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The book, written by Mark Headd, one of the first municipal Chief Data Officers in the United States, is meant for public servants and people working inside government who want to connect with innovators and technologists outside of the bureaucracy. It highlights strategies they can use to collaborate with people doing interesting and valuable work that can benefit or support the mission of government.
The book is designed to help civil servants find, communicate, and collaborate with people doing interesting and valuable work -particularly those working with technology- that can benefit or support the mission of government. It highlights strategies to help government employees leverage the talents of smart, passionate people in their local technology community, as well as those further afield.
This book is organized into four main sections.
- The first section discusses how these new kinds of collaborations with local technology communities fit into a long tradition in government of tapping into expertise from outside of the bureaucracy.
- The second section uses the results from a survey of current and former city government officials to highlight specific benefits of working with outside technology groups, and details several case studies which describe how cities are successfully collaborating with these groups.
- The third section lists some of the challenges and limitations of working with outside technology groups, and also draws heavily on survey responses from current and former city government employees.
- The final section lists some specific strategies and tactics that can be used by government employees to identify, communicate, and collaborate with the members of their local technology community.
This book is available for free under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.