, black women have had really, really difficult experiences despite great talents and often great support in the tech industry. And this is the public sphere, everybody listening to this probably has it more ingrained in them than then even in me, that is supposed to be for everybody. And so if we, as a tech industry or a civic tech field are not reflecting that everybody, we miss really important things. We miss the actual life experience of, you know, what it’s like to have difficulty getting to vote or what it’s like to be harassed or what it’s like to be excluded from ordinary societal benefits like marriage. If we don’t, you know, and, and one I really should mention is because of language or some kind of physical ability, when we’re talking about digital services. So if I am a Spanish speaking Californian, I have a lot of translated stuff online, but I don’t have necessarily a lot of Spanish speakers at the highest level of government, from my community, what does that mean about my participation and my belonging to government as an institution? If I’m somebody who uses a screen reader, how many of the services that are available to me from the various levels of government that I’m part of, I always hesitate to say, sort of, you know, governed by only, we’re a democracy, so I’m a member of these. But how many of those are available to me in the way that I need to fully participate? And what does our community lose if I can’t fully participate if I’m that person? And I would say we lose a lot, if I can’t. And so it’s on all of us who work in this space to not just sort of add on equity and accessibility features as edge cases later. But to think about these things from the beginning and to to think too about, you know, how automating things that may already be inequitable, can reinforce that inequity, and lead to greater injustice. And so then, what are the right tools? Are they tech tools? Or do we need to make political changes alongside the technology changes that we’re making to make things more faster and smoother in some ways?

Kirsten Wyatt  17:18

What this reminds me of is the idea that even if someone listening isn’t directly working in with technology, that the lessons that you’re sharing about user experience and that research, or, or that Pro, that process is important for anyone at any level of government to think about. Whether they are talking about or working with a technology project, or if it’s just a process improvement project, to think about, you know, how they’re providing service, at the front desk in their city hall. Any advice on you know, for a listener, who maybe hasn’t thought through how they incorporate UX into their job, a place to get started a place to start thinking more deeply or more thoughtfully about that?

Cyd Harrell  18:07

Absolutely, yeah, these are actually powerful and accessible practices, I think, and they are definitely useful for things beyond the digital. So it’s sort of another, another set of tools. And some of the most useful things in the toolbox, in my opinion, are just observation. When I’ve been working with a court system, you know, we before times before, the pandemic would just go to court waiting rooms and ask people, if they had five minutes to talk to us, and ask them about the form they might be filling out on a clipboard and how it was working for them. And from that, over the course of several interviews with people, you get a bunch of ideas about how this form might be reconfigured. And I’ve done similar things in the past at Code for America with, you know, City Hall counters, where people are waiting to get permits and things like that. And there are tools, which a lot of people are a lot more familiar with now, in our remote age, where you can share screens with somebody who is using, say, your summer camp signup website, or really any service that you offer, and you can just watch, where they run into sticking points and how it works for them. And and as you talk to them, you kind of hear about whether it even matches up to the way that they conceive of the task. And these kinds of learnings are really, really useful in improving all sorts of processes. And it’s it’s not really high tech, it’s a human conversation practice. There’s a lot of good information about it out there in the world, for anybody who’s interested.

Kirsten Wyatt  19:44

And it lends that empathy or that kind of that emotional piece to working in public service. Because you’re putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and designing processes for them, not just what works for you.

Cyd Harrell  19:58

Yeah, and then the best case, I think I have seen it reconnect a lot of public servants to the constituents that they went into this to serve, you know, if sometimes they’ve been stuck in a back office place where they’re revising forms, and they don’t, you know, have a lot of contact with the public to be able to see how shortening that intro from four sentences to one makes it this much easier for somebody to get through and get the benefit they need. That feels really good to most people.

Kirsten Wyatt  20:28

Many of our listeners work for government. And I think many of our listeners know that it’s no surprise that ELGL is a huge fan of Code for America and US digital response and, and some of these great organizations that place volunteers or consultants with government to help improve the work of government. Given that you’ve kind of worked on both sides, any advice for government about how to most effectively make that relationship with a volunteer, or maybe someone who’s, you know, coming from the private sector wants to come in and provide help and service to the public sector to make that relationship and to make that make that project most successful?

Cyd Harrell  21:15

That’s a great question. Um, my friend, Mark Headd wrote a little online book about it a few years ago, it’s called How to work with civic hackers. And for me, I think, you know, assume that they don’t know, necessarily a ton about the constraints involved in government, but that they might know ways around a lot of technical and, and not just technical, but sort of business process difficulties. And most folks who want to do this are curious. And so the more you can share with them in terms of data sets, and stories, and, you know, if you tried to do this twice before and it didn’t work, they’ll be really interested to know what happened and why. And they might be able to figure out some way based on new technology or a different design, to make it go farther this time. What a lot of them are looking for is just to be able to make a little bit of a difference. And so they should be excited to support what you’re doing. But they really are coming from a world with a different vocabulary and a different set of customs and assumptions professionally. And so if you can, you know, gracefully intro them the minute they look confused. That’ll give them a leg up.

Kirsten Wyatt  22:51

Well, and I think also, the last thing we want to do is scare talent away from government service and so not making their place too miserable or too hard, or putting out all of the like, bureaucracy and terrible things on the first day probably isn’t, isn’t helpful.

Cyd Harrell  23:10

No it’s probably not, but also, you know, pretending like it’s rosy, and everyone has a great Mac and free snacks. And nothing is too hard is not helping them either.

Kirsten Wyatt  23:24

Right. You wright that innovation is a flawed framework for change. Talk to us about this.

Cyd Harrell  23:31

Yeah. So of course, civic tech is sometimes synonymous with government innovation, or civic innovation. And I think one of the issues that this causes is this idea that, you know, well, innovation, in terms of problem solving and invention isn’t already happening in government, it has to come from outside or it has to happen in a special group. It also makes it sound as if what government needs is the newest technology and brand new ideas. And I think a lot of the time, what government needs is better implementations of, you know, already established and solid technologies, and really thoughtful you know, thoughtful work to actually put in place, ideas that people have had and struggled to get through processes or through budgets or things like that. And I I think that textbooks are we are prone to think we’re super smart. Your mileage may certainly vary. And so, you know, prone to think like, Oh, we need to bring new ideas. And so am I writing that as something of a caution to all those tech folks who think that they’re, you know, there might not be good ideas. In my experience, good ideas are all over the place in government and getting them through is what’s really difficult. And that is a place where technologists, I think, can really help. You know, that’s kind of what we do is we make things real or at least digitally real.

Kirsten Wyatt  25:19

And you also wright, “almost everyone I know, who has joined civic tech from the private sector, started out with the idea that doing things fast would be part of making things better.” So, you know, does that, you know, concept of move fast and break things, not working civic tech? Or is that more of just understanding that, that the framework that you’re working in government, is just different than when you’re trying to, you know, move a product out to the market?

Cyd Harrell  25:49

Well, you know, I think recently, we’re starting to see some of the problems with it in the private sector, too. But particularly in the public sector, there are reasons why things haven’t happened super fast. And it’s actually not okay to make a prototype that only works on the very latest phones or something like that, which is sometimes what’s required by moving fast is leaving out a lot of things. And it’s not okay to break essential public services. And it’s not okay to break things that people depend on for their life or their livelihood. So I think we’ve said, you know, move a little faster, and fix things judiciously, just doesn’t have exactly the same ring to it. But it’s much more appropriate way to do this

Kirsten Wyatt  26:36

I want to make a T shirt with that on it.

Cyd Harrell  26:39

I actually, I could send you, I had to get a new laptop recently, because my old one broke, and some friends sent me stickers that say move carefully and fix things. 

Kirsten Wyatt  26:52

I like it. Alright, and then, let’s see, I just want to, we already talked about this, but I want to read this quote, because I want our listeners to hear it. But you’ve wrote, “Some of the most magical changes I have seen as a civic technologist have come from making it possible for public servants who felt disconnected from their constituents, to observe user research and see the impact of their work on the people that they serve.” I love that. And I, you know, I know, we just talked a little bit about, you know, how local governments can kind of dip their toe into the UX world. But anything else to share on that? Because, again, I just, it really gets to the heart, I think of public service and of, of how our listeners and ELGL members are driven by a mission. And this is just one more way to kind of execute on that.

Cyd Harrell  27:48

Yeah, you know, I think there are a lot of ways that public Government Relations happen through deliberative processes and common processes and so forth. But the research process of sitting one on one or one on a few with people who are trying to use something that you’ve made for them, is one of the most profound ways to understand a need and understand how you can fill it. And you know, I sometimes I get teary about it even doing private sector, maybe not about car configurators. But of course, there are more significant things in the private sector too. But you know, when you it, for me, it kind of refreshes my motivation to serve to work on a study like I did last summer about what it was actually like trying to secure unemployment benefits during the pandemic and what people were going through. And while it was, it was really painful. We heard a lot of really difficult stories. It matters. And I think we all who are drawn to this, do it because it matters. And it gives us not just that emotion about why it matters and who the people are that we’re serving, but really good cues to how we can serve them better.

Kirsten Wyatt  29:07

You also write, “long term victories in civic tech often come with a lot of short term losses along the way.” Talk to us about dealing with those peaks and those valleys and especially in the public sector, where no one wants to fail. And there there tends to be pressure on not failing publicly or letting your community see a setback.

Cyd Harrell  29:36

Yeah, that’s one of the toughest things, I think, and I I feel like your listeners could probably give me advice on how to deal with this over the really long term. But I have had a lot of projects that just haven’t gotten as far as I hoped, and that’s probably, everybody does. And I wish that we were better about talking about it that Yeah, we got a new administration and they just kind of botched that whole initiative. And that’s one of those instances where if you have, can wrap it up and do orderly wind down, and leave it for the next person to pick up the baton, when there’s a more favorable environment, you’re doing a service to the whole field. Or something just didn’t work. And it can be really disheartening. And this is another place where community is essential. And I think, you know, not just community, one of the things I talk about is how we need a shelf of books. So this is one little book, there are a couple of others out there. There are a couple of others forthcoming. But wouldn’t it be great if we had a shared library, where we could all look in here, a shared set of case studies that talk about, you know, projects that got killed in year two after a promising start in year one, but actually picked up in year four, and are serving a million people in year six, because these things happen. And I think it’s easy to feel alone. And like you’re the only one who has had a setback, even though we also all know that it’s endemic.

Kirsten Wyatt  31:20

Well, and I, one thing we talk about here at ELGL is not just celebrating and sharing the stories of success, but then also giving our members a place to tell the stories of things that didn’t go so well. And knowing that it’s a supportive environment, because telling that story is going to help someone else avoid a pitfall that could be avoided or just again, like you say, know that they’re not alone.

Cyd Harrell  31:49

That’s so fantastic.

Kirsten Wyatt  31:51

So tell me about the process of writing this book. What prompted you to do it? Why was now the right time? And did you enjoy the process of of authoring a book?

Cyd Harrell  32:06

It’s funny, I was having a pre holiday drink for the friend in 2019, at the end of the year, and she told me about how she was trying to write a grounding document to kind of reset education in the design field. And it occurred to me that I might be able to do that for civic tech. And I kind of got so jazzed up that I wrote an outline, in a taxi on the way home on Google Docs mobile on my phone. And I got home and I, I told my husband, I was like, You know what, I think I’m actually going to write a book. And I’m gonna do it right now, I’m going to get started. And so he listened to me, and he was excited about it. And he said, You know what, you should really get that out before the November election. Because depending on what happens, there’s either going to be a huge rush into federal tech, or, you know, there may be a huge rush into retrenching states that are trying to keep up services. So all of a sudden, I wasn’t just writing a book, I was writing it on a really fast timeline, which also meant self publishing. But since I had that history in the book publishing industry, I was pretty confident in what the process ought to look like. And so I wrote largely on weekends, I really didn’t take a weekend off between January 8, and August 15th, 2020 when we finished the last edits, and sent it through press. I hired editors and I worked with a designer who was sponsored by the Beck Center at Georgetown, on the paperback, and we, it was kind of a lightening process. I did enjoy it. But it was a lot of work even for a short little book like this.

Kirsten Wyatt  33:58

And for our listeners, if you haven’t read it yet, one thing that is so helpful is that you leave in everything that was 2020. And so, like, of what a nightmare year it was, and all of these shifts and pivots and adjustments that government had to make. I mean, that’s captured in there. And so it’s not just helpful to, you know, think about civic technology from the lessons that you’ve learned, but you just make it highly relevant to today, and to you know, what people in public service are going through.

Cyd Harrell  34:38

Thank you so much.

Kirsten Wyatt  34:40

So what’s next for you? You’re doing a project with California Courts. What else do you have ahead of you?

Cyd Harrell  34:47

Right now, I’m also curating the design and delivery track for the upcoming Code for America summit in May. Yeah, so that’s really exciting. Getting to see lots of talk proposals about really interesting projects and work that people have undertaken over the last few years.

Kirsten Wyatt  35:04

Wonderful well, and in years past, ELGL has always shared that event with our members. It’s an excellent opportunity. And so we’ll continue to push information out to our members to make sure that they’re aware of how they can get involved and participate. And I assume it’s virtual.

Cyd Harrell  35:22

It’s all virtual this year. And I think it’s very inexpensive. I think the tickets are like 25 to 75 this year, so.

Kirsten Wyatt  35:28

Well, and what a great chance too for some first time, attendees to get a chance to attend summit. All right. Anything else you’d like to share with us about civic technologist practice guide?

Cyd Harrell  35:41

Nothing about the book, but just thank you all for the work that you do. And I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you.

Kirsten Wyatt  35:47

Our last question, I know that you’ve been thinking about this one. If you could be the Gov Love DJ, what song would you pick as our exit music for this episode? 

Cyd Harrell  35:56

Okay, so, this is driven by having just watched American Utopia, but I’m going to go with Talking Heads Road to Nowhere. And I think it’s best if you start with the middle verse that starts with there’s a city in my mind.

Kirsten Wyatt  36:08

Perfect. Well, we’ll make sure we get that queued up in the right spot. And a reminder that Cyd will join us at the ELGL book club on April 15th, at four o’clock Pacific to talk about the book. We have gifted six signed copies to our members, but you can also go to the show notes and order your own copy both on Kindle or e-reader and then also paperback and so we’ll share that with you. So check out the book and then join us again on April 15th at four o’clock that talk more about this helpful guide for local governments. So this ends our episode for the day. Gov Love is produced by a rotating cast of ELGL volunteers. ELGL is the Engaging Local Government Leaders network. You can reach us at ELGL.org or on Twitter @GovLovePodcast. Thank you for listening. This has been Gov Love, a podcast about local government.


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