Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: The City, the BABA Podcast where we bring together top actors in the Smart City arena, sparking dialogues and interactions around the stakeholders and themes most prevalent for today's citizens and tomorrow's generations.
I am your host, Tamlyn Shimizu and I hope you will enjoy this episode and gain knowledge and connections to accelerate the change for a better urban life.
Smart in the City is brought to you by BABLE Smart Cities. We enable processes from research and strategy development to co creation and implementation. To learn more about us, please visit the BABLE platform at BABLE SmartCities EU.
[00:00:46] Speaker C: So today we are crossing the Atlantic and heading to the heartland of the United States, to Kansas City, Missouri. So with me today is Andrew Newey, the Chief Digital Office of Kansas City.
And I also have to mention, before
[00:01:01] Speaker D: I let him introduce and say welcome,
[00:01:04] Speaker C: I also have to mention that Andrew has been recognized by Apolitical as one of the top 100 global practitioners driving real AI implementation and adoption in government.
So not just talking about AI as
[00:01:16] Speaker D: a lot of people do, as a lot of us do, but actually doing it as well, practically. So I'm really looking forward to digging
[00:01:23] Speaker C: into what that looks like on the ground. So welcome, Andrew.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: Well, thank you for having me, Tamlin. It's such a pleasure to be on your podcast.
[00:01:31] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely. A pleasure is all mine.
[00:01:34] Speaker C: I like to get us warmed up
[00:01:36] Speaker D: a little bit before we get into some of the tougher questions.
So I wanted to ask you, what's
[00:01:43] Speaker C: the most very human problem in your city that you, you never dare hand
[00:01:48] Speaker D: to an AI machine or anything like that?
[00:01:52] Speaker A: Yeah. So when I read the question, really, that was the question that stumped me the most.
[00:01:59] Speaker D: It's the most difficult question.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: Well, yes, because it feels like that there's almost nothing that is impossible now with AI, but yet the reason why it stumped me was because what would I, personally and perhaps also professionally not ever want to hand off to AI? It's not a question of not daring to, but it's a rather a question of do I want to or not? Because it leads to a broader question of what does it mean, number one, to be human? What does it mean, mean to engage in human society?
And I say human society because we see robots on our streets delivering food, we see drones in the air, we see a variety of technological enabled things in our environment. And so perhaps the long way to answer your question, I would never want to hand off human to human interaction to AI, because ultimately that makes us human, number one. And number two, really, it's that human to Human connection.
That is going to be the most ultimately valuable thing given the technological advancement, the rapid technological advancement that we see ourselves in. And I'm actually remembering one of the major News outlets in 2016 that actually said human contact is now a luxury good.
And so the larger question, like I was alluding to earlier, is, should we even, you know, outsource human engagement to AI? That my. My hot take here is probably no and hopefully never.
[00:04:11] Speaker E: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
[00:04:13] Speaker C: I think hopefully that means my podcast hosting job is also safe. Right. Because
[00:04:20] Speaker D: I really enjoy these conversations and I think an AI could not have this type of genuine human connection. Right.
[00:04:28] Speaker C: But also with so many of the
[00:04:29] Speaker D: other things we do as well. So, yeah, good philosophical question to start us off.
Before we get into a bit more
[00:04:38] Speaker C: of your AI work and stuff you're doing on the ground, I want to learn a little bit more about you as a person.
Can you tell me a bit about your background and what journey led you into your role today?
[00:04:49] Speaker A: That's a great question. So I'm in my third career.
[00:04:53] Speaker D: Wonderful.
[00:04:54] Speaker A: And I will say that I'm fortunate to be in my third career. My first career was in design.
My. My first education was in design and product industrial design.
And then that took me into graphic design, and then that ultimately led me into this work called wayfinding. Essentially, not only the creation of signs, but really the architecting of information that is all around us, primarily in the physical space. Although now that has been gone on to this idea of digital wayfinding and what we call user experience. Now, I never actually got into the sort of digital experience space, but certainly the jump from sort of architecting information in the built environment really lends itself to my second career in innovation and startups.
And then ultimately had the opportunity to join government.
Now here in the city of Kansas City, that is significantly being impactful. And I'll say it this way, because as we talked about earlier with humans, you know, humans have routines, humans have behaviors, and if we are creatures of habit, then really we should be thinking about the things that we're doing, whether it be with technology or with one another in the way of behavior change. And I think ultimately that has been probably some of the most underlooked aspects. Although arguably a lot of sovereign countries and nations, and also more importantly now technology companies are actually and deliberately specifically looking into that.
[00:06:44] Speaker E: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:06:45] Speaker C: Interesting journey. That's also one of the best parts of my job, is learning about everyone's backgrounds.
[00:06:51] Speaker D: A lot of people are on their second or third career, at least some people's journey makes like very logical sense, but very few, Few actually.
So I love that we can do so many different things as humans.
[00:07:04] Speaker C: Can you paint me a little bit of a picture about Kansas City?
So I've been there actually, because my,
[00:07:12] Speaker D: I, I mentioned to you before, my
[00:07:13] Speaker C: mom is from Kansas, so I've been to Kansas City a few different times,
[00:07:18] Speaker D: but probably a lot of people haven't
[00:07:20] Speaker C: and don't have a good vision in their head.
Can you describe a little bit about the city and what makes it unique?
[00:07:27] Speaker A: Well, there are a number of different things that make the city of Kansas City, Missouri unique.
Let's start with our landmass. We are 319 square miles top to bottom. It's a very large city and we straddle a number of different counties and we're roughly about half a million, just over half a million population.
But with the coming World cup in less than two months, were expected to double our population overnight.
So that's going to be kind of exciting.
So I'll share a little bit more about what makes Kansas City unique.
One of my passions is about food. And so we have Kansas City barbecue.
Yeah. And so people actually do Kansas City barbecue food tours.
One of one of them that is really interesting is Gates Barbecue. And they, there's just the way of their warmth, their culture, the way they invite you into their space as if it was that like their home. And then another one, literally, it's outside, it's in a gas station and people queue up and line up all around the block. It's kind of crazy.
Some other key and exciting things.
Kansas City has more boulevards than Paris.
It's also called the City of Fountains.
Walt Disney has one of its studios in Kansas City.
Also, if you're familiar with Hallmark cards, the company halls is headquartered in Kansas City.
[00:09:11] Speaker D: The more you know, I always learn also so many interesting facts about places on here as well.
[00:09:19] Speaker C: So we know a little bit about you, we know a little bit about Kansas City. Let's dig into some of your projects that you're working on now as well. You mentioned to me the Bloomberg City Data alliance and its connection to your 311 services.
Can you talk a little bit more about this public service hotline and walk us through what Kansas City is building here and what role AI plays in it.
[00:09:45] Speaker A: Absolutely. So just for those who are unfamiliar with the 311 service imaginate, you know, you would typically have a customer service hotline.
This is a city service hotline. And so if your trash was not picked up, if you have a pothole on your street. If the water is water running out from your, your water mains, a huge variety of things, that's the number that you would actually call.
And so when we applied to the Bloomberg City Data alliance program, our focus was how might we leverage the data that we have to actually look into the gaps that will ultimately lead to opportunities to improve. And so this was a nine month journey in terms of doing that. And so what we came out of that was what we discovered was that, you know, because the 311 service does not start and end at the call taker, it actually is all across the entire organization.
And so when things have to cross departments and divisions, there are, you know, transitions. And those transitions, if not done well, will cause service requests or different things to fall through the cracks. And so, and this is not just common to Kansas City, this is common to all the city service requests all across the U.S.
one of the things that we've heard is that, you know, when I call in or I submit the request through the app, I don't really know if and when that gets fixed and if it says resolved, but then the water's still running in the street.
And why is that? And so really we set about to uncover that process, you know, so I submitted, and it just so happened that I had met a resident and just said, hey, you know, the water's been running in my street for a number of different months already.
I've called in. And then I said, well, they should have given you some sort of ticket number or some sort of tracking. And so there are all these different aspects, whether it's a duplicate call or how it transfers through the process, like I explained earlier. And so you have to walk a mile in somebody's shoes. And so that's exactly what we did.
We submitted the request and we just went to follow that entire workflow and process. And so as a result of that, what we discovered that there were certain gaps as a result of that. And then because we identified the gaps, there were opportunities that we could address.
And so that's what the heart of what we were trying to do was really to become AI ready. Because it's not just a data component much pretty piece or a tech component piece, but it's also a people piece. Right? A lot of times we talk about the software and the hardware and the process, but we forget to talk about the people and we forget to talk about how does data transfer across each and every transitional aspect. And so as a result of that, a number of things have come up.
We have started going forward after this program has ended, which was last month.
We now have a citywide task force 4311, which means we have one person in every single department that we can reach out to.
The next part is we're also creating a customer service excellence standard, not just for the 311 call takers, but for everyone.
Right.
You know, why should it be that customer service excellence pertain only to the call takers when it should really be about the entire journey? Yeah, absolutely right. And so a lot of times, what we will see when they transition, the work transitions across departments and divisions. Everybody has their own box of their responsibilities and their roles.
But now what we're saying is, because you need to understand the entire journey, we're asking you to punch through the four walls of your roles and responsibilities and grab on to somebody else's hand by default.
And so this comes back to the whole behavioral change piece, which we're really specifically looking at. Like, you need to make sure that the next person down the line or before you has the ability to connect. And so at the heart of it, that's what we're trying to do.
Making sure that the data is standardized, making sure that our language is customer focused or customer centered. For example, you know, currently it says when they closed out the thing and they said, oh, it's referred.
You and I, as a resident, have no clue what it means to have it referred.
And meanwhile, the resident is going out there on the street and it's like, but the water's still running on my street.
And so what we want to do is to say something like, thank you for your request.
This service has been referred to our pipeline department.
The estimated timeframe for a resolution that it is in priority sequence is expected to take four to six weeks.
And so just transitioning that language to be a lot more customer focused and a lot more anticipatory.
This is at the heart of what we're doing. In addition to making sure that the AI components, we are preparing for the AI components to actually be able to happen.
[00:15:49] Speaker E: Yeah, makes a lot of sense.
[00:15:51] Speaker C: I'm in big favor of always looking at the full journey, the full user journey. There's also some great communication points in there about citizen communication.
You've also talked publicly about the dark underside of the shiny AI widget.
And I have to ask you to kind of make this really real for us. What are the risks or failure modes you are watching most closely when it comes to AI in local government?
And is the sector Being honest about them.
[00:16:23] Speaker A: I think there's a lot of, oh, look how I can do something with AI.
But it takes a lot of work to get there. And so the dark underside that I'm referencing to is the people, the data and the process that, you know, in order to get to the shiny AI widget and to have it work in miraculous and wondrous ways.
I think there's a lot of, how do I even say this? There's a lot of work that needs to be done.
Is your data in the right format? Does all your data, do all your data sets talk to each other?
Can you, you know, are your people ready? Are they trained?
You know, are you specifically only inserting AI into specific parts versus asking people to disrupt the entire workflow flow to say, okay, we're just going to do AI because it's awesome.
And so the dark underside, in my opinion is really a systematic process of looking at the entire workflow, looking at your staff, looking at all your data, tech and other processes and making sure they align. Because if they don't align, you're not going to get the outcome that the shiny AI widget says that you're going to get it.
[00:18:03] Speaker C: And do you think people are being honest about this?
Do you think people are talking enough about this dark underside?
[00:18:11] Speaker A: So I'll reference the picture that I had in my post about the duck.
The duck is gliding so effortlessly.
But meanwhile we don't see, see everything else that needs to happen in order for that to happen. So as to whether it's honest or not, it really depends on the organization.
And that's why you see posts from a number of institutions and others that reference that, well, everybody's in a experimental phase and not necessarily in a phase of demonstrated tangible outcomes.
[00:18:51] Speaker E: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:18:53] Speaker C: There's so much to keep up on as well with AI. It's a bit overwhelming I think, for a lot of people, especially those working within city government, to really keep up with everything, with all your everyday tasks, et cetera too.
One thing that you've done through the Gov AI coalition is you've produced a couple practical tools including a slide deck template to help staff get executive buy in for AI and a notebook LM companion to reimagine service delivery. Can you dive a bit deeper into these tools? They're quite hands on and specific.
And what drove you to kind of get this granular when you're talking about, you know, the real bottlenecks in government AI adoption?
[00:19:41] Speaker A: Yeah. So you know, with the Gov AI Coalition, it is a volunteer practitioner Network and essentially government agencies all across the U.S. canada and other countries have come together to in acknowledgement that, you know, unless we come together, we're not going to necessarily have the expertise, have the tools, have the know how.
And so we're engaging across governments, we're engaging across academic institutions, research organizations and many others, not for profit organizations as well to come together to say, hey, regardless of where you are, whether you be on the far end of zero or whether you're on the other end of more towards 100, let's walk this AI journey together as a government agency.
And primarily this is local and county and state level government organizations.
You know, of course the coalition has connections to the federal level agencies as well. But ultimately if you look at the agencies that impact the people most, that's actually at the local level, you know, at the state level, at the county level. And so the, the focus of this work was really based on that. It's practitioner led.
And that's why it was not just about an article that, you know, or white paper, but really it has to move the needle, it has to help people. And so the thinking behind not just writing the article is also okay, well this is such a great article, but what can I do with it? So very practical.
Here's the template that you can use.
Especially we see here a lot of small agencies may not necessarily already have full time staff even.
Right? So is there something that they can take to their board of commissioners or whatever structure that they have to say, hey, this is.
Given that we're not even full time, there's an opportunity for technology to do something.
And then if you still have questions, of course you can reach out to me. But at the same time I wanted to make sure that and that notebook alum continues to be updated that you can go query it and say, hey, you know, this is my particular situation. Doesn't save any of that information, but at least there's a 247 resource that you can use.
But it's already out there and it's already available.
[00:22:27] Speaker C: Yeah, I really like how practical these tools are because a lot of times we're just talking and AI has so many capabilities on large scale and so many different possibilities. But at the end of the day we also need just these very simple applications to help our work and to get us the information we need.
You've also described Human Readiness as a real API for scaling AI beyond the pilot stage, which I think is a really clever way to put it.
So what does it actually take to get an organization of say, thousands of city employees actually ready. And where do you think most cities get stuck?
[00:23:07] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great question because you know, I referenced change management earlier and I think this is quite specific.
A lot of times pilots or the majority of the time I would say pilots are really or proof of concept is to prove that the technology works, but it doesn't necessarily prove that the technology works within your organization. It does not prove that the technology works within your workflow and process and your people.
And so the human readiness piece is really speaking at a high level on change management, But at the same time it is focused on making sure that your staff are trained, your staff are ready. And actually in that article, it speaks to the psychological safety of staff to be in a place by which they're actually self motivated to want to do the things that we aspire them to do in helping the organization improve, in helping the organization to be the best that we can be.
And so really, you know, on the one hand we're talking about change management, but understand that change management, organizational change management truly begins with the individual. And so that's why we're focusing on making sure that our staff and making sure that the culture really at the heart of it. Really what I'm talking about is the culture shift and the culture change.
The idea here, what we're trying to do is really to like a virus, I guess, if you could call it, you know, the innovation or the innovator is the virus, right? And then the body has its immune defense and immune response.
And so the innovation has to live long enough for it to take root.
And so what we're trying to do here is to engage with staff as actually innovators and change makers throughout the organization. And so that's how we think about starting and how we continue to activate and empower and enable staff to do that.
[00:25:41] Speaker C: I love talking about change management when it comes to cities because it's so important not just for the city staff, of course, also for so many different
[00:25:50] Speaker D: stakeholders within the urban context as well.
[00:25:54] Speaker C: And maybe this relates to what we were just talking about as well. But I want to ask you basically if you could remove one structural or institutional barrier tomorrow, like snap your fingers,
[00:26:06] Speaker D: wave a magic wand, however you want to do it.
[00:26:09] Speaker C: Something that is really slowing down the city of Kansas.
[00:26:13] Speaker D: Kansas City, Sorry, the city of Kansas sounds weird. Kansas City, what would that change be?
[00:26:23] Speaker A: I think it's really moving people from working in jobs, right, to the idea of meaningful work.
I want to reference Daniel Pink. He has a book it's called drive.
And he talks about three factors that people are motivated by in work beyond satisfaction of a, you know, particular salary.
And the three things are autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
And so at the heart of how we were thinking about engaging with staff and with teams and creating high performing, you know, exponential team work is really at the heart of that. That's really, you know, do they have the autonomy to do what they do?
Of course. They've been either hired into the role or have significant tenor in a particular role. So the mastery becomes part of that. And then the third part of that is purpose.
Does the work that they're doing and that they enjoy doing align with their life's purpose? Right, so it really shifts the work from, oh, it's just a job.
I get here at eight, I finish at five, and then I go home.
Two, I actually enjoy this thing. It brings me satisfaction to actually see something happen. So it's an invitation to co ownership, right?
The idea that, you know, the ownership of, you know, typical person is, hey, it's the four walls of my house or my apartment or my, you know, my land.
But how can I be a co owner of the city in which I live or the country in which I live? And so it's an invitation, I think at the heart of it to a co ownership and to be responsible for the change that you actually want to see in your city and in your country.
[00:28:37] Speaker C: I love how we went from philosophy at the beginning to now organizational psychology.
[00:28:42] Speaker D: It's wonderful, the journey throughout the, throughout the podcast.
[00:28:48] Speaker C: So a lot of our listeners are, of course, those cities and city employees that you're talking about and also leaders within the space. But a lot of our audience is also made up of, you know, other stakeholders like companies, and they are really interested obviously in, in getting insights from the people working in cities on where do you sit, how do you collaborate best with the vendors, with innovation companies? How do you approach this as Kansas City and what would make them more useful partners rather than, you know, just another company pitching their solution?
[00:29:22] Speaker A: That's great question because actually my.
At a meeting earlier and we were specifically talking about what are the opportunities at, you know, to engage with cities.
And so the way we're thinking about quite specifically is the idea or concept of a public innovation challenge. And we see this in, we see this in a startup world where they have hackathons, right, and they unite around a particular thematic focus.
And so similar, similarly, a public innovation challenge is coming together under, under a particular challenge focus.
So as an example, using Our, one of our departments, our city planning and development department, what is the challenge that they particularly face.
And so we'll outline that challenge and then we invite, perhaps once or twice a year, all sorts of businesses, all across the spectrum, from small business to startups to, you know, national and beyond, to propose solutions that meet or exceed the particular stated challenge. And here's how to do it.
A lot of times vendors keep pitching, but they don't necessarily have or have done the homework of deeply understanding what the problem is. So that becomes going to the doctor and saying to the doctor, hey, I have a sore throat, but not deeply understanding. How did you get a sore throat?
Right. And so it gets hard because you're essentially pitching something that may not be rooted in any sort of pain point that the agency is currently experiencing or that it's not necessarily a priority.
And so I reference, you know, the startup world. Again, the story of the piece of candy, a vitamin or a painkiller.
Candy's sweet, certainly good to eat, vitamins, beneficial. But unless if you have a deep hurt or pain, you need that painkiller right now because it's targeted, it's a priority and it's specific.
Right. And so the invitation, I think, to vendors is to learn as much as you can about the agency that you're reaching out to.
Take a playbook from the startup world. Who's your customer, how are they experiencing the pain point? And what is, you know, what is the purpose of the service offering or the platform or whatever it is that you're trying to position?
[00:32:33] Speaker E: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:32:34] Speaker C: I 100% agree with that approach.
We actually, at BABLE we aggregate a lot of data on what cities are doing. So city intelligence, and we found that's actually one of the most useful things for companies as well, is understanding really deeply what is the city planning to do, what challenges are they trying to solve right now? To really target this a lot more because, yeah, so the B2G market is so challenging for these companies, for startups, et cetera. So definitely a pain point that we also see over here in Europe and globally too.
I want to ask you as well.
We touched on a lot of points today, but there might also be some that we didn't yet get to touch on. So I'd like to give you a little bit of an open flow floor. You don't have to take it, but you can if you'd like to.
Do you have a topic that you really want the listeners to know about that we didn't yet get to. To discuss?
[00:33:27] Speaker A: Yeah, So I want to come back to the things that we are, you know, or let me, let me put it this way.
Like it or not, AI is changing the world around us and more rapidly than we can appreciate.
And so from a government perspective, I do wonder about are we being left behind? That's number one.
Number two, in this frantic sort of rate of change and in many ways, in this sudden urgency to do something, I think we have to be more thoughtful.
I think we need to look at the. Not just the immediate impact to work or what is the future of human work, but broader.
What are the unexpected, unintentional and unintended consequences of implementing any sort of technology? Could be AI, could be whatever.
And these are not easy questions, but it's certainly important to think about them.
Reference it this way. You can, you know, somebody is transcribing, let's say, a spreadsheet of, you know, accounting ledger as an example, but in the transcription from hand to paper or to digital or whatever it is, that thinking time or reflection time afforded to that person while they're doing some seemingly menial work could have additional second order repercussions. Because it's not just thinking about, I need to copy the thing to whatever, but the person's actually also thinking about other things that may be adjacent to it.
Oh, what about this other process? Oh, did this linkage actually happen?
Are the numbers accurate? And so suddenly it's not just about doing the production work, but if we did truly separate the production work from the thinking work, do people actually still have the opportunity of that time to actually think more deeply about that? Because you may not necessarily have that. So that, to me, I think, is a concern.
The other part to it too, is, you know, at the level that we're at, when we're asked a question, case in point with why is the water still leaking on the street?
The answer is not a yes or no answer. It is a complex answer that, you know, and maybe that is a bad reference to that particular one. But like, if, at my level, if I'm being asked a question, typically the response to that is, it depends.
And it depends because there's institutional knowledge. It depends on because there is, you know, my lived experience. It depends because of my, you know, academic background and all the other things.
And there's no straightforward answer. And so then the question, if you're trying to map that into AI, there's no, there's no sort of straightforward way to do that.
And so it begins to be, you know, it's a lot more complicated in this whole dark, shiny underside of the AI widget to map that entire body of knowledge and experience to some sort of deterministic, machine readable pathway.
[00:37:43] Speaker E: Yeah, really interesting.
[00:37:46] Speaker C: I could talk to you for a long time about AI, I think, but
[00:37:50] Speaker D: unfortunately we're at the end of our end of our main interview.
[00:37:55] Speaker C: But we do have a segment for you. The segment is Hot take of the day.
[00:38:02] Speaker B: Hot take of the day.
We want to hear an opinion of yours that may be slightly controversial or debated.
[00:38:16] Speaker A: Yeah, I guess the controversial, perhaps controversial part about AI is really focused on the use cases.
Not on the use cases of today, but on the use cases that we haven't even begun to imagine yet. And so the, the hot take, in my personal opinion is I would argue the age of AI is really the age of creativity because the barriers have not been lower.
[00:38:42] Speaker C: Interesting. Might have to reflect on that point a little bit more.
But I do want to ask you also the question that we ask every single guest that is to you, what is a Smart City?
[00:38:57] Speaker A: That's a great question.
Another one of those stumping questions.
I think it's not just about technology.
I think it's about the ability for a city to be in sync with its residents, to be very aware of what they need and care about.
And I would also say what is aspirational to its residents.
And so imagine that a city could be more responsive and anticipatory as opposed to reactionary.
I think that would be a great Smart City.
[00:39:41] Speaker C: Yeah, I love that image of the Smart City is really being a lot
[00:39:48] Speaker D: more proactive in responding to challenges even before they happen.
[00:39:53] Speaker C: So with that, I just have to thank you so much for your time, Andrew. I've really enjoyed talking to you, getting to know a lot more about your work and the way that you think about things, especially when it comes to AI and more. So thanks so much for your time.
[00:40:06] Speaker A: Well, thank you for having me.
[00:40:08] Speaker C: Absolutely. Anytime. And of course I have to give a big thank you to our listeners.
[00:40:12] Speaker D: Also.
[00:40:13] Speaker C: Wouldn't happen without you. Don't forget you can always create a free account on Baba SmartCities EU. You can find out more about different use cases, solutions and more. Thank you very much.
[00:40:25] Speaker B: Thank you all for listening. I'll see you at the next stop on the journey to a better urban life.
[00:40:33] Speaker C: It.
