Interview transcript: Terry Gerton I am excited to hear more about this new POPVOX project called the Departure Dialogues. So tell us kind of what it is and how it fits in the space. Anne Meeker Yes, absolutely. We are so excited to have this launched and live in the world. So I will say this is a collaborative project. So it is not just our team at POPVOX Foundation, but working with a wonderful group of other organizations, including the Niskanen Center, Civil Service Strong, Partnership for Public Service and Foundation for American Innovation. And where this all came from was actually some conversations that we had last year, and I know many folks have had similar ones, talking to federal employees and talking to congressional staff about just where are the disconnects between the legislative branch and executive branch. And what we always hear is that, hey, Congress, in its infinite wisdom and sometimes with the best of intentions, can actually place these statutory barriers to efficiency and effective programmatic work in the pathway of agencies. And then the process of actually getting that information of saying, hey Congress, bless your heart, but there is an outdated requirement that I have to fax this specific type of information that adds time, that adds workload, that adds money. Getting that kind of granular issue over and across the legislative affairs bottleneck to Congress itself is incredibly hard. Legislative affairs only has so much time with committees, only has some much time members, they’re focused on the big priorities. Sometimes that small stuff really falls through the cracks. But rank and file federal employees aren’t always empowered to go talk to Congress. So we really kind of, in this crazy year where we’re seeing so many federal employees departing federal service voluntarily or involuntarily, we were all talking and realized there might be an incredible opportunity here where we can talk to some of these folks and say, hey, what is the thing that you always wished you could get through that legislative affairs bottleneck? What do you want Congress to know about how it is making your job or it’s making your former job harder? And then the idea is that hopefully we’ll be able to collect some of these insights and then do our part to throw them over the wall to Congress to get them to the right place where they need to go and give Congress that road map of, hey, where do we go from here? How do we create more effective, efficient federal agencies and programs? Terry Gerton This is not just an oral history project where I get to come in and tell you my life story. You’re really looking for specific policy observations or operational, as you say, bottlenecks. Anne Meeker Yes, exactly. And I will say there is a phenomenal group of organizations also operating in this space, many of whom are actually doing more oral history work, focusing on federal civil service storytelling, really kind of getting broad and getting long into the stories that they’re asking federal employees to tell. And we are differentiated from that. So if you are a departing federal employee and you’re like, hey, my life story is my life story. I don’t really want to share this. But I really have to tell you that this report to Congress that Congress has asked for, that I know no one reads, is a problem. We want to be the home for that kind of information. Terry Gerton What kind of folks are you looking to have participate? GS-14s and 15 managers, doers at the lower levels, white collar, blue collar — what are you thinking? Anne Meeker Sure, we are open to everybody. Civil service, political appointee, contractor. If you have worked for the federal government and you have had one of those moments at some point — they’re like, hey, dear Congress, you should know about this and I can’t figure out the way to tell you — we hope that you’ll come, come talk to us at Departure Dialogues. Terry Gerton And you have sort of a sense of urgency about this. You want people to do it now, right? Anne Meeker Yeah, exactly. You know, we’re aware that this is a limited window, that the folks who are departing federal service, the folks that have already processed off, or the many, many, many people who are leaving on, or whose employment formally terminates at the end of September, you know, they’re heading to their next careers. They’re heading their next placement, their next employment. So we really are aware that we kind of have this limited window when we can really reach folks and they might have, you know, that fresh insight, that fresh experience, and then also a limited window for this Congress as well. Terry Gerton Tell us a little bit about how your data collection process works. If someone wants to participate and tell you their story, what should they expect in terms of interaction? Anne Meeker Sure. So we’ll say the kind of the sub-goal here, the meta-level is that we’re also hoping that this is a really good experiment to show Congress how it is possible to do this kind of large-scale qualitative data collection of proactive, hey, this is the information that we want to get. And here’s how we can reach out to a broad number of people, broad spectrum of people without completely tying up Congress’s limited capacity in that information. So it’s completely self-service, so we have two options. We’ve worked with an oral history platform called TheirStory to allow folks to kind of do a guided self-interview. So you log onto the platform and then the platform walks you through our nine questions. And we also have a written version as well, if folks don’t want to do the video, they don’t want to record themselves, but we can take those insights in a form as well. And I will say we offer levels of anonymity. We understand some of this information is sensitive and we are not looking for, you know, criminal malfeasance, whistleblower stuff, we love to direct folks with that kind of information to the proper channels. But this is still sensitive information, so we do offer folks participating the chance to remain anonymous if they’d like. Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Anne Meeker. She’s managing director of the POPVOX Foundation. All right, Anne, you mentioned this large scale quantitative data collection. That is really hard information to process. What happens on the back end? How will POPVOX turn this into something that lawmakers can use? Anne Meeker Yeah, absolutely. And so that is our other partner for this project that we’re really excited to work with as a team, called the AI Objectives Institute, who run a product called Talk to the City. And what Talk to The City does is it uses AI, uses machine learning sentiment analysis to take a body of video interviews and then pull them into —  use sentiment analysis to pull them in to an interactive archive. So what that archive shows you is kind of the top takeaways from that body of videos. And then you can drill down onto those top-line takeaways into individual arguments. And then looking at an individual argument, it’ll take you back to the moment in the video archive where someone said that thing. So we’re really making it clear, like, we are not in any way trying to put our thumb on the scale for how to interpret some of these videos. We are trying to just present this in a way that is as easy to use as possible for Congress, so that anyone for any political background, either party, whichever committee is interested in taking forward some of these ideas, some of these insights, can use this information to draw that road map. Terry Gerton And how do you make sure that the AI comes at this from an objective, unbiased perspective? Anne Meeker So that’s a lot of where our coalition partners come in. You know, we have folks in that group of organizations from both sides of the aisle and from legislative and executive branch perspectives as well. So we are going to be working with them on that analysis to kind of double-check what’s coming out of that AI tool and make sure that it is unbiased. It is true to what these employees or former federal employees are telling us, and that it has also presented in a way that’s as easy as possible for Congress to actually make use of. Terry Gerton Have you heard from members of Congress about what they might be interested in related to this project? Are there particular policy issues? Are there are particular committees, particular members that are sitting on pins and needles waiting for this information? Anne Meeker I hope they are. I will say there’s this growing group within Congress of folks who are really interested in state capacity as the big headline concept of really trying to understand, how do we write legislation that is actually implementable? So that’s Congress actually starting to sit up and take some responsibility for the places where it has inadvertently created these problems. We’re seeing a growing kind of coalition and growing interest among a lot of members across a bunch of different issue areas, committees, agency portfolios, saying, hey, you know, this kind of administrative work, this kind of granular detail isn’t something that Congress can ignore and can just let the agency sort out. Like there are places that will require statutory fixes. So we’re hoping we can kind of tap into that nascent interest in Congress. Terry Gerton For someone who’s listening and might be on the fence about whether or not they should participate, what’s your elevator pitch to get them over the line to say, yes, I want to tell you my story, and how should they do that? Anne Meeker Yeah, absolutely. So I’m going to start by just saying, thank you to all the federal employees who are departing the federal government right now. The value of that service is incredible and the value of that expertise is also incredible. I don’t think it’s always clear to folks in the executive branch how much Congress is hungry for this information, that Congress wants the information that it needs to do a good job. It’s just really hard to access. There are a lot of things that look obvious to folks in the executive branch that are absolutely mind-blowing over on the legislative branch. That divide is incredible. So for folks on the fence, we’d really say no matter how small that insight is, again, if it’s, hey, I couldn’t get enough staplers for my department for whatever stupid procurement reason, that is important. That is really, really important. That is valuable. That is worthwhile. And we hope that, again, we can kind of do honor to those folks and do honor to their expertise, their years of service, by getting those insights and putting them in the hands of folks who can do something about it. Terry Gerton Is there a deadline? Anne Meeker We are planning to keep this open until the end of the calendar year. We’d encourage folks to participate as soon as possible because we do want to start pulling together some kind of analytical products, first conclusions, and we can start sharing with Congress. But there’s plenty of opportunity if folks are on the deferred resignation, they don’t cycle out of their formal employment. So later this fall, we will still be open. We are here, happy to take those insights.The post When feds leave, a new project makes sure their wisdom doesn’t walk out the door with them first appeared on Federal News Network.