This was my experience with the FDA when I was a contractor for Google, as I sat and watched the nations youth get addicted to e-cigarettes as policy was pointed in a different direction for an unmovable 5-10y span of the big CTP contracts. I was actually told by the FDA to stop supplying data showing the rise in e-cigarette queries beyond my contractual mandate.
Thank you for writing about this—I'd been wanting to hear your thoughts. My comment has no impact on the recommendations you outline- and I'm in full agreement regarding state capacity. I'm a practitioner on the front lines, trying to help students navigate this FAFSA crisis. The FA community had warned FSA from the beginning that the process they were proposing would not work effectively for a large population of students: those in mixed-status families.
I'd like to clarify a point that the media is misunderstanding. The 70,000 emails were from people without social security numbers trying to verify their accounts. The majority of these are undocumented parents of US citizen students, not students themselves. While undocumented students do file the FAFSA to be reviewed for institutional and state financial aid in some parts of the country, the issue has been severely impacting the US citizen students who are dependents and need their undocumented parents to sign the FAFSA. I only emphasize the point because it's more accurate and reveals the scope of the problem with this process. Millions of students are in mixed-status families and were required to go through this process.
I think what's frustrating and why there's an impulse to lay blame is because FSA has not course corrected at all yet- they keep ramming into the iceberg and our students are the ones left to deal with the consequences, which ranges from missing out on grants due to missing state deadlines (already pushed back due to the crisis) to delaying their education all together. This will have a long-term impact on higher education, and I hope we can get back on course.
Did anyone take responsibility for the 70,000 emails getting ignored, or suffer any meaningful adverse consequences? If not, expect things like this to happen again in the future. Incentives (or the lack thereof) matter.
Oh my god, all of this is so true! I currently work on the largest IT procurement project for the state of California. This is a full system replacement for a large agency that delivers for the entire state. It is also the third bite at the Apple, and we are six years in this RFP cycle. This is not for a lack of effort or dedication of the employees but systemic problems. I look forward to more posts like this and hope for insights that may help.
The call to action in this post is compelling and links with, what I think, is an important shift of mentality for people who care about state capacity, good governance, and generally having better public policy--there is a difference between participation and contribution. Both are valuable; voting is a key participatory act. But individuals can make concrete contributions like simple and clear asks of their elected officials, and failing to contribute is a missed opportunity.
I will also say I'm glad to have found your Substack this morning! I've worked in public policy since 2010 and my experience tends far more towards, what you called in another post, the planting seeds work of public policy. I recognized the importance of state capacity after seeing the results of some policy changes that I worked on fail to solve their intended problem. Looking forward to reading more!
Have you heard of any state or local governments using processes similar to SME-QA? Or governments abroad?
This was my experience with the FDA when I was a contractor for Google, as I sat and watched the nations youth get addicted to e-cigarettes as policy was pointed in a different direction for an unmovable 5-10y span of the big CTP contracts. I was actually told by the FDA to stop supplying data showing the rise in e-cigarette queries beyond my contractual mandate.
https://socialdawn.substack.com/p/the-most-valuable-dataset-the-government
Thank you for writing about this—I'd been wanting to hear your thoughts. My comment has no impact on the recommendations you outline- and I'm in full agreement regarding state capacity. I'm a practitioner on the front lines, trying to help students navigate this FAFSA crisis. The FA community had warned FSA from the beginning that the process they were proposing would not work effectively for a large population of students: those in mixed-status families.
I'd like to clarify a point that the media is misunderstanding. The 70,000 emails were from people without social security numbers trying to verify their accounts. The majority of these are undocumented parents of US citizen students, not students themselves. While undocumented students do file the FAFSA to be reviewed for institutional and state financial aid in some parts of the country, the issue has been severely impacting the US citizen students who are dependents and need their undocumented parents to sign the FAFSA. I only emphasize the point because it's more accurate and reveals the scope of the problem with this process. Millions of students are in mixed-status families and were required to go through this process.
I think what's frustrating and why there's an impulse to lay blame is because FSA has not course corrected at all yet- they keep ramming into the iceberg and our students are the ones left to deal with the consequences, which ranges from missing out on grants due to missing state deadlines (already pushed back due to the crisis) to delaying their education all together. This will have a long-term impact on higher education, and I hope we can get back on course.
Did anyone take responsibility for the 70,000 emails getting ignored, or suffer any meaningful adverse consequences? If not, expect things like this to happen again in the future. Incentives (or the lack thereof) matter.
Oh my god, all of this is so true! I currently work on the largest IT procurement project for the state of California. This is a full system replacement for a large agency that delivers for the entire state. It is also the third bite at the Apple, and we are six years in this RFP cycle. This is not for a lack of effort or dedication of the employees but systemic problems. I look forward to more posts like this and hope for insights that may help.
The call to action in this post is compelling and links with, what I think, is an important shift of mentality for people who care about state capacity, good governance, and generally having better public policy--there is a difference between participation and contribution. Both are valuable; voting is a key participatory act. But individuals can make concrete contributions like simple and clear asks of their elected officials, and failing to contribute is a missed opportunity.
I will also say I'm glad to have found your Substack this morning! I've worked in public policy since 2010 and my experience tends far more towards, what you called in another post, the planting seeds work of public policy. I recognized the importance of state capacity after seeing the results of some policy changes that I worked on fail to solve their intended problem. Looking forward to reading more!