Code for America Reading List for Incoming Fellows

2014

1. Spreading Slow Ideas by Atul Gawande. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/07/29/slow-ideas … the point of this article is that people - friendly people - are much more scalable than anything else, for scaling major change in any kind of practice or culture.

2. Deep Inside Taco Bell's Doritos Locos Taco by Austin Carr https://www.fastcompany.com/3008346/deep-inside-taco-bells-doritos-locos-taco … - this one is about an impeccable, tenacious innovation process to do something entirely stupid and inconsequential. it's both a great process piece and a warning that process isn't enough.

3. Tickets for Restaurants by Nick Kokonas http://website.alinearestaurant.com/site/2014/06/tickets-for-restaurants/ … - a really interesting case study of major change in model years after something (restaurant reservations) moved online.

4. Help Joy Help You, by @leisa http://www.disambiguity.com/help-joy-help-you/ … - this exhortation to technologists to make life better for frontline service workers has continued to bear out in my years of working with public servants.

5. I keep wanting to link Paul Ford's classic "The Web Is a Customer-Service Medium" but his site is down. you should find it & read it - just google "paul ford wwic" another day. it's one of the best elucidations of what the web is1G

6. Usability Testing Demystified, by @danachis https://alistapart.com/article/usability-testing-demystified … - yes this is 9 years old now. pretty much nothing has changed. observing users continues to be one of the most useful & underrated practices in the entire tech toolkit. Dana explains it beautifully.

2015

1. What We Wanted To Do

   http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/61/transcript

   April, 1997 by Ron Carlson

2. On Strategy: The strategy is delivery. Again.

   http://mikebracken.com/blog/the-strategy-is-delivery-again/

   January 6, 2013 by Mike Bracken

   I had the pleasure of working for Mike, at GDS, before I joined Code for America. When this man says "the strategy is delivery" he really means it. Above all else, there is a critical need to create better services for our users and we should never let anything stand in the way, be that policy or politics. - Frances

3. Readme Driven Development

   http://tom.preston-werner.com/2010/08/23/readme-driven-development.html

   August 23, 2010 by Tom Preston-Werner

   Tom Preston-Werner’s 2010 advice on development driven by clearly-defined ideas saved in a README. - mike.

4. Norris Numbers

   http://www.teamten.com/lawrence/writings/norris-numbers.html

   Lawrence Kesteloot, June 1, 2014

   Code for America’s fellowship specializes in the delivery of alpha-stage apps to government partners. A typical fellowship app should top out at 2,000 lines of code. Lawrence Kesteloot explains why. -mike.

5. Enduring CSS: writing style sheets for rapidly changing, long-lived projects

   http://benfrain.com/enduring-css-writing-style-sheets-rapidly-changing-long-lived-projects/

   August 7, 2014 by Ben Frain

   CSS is the worst. It’s the weakest part of the front-end webstack, and it will save you pain later if you have some coping strategies in your back pocket. Future-you will be thankful. - Frances

6. Cargo Cult CSS

   http://www.kapowaz.net/articles/cargo-cult-css

   October 21, 2013 by Ben Darlow

   Yo, don’t be dogmatic about markup and stylesheet syntax. Scroll to the bottom for some bare-bones guidelines on writing CSS well without swearing fealty to a particular methodology. - mike

7. Web App Mistakes: Condemned to repeat

   http://isolani.co.uk/blog/standards/WebAppMistakesWeAreCondemnedToRepeat

   November 13, 2012 by Mike Davies

   Davies offers a heavily-opinionated take on client-side applications. A rule of thumb to remember for apps written while at CfA is that Internet Explorer 8 compatibility will be a requirement sooner or later. If you can skip script-based approaches and client-side loading complexity in favor of simple 1990s-age web techniques, do it. -mike.

8. Why mobile web apps are slow

   http://sealedabstract.com/rants/why-mobile-web-apps-are-slow/

   July 9, 2013 by Drew Crawford

   This is an article about mobile web apps, but we’re including it here because it’s also an article about the core complexity of interactive development with Javascript. Government partners are an especially difficult consumer of web apps written with client-side code, because they frequently use browsers as old as Internet Explorer 8. Do not attempt a browser upgrade campaign with your city. Instead, assume that your front-end interactive development will be harder than you estimate and degrade gracefully to plain HTML and server-side processes where you can. For another take on this topic, watch Alice Bartlett’s talk at EpicFEL 2014, “Burn Your Select Tags” (search for it on Youtube). -mike.

9. The emperor’s new clothes were built with Node.js

   http://notes.ericjiang.com/posts/751

   June 4, 2014 by Eric Jiang

   Eric Jiang offers a caustic take on the weaknesses of Node.js. While Code for America encourages quick-turnaround experiments with a variety of languages and tools, we've found Node.js to be especially lacking in two important areas: the Node ecosystem is too reliant on quickly-changing conventions, and government partners don’t know how to cope with server-side Javascript.

   When in doubt:

   • Write code
   • Not too much
   • Mostly procedural

   -mike

10. Why You Should Never Use MongoDB

[http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/2013/11/11/why-you-should-never-use-mongodb/](http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/2013/11/11/why-you-should-never-use-mongodb/)

November 11, 2013 by Sarah Mei

> We’re including this article to clarify why you should in fact never use MongoDB. Mongo’s strengths are typically described as its free-form, schema-free nature, but as you’ll learn from Sarah Mei’s essay this is also a serious weakness for your application. If you believe that you need an unstructured, key-value store for your application look into PostgreSQL’s JSON column store. -mike.

11. Publishing Open Data – Do you really need an API?

    https://www.peterkrantz.com/2012/publishing-open-data-api-design/

    March 19, 2012 by Peter Krantz

    This piece may provide useful argument fodder for your conversations with partner governments. The decision to open government data is often assumed to be identical to the decision to adopt swishy new web platform features, but see Albuquerque’s open data portal for an example of a high-quality static file data site.

    See also Paul Ramsey’s What's so hard about that download? for a developer’s take. - mike.

12. What's so hard about that download?

    http://blog.cleverelephant.ca/2012/12/whats-so-hard-about-that-download.html

    December 2, 2012 by Paul Ramsey

    Developer experience. Actually a pretty huge deal - while the author might not call it that, this is a detailed UX teardown of the data access process of one of the more advanced North American local governments. We need to figure out how to affect this, which isn't easy. - Cyd

13. Stevey's Google Platforms Rant

    https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX

    October 12, 2011 by Steve Yegge

    Steve Yegge’s platform rant was an instant classic when it leaked in 2011. Code for America fellowship projects aren’t expected to be platforms as part of the normal first-year experience, but it’s worth understanding what the ramp from fellowship prototypes to products and platforms looks like. - mike

14. The Web Is a Customer Service Medium

    http://www.ftrain.com/wwic.html

    January 6, 2011 by Paul Ford

    This is as good a description as I've ever seen of the gulf that people have to cross to truly understand the impact of the internet on their business. Most of our government partners start the year on the far side of it, and finding ways to get them over it is critical work for fellowship teams. By and large, we've seen showing it work much better than saying it, as you might expect - but it's good to really ground yourself in what "it" is. - Cyd

15. Coding, Fast and Slow: Developers and the Psychology of Overconfidence

    http://blog.hut8labs.com/coding-fast-and-slow.html

    April 22, 2013 by Dan Milstein

    Dan Milstein offers one of the strongest justifications for agile and lean software development, grounded in Daniel Kahneman’s psychology text “Thinking Fast and Slow”. In short: no one knows how to estimate software because writing code is identical to learning, so it’s best to use an approach that’s suited for unknown timescales and outcomes.

    “No Deadlines For You! Software Dev Without Estimates, Specs or Other Lies” is an excellent follow-up post to this one. - mike

16. Slow Ideas

    http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/07/29/slow-ideas

    Atul Gawande, July 29, 2013

    One of the most profound things I’ve ever read about how substantial innovations actually get traction (or don’t). It made me realize all over again the critical role that the Fellows play in the project of transforming government. Even when it feels rough, even when it feels like you’re making no progress (there will be some times like that), you’ll be doing the great and difficult work described in this piece. By being present, as friendly, trustworthy people who are there to help, you’ll be changing minds bit by bit, the entire year. - Cyd

17. Organizational Skills Beat Algorithmic Wizardry

    http://prog21.dadgum.com/177.html

    June 19, 2013 by James Hague

18. Let’s Respectfully Redesign Government

    http://www.codeforamerica.org/blog/2014/06/09/lets-respectfully-redesign-government/

    June 9, 2014 by Molly McLeod

    2014 Fellow Molly McLeod did a 1/2-hour unsolicited redesign of a government form that ended up on the front page of Reddit. Afterward, she reflected on good practice for crtiquing design in the government space. Extra good news: Molly is joining the CfA staff and will be around to geek out about this and all design-related topics. - Cyd

19. A recipe for starting & prototyping new projects

    http://blog.memespring.co.uk/2014/07/27/starting-a-new-project-prototyping-a-recipe/

    Richard Pope, 27 Jul 2014

    This is far from the only way to start a project, but it’s a pretty darn decent sequence to take as a baseline. The critical thing is getting past the beautiful-soap-bubble idea stage as quickly as possible. I like the piece because Richard doesn’t just set that as a principle, he says exactly how he does it. - Cyd

20. Usability Testing Demystified

    http://alistapart.com/article/usability-testing-demystified

    October 6, 2009 by Dana Chisnell

    An oldie but a goodie on one of the most basic and powerful practices of user-centered design. If you’ve never run a usability test or user research, this is a great overview of something we encourage every fellow to get involved in. If you’re already a pro, it’s still worth a re-read. By the way, Dana Chisnell has done a ton of this work in ballot design and other civic spheres. She recently joined USDS and I’ll be very surprised if we don’t see her at CfA HQ sometime in 2015.

    As a follow up, Smart Chicago has done tremendous work on how to recruit participants across neighborhoods and socio-economic classes, to make sure civic apps get tested and work for everyone. They wrote a book about it, available at http://www.cutgroupbook.org. - Cyd

21. What's the design process at GDS?

    https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2014/07/18/whats-the-design-process-at-gds/

    July 18, 2014 by Ben Terrett

    I like to think that we’re similarly bullshit-free in the way we do design at CfA. We certainly strive to be. Fast, light, and flexible are the watchwords, and as Ben says, if it doesn’t work, we’ll change it. - Cyd

22. Help Joy help you. On the unusability of internal systems

    http://www.disambiguity.com/help-joy-help-you/

    July 9, 2014 by Leisa Reichelt

    One thing you will quickly discover is that as bad as public-facing government technology can be, the internal tools used by public servants are often much worse. Often bad to the point of abusiveness, to be honest. Leisa Reichelt, the head of UX for Gov.UK, talks here about an experience she had where she came to grips with how hard a customer service person was working to paper over the shortcomings of the systems she worked with. Imagine how well she could help her clients if she wasn’t spending all her energy on clever and insane workarounds. You’ll meet a lot of dedicated public servants in February, and thinking about how you can help them be great at their jobs will be really important. - Cyd

23. Designer Duds: Losing Our Seat at the Table

    http://mokriya.quora.com/Designer-Duds-Losing-Our-Seat-at-the-Table

    April 23, 2014 by Mills Baker

    Mills Baker writes a critical call-to-action laying a lot of responsibility at the feet of designers in this piece. Design is fundamentally central to everything we’re producing in the world and it’s where the rubber meets the road in the service/user interaction. When it comes to the business of delivering public services in particular, it’s not a ball we can afford to drop or step back from, and we must always, always, keep the users’ needs central to everything we do or risk failure. - Frances

24. Tickets for Restaurants

    http://website.alinearestaurant.com/site/2014/06/tickets-for-restaurants/

    June 4, 2014 by Nick Kokonas

    There’s a really interesting phenomenon where something that has been online for a few years suddenly gets a revolutionary re-thinking. Our first attempts to bring a thing (weather forecasts, ticketing, whatever) into the digital space almost necessarily copy the old model, and it’s not until people have been using an online version for some time that someone realizes “hey, these are false constraints, we could do this completely differently”. It happened to weather a while ago and this article is about it happening to restaurant reservations. This means a couple of things - 1) look out for opportunities to make these shifts; 2) any time you bring things online you’re doing a critical, absolutely required step to actually making them better. - Cyd

25. People, Not Data

    https://medium.com/@lippytak/people-not-data-47434acb50a8

    Jake Solomon, January 5 2014

    This is a terrific piece by 2013 Fellow Jake Solomon about his experience observing clients at the Food Stamps office in SF. It’s natural to get outraged by the conditions described here, but we include it partly to ask a more interesting question than “is this inexcusable?” (“yes”). The question is, what are the conditions affecting government organizations and public servants that lead them to accept such things as matters of course? (Of note, Jake didn’t join us as a UX person or a researcher; he just did this, with encouragement from me and his teammate Marc Hebert, and wrote about it.) - Cyd

26. Healthcare.gov and the Gulf Between Planning and Reality

    http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2013/11/healthcare-gov-and-the-gulf-between-planning-and-reality/

    November 19, 2013 by Clay Shirky

    We'll hear more from the Healthcare dot gov team later this year, but this is a good elucidation of the management problem (it was just one among many). Testing & failure are some of the most sensitive issues with our partners, especially as the CfA Fellowship is a significant expense, requiring city council approval and oversight. And yet, there are tremendous risks to leaving these out of the conversation, as illustrated here. We've talked about this already in city onboarding, but nodding along to principles and learning to actually work this way are different things, and the latter is legitimately very very hard. We ask you to take a strong stand on the right way to work, while also holding a lot of empathy for the real reasons it may be hard for your partners. - Cyd

27. the fixie federal IT paradigm

    http://feomike.github.io/post/fixie-federal-it-paradigmn.html

    July 12, 2014 by Mike Byrne

    Mike “Good Mike” Byrne has insights into government procurement that span his years at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, his input into the White House Open Data Policy, his time at the FCC, and his service to the State of California. He also happens to be a bike nerd with a keen understanding of how simplicity can win for government technology. - mike

28. ETL for America

    http://daguar.github.io/2014/03/17/etl-for-america/

    March 17, 2014 by Dave Guarino

    This article is by a 2013 Fellow and describes what the main technical challenge inside government technology is right now. It’s not sexy, it’s not scalable, it’s not easy. ETL inside of your City hall is boring inglorious work, yet it is the job for right now. It’s up to you to get it right so those that come after you can do the fun work with ease. -Andrew

29. Love Your Monsters: Why We Must Care for Our Technologies As We Do Our Children

    http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/journal/past-issues/issue-2/love-your-monsters/

    Winter, 2012 by Bruno Latour

    "The environment is what appeared when unwanted consequences came back to haunt the originators of such actions.” Code for America’s environment is the world of government digital needs. We don’t want to replace it as modernists, or fearfully turn and run. The changes we make to this environment will need to be adopted and sustained into the future.

    For transit geeks, Bruno Latour’s “Aramis” (1993) is an excellent book-length mystery story of a failed Parisian personal rapid transportation system. - mike

30. Code, the newsroom, and self-doubt

    http://veltman.tumblr.com/post/56132893301/code-the-newsroom-and-self-doubt

    July 22, 2013 by Noah Veltman

31. On journalism and learning to code (again)

    http://veltman.tumblr.com/post/64900530026/on-journalism-and-learning-to-code-again

    February 18, 2014 by Dan Hon

    There are two worlds adjacent to government where code and design literacy is a hot topic: academic digital humanities and journalism. Here’s a report from the current status of the learn-to-code debate in the latter. -mike.

32. Slow Food

    http://blog.geomusings.com/2014/07/29/slow-food/

    July 29, 2014 by Bill Dollins

    Government technology is an awkward combination of large and small. Enormous procurement contracts for millions of dollars in software mask systemic issues while tiny offices on shoestring budgets develop creative approaches to problems they can’t buy their way out of. GIS entrepreneur Bill Dollins talks about his history in food service to describe some of the differences between fast and slow operations. - mike.

33. Episode Nineteen - Not Trying Is A Signal, Peak Game, EasyHard, SnapChat

    http://tinyletter.com/danhon/letters/episode-nineteen-not-trying-is-a-signal-peak-game-easyhard-snapchat

    February 18, 2014 by Dan Hon

    Code for America's Dan Hon starts to ask the hard questions in this edition of his newsletter. Why are Governments not trying harder to improve their services? -Frances

34. Avoiding ‘words to avoid’

    https://insidegovuk.blog.gov.uk/2014/04/11/avoiding-words-to-avoid/

    April 11, 2014 by Lisa Scott

    Jargon: it’s a problem. Read on for GOV.UK’s take on banned jargon. - mike

35. GDS Banned Words

    https://twitter.com/alicebartlett/status/491503367920050176

    July 22, 2014 via Alice Bartlett

36. Time to end the jargon barrier

    http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/fde276d8-643f-11e4-bac8-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=uk

    November 6, 2014 by Maija Palmer

    The Financial Times is a big anti-jargon campaigner. They normally do an end-of-year competition to find the worst examples. Here's a good example of jargon where simple language is clearer and can be undestood by everyone. Some of these examples, like "Digital Transformation" are still good shorthand for what we're trying to achieve - but still need to be explained. Remember: read over what you've written, and ask yourself: did I actually say what I meant? -- Dan

37. Russell Davies

    Who is Russell Davies and how has he managed to get an entire section of articles to himself? That’s a good question. He works for the Government Digital Service in the UK and is the man to blame for the “simpler, clear, faster” slogan along with finding appropriate language to help civic servants understand their problem domain better and fulfil their remit. He rather modestly describes his job as “words and powerpoint”, but he has set the underlying tone for GDS’ work in an incredible way.

    Russell has an eye for the pointless. The time wasting. The complicated. He says little, but what he does say is simple and clear. Almost everything he writes is on-point and he is articluating the problems in government design in the best way I have seen. Here’s a selection of some of his articles. - Frances

    • Waste No Words

      http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2014/02/waste-no-words.html

      February 8, 2014 by Russell Davies

    • Consumers, users, people, mammals

      http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2014/06/consumers-users-people-mammals.html

      June 15, 2014 by Russell Davies

    • Activities not audiences

      http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2013/10/activities-not-audiences.html

    October 9, 2013 by Russell Davies
    

    • Digital tranformation

      http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2014/07/digital-transformation.html

    July 4, 2014 by Russell Davies
    

    • Naming Digital

      http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2014/03/naming-digital.html

    March 18, 2014 by Russell Davies
    

38. Deep Inside Taco Bell’s Doritos Locos Taco

    http://www.fastcompany.com/3008346/deep-inside-taco-bells-doritos-locos-taco

    May 1, 2013 by Austin Carr

    This super fun article details a relentless quest for innovation in something that doesn’t matter very much at all. The number of times the team bounces back from adversity, from failure, from total irrelevance, is astounding. May we all be this tenacious in pursuing better government and government technology!

    Also, for what happens when Taco Bell attempts to innovate in mobile apps, see The Chipotlification of American Fast Food by Adam Chandler http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/the-chipotlification-of-american-fast-food/382167/. - Cyd

2016

1. Institutional memory and reverse smuggling

   https://web.archive.org/web/20120111055334/http://wrttn.in/04af1a

   December 4, 2011 by an unknown author

2. ETL for America

   http://daguar.github.io/2014/03/17/etl-for-america/

   March 17, 2014 by Dave Guarino

   This article is by a 2013 Fellow and describes what the main technical challenge inside government technology is right now. It’s not sexy, it’s not scalable, it’s not easy. ETL inside of your City hall is boring inglorious work, yet it is the job for right now. It’s up to you to get it right so those that come after you can do the fun work with ease. -Andrew

3. Please Offer An Excel Export Option

   http://www.evanmiller.org/please-offer-an-excel-export-option.html

   November 30, 2014 by Evan Miller

   Design your product to integrate with the tools your users use and the processes they follow. Have your application import the product of applications that are already in use. Have it export into formats that are familiar and practical. —Tomas

4. Publishing Open Data – Do you really need an API?

   https://www.peterkrantz.com/2012/publishing-open-data-api-design/

   March 19, 2012 by Peter Krantz

   This piece may provide useful argument fodder for your conversations with partner governments. The decision to open government data is often assumed to be identical to the decision to adopt swishy new web platform features, but see Albuquerque’s open data portal for an example of a high-quality static file data site.

   See also Paul Ramsey’s What's so hard about that download? for a developer’s take.

   -mike.

5. A New Way to Listen

   http://alistapart.com/article/a-new-way-to-listen

   February 17, 2015 by Indi Young

   Indi Young draws the important distinction between casual conversation and journalism from the art of active listening to build empathy. She outlines the value of this approach and strategies you can practice to better surface core motivations, mental models, and factors driving behaviors. - Colleen

6. Help Joy help you. On the unusability of internal systems

   http://www.disambiguity.com/help-joy-help-you/

   July 9, 2014 by Leisa Reichelt

   One thing you will quickly discover is that as bad as public-facing government technology can be, the internal tools used by public servants are often much worse. Often bad to the point of abusiveness, to be honest. Leisa Reichelt, the head of UX for Gov.UK, talks here about an experience she had where she came to grips with how hard a customer service person was working to paper over the shortcomings of the systems she worked with. Imagine how well she could help her clients if she wasn’t spending all her energy on clever and insane workarounds. You’ll meet a lot of dedicated public servants in February, and thinking about how you can help them be great at their jobs will be really important. - Cyd

7. Long-Distance Relationships

   https://deardesignstudent.com/long-distance-relationships-c7069cc67af3

   April 6, 2015 by Erika Hall

   In her characteristically witty style, Erika Hall lays out some insightful rules of thumb for remote teams – assigning a client-side herder, guiding clients on how to participate at each stage in the design process, cultivating frequent conversation during and between meetings, and more. -Colleen

8. The Web Is a Customer Service Medium

   http://www.ftrain.com/wwic.html

   January 6, 2011 by Paul Ford

   This is as good a description as I've ever seen of the gulf that people have to cross to truly understand the impact of the internet on their business. Most of our government partners start the year on the far side of it, and finding ways to get them over it is critical work for fellowship teams. By and large, we've seen showing it work much better than saying it, as you might expect - but it's good to really ground yourself in what "it" is. - Cyd

9. Want to write convincing futures? Work retail.

   http://madelineashby.com/?p=1819

   July 14, 2015 by Madeline Ashby

   Madeline's story beautifully illustrates the power of being on the front lines. Designers should actively seek out ways to expose themselves to the intricicies of needs and motivations across current and potential customers. -Colleen

10. Agile for non-digital projects

[https://mojdigital.blog.gov.uk/2014/10/01/agile-for-non-digital-projects/](https://mojdigital.blog.gov.uk/2014/10/01/agile-for-non-digital-projects/)

October 1, 2014 by Amy Wagner

11. Coding, Fast and Slow: Developers and the Psychology of Overconfidence

    http://blog.hut8labs.com/coding-fast-and-slow.html

    April 22, 2013 by Dan Milstein

    Dan Milstein offers one of the strongest justifications for agile and lean software development, grounded in Daniel Kahneman’s psychology text “Thinking Fast and Slow”. In short: no one knows how to estimate software because writing code is identical to learning, so it’s best to use an approach that’s suited for unknown timescales and outcomes.
    “No Deadlines For You! Software Dev Without Estimates, Specs or Other Lies” is an excellent follow-up post to this one.

    -mike

12. The fixie federal IT paradigm

    http://feomike.github.io/post/fixie-federal-it-paradigmn.html

    July 12, 2014 by Mike Byrne

    Mike “Good Mike” Byrne has insights into government procurement that span his years at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, his input into the White House Open Data Policy, his time at the FCC, and his service to the State of California. He also happens to be a bike nerd with a keen understanding of how simplicity can win for government technology. -mike.

13. Organizational Skills Beat Algorithmic Wizardry

    http://prog21.dadgum.com/177.html

    June 19, 2013 by James Hague

14. Most of government is mostly service design most of the time. Discuss.

    http://blog.mattedgar.com/2015/05/12/most-of-government-is-mostly-service-design-most-of-the-time-discuss/

May 12, 2015 by Matt Edgar

15. People, Not Data

    https://medium.com/@lippytak/people-not-data-47434acb50a8

    Jake Solomon, January 5 2014

    This is a terrific piece by 2013 Fellow Jake Solomon about his experience observing clients at the Food Stamps office in SF. It’s natural to get outraged by the conditions described here, but we include it partly to ask a more interesting question than “is this inexcusable?” (“yes”). The question is, what are the conditions affecting government organizations and public servants that lead them to accept such things as matters of course? (Of note, Jake didn’t join us as a UX person or a researcher; he just did this, with encouragement from me and his teammate Marc Hebert, and wrote about it.) - Cyd

16. Slow Ideas

    http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/07/29/slow-ideas

    Atul Gawande, July 29, 2013

    One of the most profound things I’ve ever read about how substantial innovations actually get traction (or don’t). It made me realize all over again the critical role that the Fellows play in the project of transforming government. Even when it feels rough, even when it feels like you’re making no progress (there will be some times like that), you’ll be doing the great and difficult work described in this piece. By being present, as friendly, trustworthy people who are there to help, you’ll be changing minds bit by bit, the entire year. - Cyd

17. The smartest cities rely on citizen cunning and unglamorous technology

    http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/dec/22/the-smartest-cities-rely-on-citizen-cunning-and-unglamorous-technology

    December 22, 2014 by Adam Greenfield

    The “smart city” sales pitch is a sham and the discussions that officials in your cities will want to have about it are a distraction. Focus on real people's needs and you'll get to where you need to be. We don't build software with big top down plans anymore, and there are lessons here for urban planners as well as some fantasic examples of creative projects. Former Fellow Lou Huang described it as iterative placemaking. —Andrew

18. I Have 21 Radical Ideas

    https://medium.com/responsive-engineering/i-have-21-radical-ideas-b428414a4efc

    September 12, 2013 by Kris Galet

19. Everything a government attorney needs to know about open source software licensing

    http://ben.balter.com/2014/10/08/open-source-licensing-for-government-attorneys/

    October 8, 2014 by Ben Balter

    A high-level overview of legal issues related to open-source software development, written for government attorneys. May be useful when making a case to a city’s or county’s legal department. —Tomas

20. Stevey's Google Platforms Rant

    https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX

    October 12, 2011 by Steve Yegge

> Steve Yegge’s platform rant was an instant classic when it leaked in 2011\. Code for America fellowship projects aren’t expected to be platforms as part of the normal first-year experience, but it’s worth understanding what the ramp from fellowship prototypes to products and platforms looks like. -mike.

21. No Stack Startups

    http://blog.aweissman.com/2015/05/no-stack-startups.html

    May 6th, 2015 by Andy Weismann

22. Welcome to the Open Data Movement’s Turbulent Teenage Years

    https://nextcity.org/features/view/open-data-cities-mark-headd-philadelphia-michael-nutter

    January 12, 2015 by Andrew Zaleski

    A survey of the current state of city-level open data efforts. Some highlights: 1. People will resist opening access to data that could hurt or embarrass them. Even a mandate from the Mayor's office may not budge the status quo. 2. If there is no clear user need motivating the release of a data set, it's likely to sit unused and ineffective. 3. Outreach to underrepresented residents is critical to understanding user needs. 4. A mature civic tech community can drive the release and effective use of open data. —Tomas

23. Russell Davies

    Who is Russell Davies and how has he managed to get an entire section of articles to himself? That’s a good question. He works for the Government Digital Service in the UK and is the man to blame for the “simpler, clear, faster” slogan along with finding appropriate language to help civic servants understand their problem domain better and fulfil their remit. He rather modestly describes his job as “words and powerpoint”, but he has set the underlying tone for GDS’ work in an incredible way.

    Russell has an eye for the pointless. The time wasting. The complicated. He says little, but what he does say is simple and clear. Almost everything he writes is on-point and he is articluating the problems in government design in the best way I have seen. Here’s a selection of some of his articles. - Frances

    • Waste No Words

      http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2014/02/waste-no-words.html

      February 8, 2014 by Russell Davies

    • Consumers, users, people, mammals

      http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2014/06/consumers-users-people-mammals.html

      June 15, 2014 by Russell Davies

    • Activities not audiences

      http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2013/10/activities-not-audiences.html

      October 9, 2013 by Russell Davies

    • Digital tranformation

      http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2014/07/digital-transformation.html

      July 4, 2014 by Russell Davies

    • Naming Digital

      http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2014/03/naming-digital.html

      March 18, 2014 by Russell Davies

24. Six months at the Government Digital Service

    http://alicebartlett.co.uk/blog/six-months-at-gds

    August 7, 2014 by Alice Bartlett

25. On Strategy: The strategy is delivery. Again.

    http://mikebracken.com/blog/the-strategy-is-delivery-again/

    January 6, 2013 by Mike Bracken

    I had the pleasure of working for Mike, at GDS, before I joined Code for America. When this man says "the strategy is delivery" he really means it. Above all else, there is a critical need to create better services for our users and we should never let anything stand in the way, be that policy or politics. -Frances

26. Enduring CSS: writing style sheets for rapidly changing, long-lived projects

    http://benfrain.com/enduring-css-writing-style-sheets-rapidly-changing-long-lived-projects/

    August 7, 2014 by Ben Frain

    CSS is the worst. It’s the weakest part of the front-end webstack, and it will save you pain later if you have some coping strategies in your back pocket. Future-you will be thankful. -Frances

27. The emperor’s new clothes were built with Node.js

    http://notes.ericjiang.com/posts/751

    June 4, 2014 by Eric Jiang

    Eric Jiang offers a caustic take on the weaknesses of Node.js. While Code for America encourages quick-turnaround experiments with a variety of languages and tools, we've found Node.js to be especially lacking in two important areas: the Node ecosystem is too reliant on quickly-changing conventions, and government partners don’t know how to cope with server-side Javascript.

    When in doubt:

    • Write code
    • Not too much
    • Mostly procedural

    -mike.

28. Why You Should Never Use MongoDB

    http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/2013/11/11/why-you-should-never-use-mongodb/

    November 11, 2013 by Sarah Mei

    We’re including this article to clarify why you should in fact never use MongoDB. Mongo’s strengths are typically described as its free-form, schema-free nature, but as you’ll learn from Sarah Mei’s essay this is also a serious weakness for your application. If you believe that you need an unstructured, key-value store for your application look into PostgreSQL’s JSON column store. -mike.

29. Deep Inside Taco Bell’s Doritos Locos Taco

    http://www.fastcompany.com/3008346/deep-inside-taco-bells-doritos-locos-taco

    May 1, 2013 by Austin Carr

    This super fun article details a relentless quest for innovation in something that doesn’t matter very much at all. The number of times the team bounces back from adversity, from failure, from total irrelevance, is astounding. May we all be this tenacious in pursuing better government and government technology!

    Also, for what happens when Taco Bell attempts to innovate in mobile apps, see The Chipotlification of American Fast Food by Adam Chandler http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/the-chipotlification-of-american-fast-food/382167/.

    • Cyd