--- id: "workshop:building-inclusive-climate-resilience-with-human-centered-design-in-government" type: "InnovateUS workshop" title: "Building Inclusive Climate Resilience with Human-Centered Design in Government" url: "https://innovate-us.org/building-inclusive-climate-resilience-with-human-centered-design-in-government" date: "2025-03-12" duration: "90 minutes" language: "English" instructors: ["Elham Ali","Jorge Valens","Liz Boyer"] recording: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhExTAQ-C2Y" transcript: "automatic, from the recording" source: "InnovateUS (innovate-us.org)" licence: "CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/), as stated on innovate-us.org" --- # Building Inclusive Climate Resilience with Human-Centered Design in Government InnovateUS workshop · 12 March 2025 · 90 minutes Climate resilience work in local government is complex—it requires meaningful community engagement, inclusive decision-making, and access to the right tech, data, and resources. But what enables municipalities to do this work well? And what stands in the way, especially given shifting federal policies? This workshop explores the intersection of Human-Centered Design (HCD), climate resilience, and civic tech—not just how local governments apply HCD principles to climate action, but also what supports or hinders their efforts in developing tech-enabled climate solutions. ## Learning goals - Understand Local Government Perspectives – Gain insights from local government staff on the opportunities and challenges of implementing climate tech resilience efforts - Engage Communities in Climate Solutions – Learn strategies for co-designing climate tech-enabled solutions that align with community needs and priorities - Navigate Implementation Challenges – Explore the key challenges of deploying tech-enabled climate resilience initiatives, including data collection and supporting community-led actions - Leverage Climate Data Tools – Develop skills to access and use climate data resources from local, state, and federal governments to support informed decision-making ## Speakers - **Elham Ali**, Researcher at Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation, Georgetown University - **Jorge Valens**, Innovation Manager at the Miami-Dade County IT, Florida - **Liz Boyer**, Climate Action Coordinator, City of Saint Paul, Minnesota Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhExTAQ-C2Y ## Transcript Automatic transcript of the recording: names and terms can be misheard, and the times can be a few seconds off. Each time links to that moment of the video. The transcript alone: https://innovate-us.org/building-inclusive-climate-resilience-with-human-centered-design-in-government.txt (plain text) and https://innovate-us.org/building-inclusive-climate-resilience-with-human-centered-design-in-government.json (every segment with its start and end second). **Elham Ali** [0:00](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=0) Long commitment and a big, big one. So we'll keep things engaging and interactive. So I'll start us off with a 25-minute overview on what climate action is, as well as human-centered design to set the stage. And then we'll spend most of our time, of our time in the panel discussion with two leaders. They bring unique perspective, one is which is a climate action leader and the other is a technologist leader. And we'll wrap up with your question at the end for 20 minutes. Just like Adisa said, we have some community agreements. I will promise that I will be speaking from my experience and I encourage you to do the same in the chat. And just know that multiple truths in this work exist at once. And you'll see me talk fast, mainly because I don't have enough time with you for 25 minutes. But if I speak too fast, just let me know in the chat and I will slow down. And tech will break. So I'll give each other grace when that happens. But most importantly, I do need your participation today. You can engage in so many ways, drop your thoughts in the Zoom chat, emoji react, or even use Slido to answer questions, which is an interactive polling tool. With that in mind, let's go ahead and speak in terms of Slido. Start with a quick warmup. So go ahead and scan the QR code on the screen with your phone or tablet, or click the link posted in the Zoom chat. You can also enter today's date at 031225 at slido.com. [1:31](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=91) You'll see this question pop up. Let me know if you can't see the screen. The question is, have you or your community ever experienced any of these climate events? This could be extreme heat, flooding, hurricanes, fires, or even sandstorms. Pick everything that applied, whether it happened to you personally or your family. So I'll give you roughly around 15 to 30 seconds, and then we'll go ahead and read some of the answers. Okay, I'm going to go ahead and read off some of the answers that we're seeing here. Well, thanks, Leanne, for the music. We try to keep things pretty interactive here. But I do see some folks here have extreme heat, as well as windstorms. And I see also here, I'm going to read off of the chat, and test dust storms absolutely off of agricultural fields. And it's interesting because sandstorms aren't always something, the first thing that comes to mind when it comes to climate conversations, but it's very real. But I do see here folks have also experienced fires as well as drought. It's such a sobering experience. And I do know that from firsthand myself. And I've lived through these. I grew up both in Bahrain, which is a tiny country in the Middle East and in the Philippines. And sandstorms were actually a normal part of my life, because we live surrounded by the desert. And so indoors doesn't even feel safe anymore because of the dust. And in the Philippines, my house sadly flooded twice. And it's such a jarring experience [3:36](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=216) to lose, but also to rebuild. But as you can see, some of these events, they're not just news headlines, they're part of our lives now. And they're only getting worse. And now more than ever, that actually matters. The 2024 planetary health check shows that we've breached six out of nine planetary boundaries. And that means that we are actively pushing Earth's boundaries towards instability and potentially collapse. So we're not just inching towards crisis, we are already in it. But there's some good news. The ozone layer is recovering thanks to global action like the Montreal Protocol. But also most systems like our climate biodiversity and freshwater are in dangerous territory, sadly. So the big question isn't how bad is it only, it's also about what do we do about it. And that's where climate action comes in. When we think about climate action, we typically think about cutting carbon emissions, which is important, but it's much bigger than that. Mitigation is also about stopping the problem at its source by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. So think about it like preventing a fire, it's better to stop it before it starts. And making building energy efficient as well as riding your bike instead of taking the car are all mitigation strategies. But there's also adaptation where we're adjusting to the actual reality or potential expected reality of climate change already. We've seen this also with farmers who are switching to drought resistant crops or planting trees for shade and extreme heat. These are great examples. Resilience is our own ability to prepare and recover from our climate disasters and not just survive them, but coming back stronger. Like my community here in Southern California and Los Angeles, where the city is rebuilding more fire resistant houses after the devastating fires this year. But finally, [5:37](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=337) and most importantly, climate justice, where we're tackling the structural injustices that contribute to the climate crisis at the root because not all communities are affected equally. We have lower income as well as communities of color that bear the worst impacts even though they've contributed the least to the crisis. They also have the least resources to recover. But affects people across our lifetime, across ages, from pregnancy where we've seen increased risk of miscarriage due to increased exposure to air pollution to the impacts of extreme heat on the elderly. It also affects people across race and ethnicity. Black and Hispanic communities in the United States are exposed to more air pollution than they create. It also affects people across places. You've probably heard about this or it's Cancer Alley in Louisiana. It's an 85 mile stretch of communities where toxic emissions from petrochemical plants have devastated health. Or on the right, which is an image of the Navajo Nation town of Thoreau in New Mexico in 2019, where 40% of households didn't have clean running water and were forced to rely on weekly and daily visits to water pumps. It also impacts people across income levels. Low-income families spend three times more of their income on utilities because of our centralized fossil fuel powered system. But this is where design matters and is so important. It's because how we design climate solution decides who benefits and who gets left behind. Human-centered design, or HCD, helps us understand people's needs through a double-diamond approach of continually discovery, co-design, testing, and low-risk spaces before we scale our solution to our communities. [7:29](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=449) And when we're applying it to climate action, it means that we're recognizing also the unequal climate burdens and making sure that solutions actually work for those most impacted. But we're taught in HCD to center people, right? Their needs, experiences, and challenges. But the climate crisis is bigger than just human needs. Our health, cities, and economies don't exist in silos. They're part of a bigger interconnected system with animals, plants, land, and the water. And in public health, we call this the one health approach, where we recognize that human well-being depends on the well-being of the ecosystems we live in. That's why we need planet-centered design. Our first key takeaway among four, we're designing solutions that support entire ecosystems, not just human convenience. Because for too long, we've expected nature to absorb the consequences of our action, but the planet has limits. And we've already pushed past many of them. And this new perspective is that shifts us from thinking about our solutions and our projects from egoism to ecosystems, where nature is a stakeholder, not an afterthought. But because also when we protect the planet, we protect ourselves. [8:52](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=532) So what does this shift in perspective look like in practice? We've seen it in U.S. cities already doing it. In Portland, Oregon, the city sits between two major rivers that's vital for salmon. So instead of just using these resources, the city invested in green infrastructure like tree planting and wetland restoration to manage stormwater and reduce pollution to their rivers. And the result is cleaner water, healthier fish, and a city more resilient to flooding. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, they're proving cities can reconnect with nature. They turned vacant lots into green spaces. They repurposed old industrial zones into eco-industrial districts and showed that their city can grow as well as their economy while restoring nature. And lastly, in Fort Collins, Colorado, the city made nature a requirement in their urban planning for their department. So their nature in the city program makes sure that every resident is within a 10-minute walk from a green space, and they track biodiversity, monitor habitats, and involve their own communities and local greening projects. So they're proving that nature and cities can thrive together. And if you want to start shifting your perspective towards planet-centered design, two resources are the Systemic Design Toolkit from the U.K. [10:21](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=621) Design Council and the Planet-Centric Design Manual, because they'll help you ask questions when you're scoping climate-related projects and apply systems thinking to your work. And when I work on climate projects, I also ask a few questions of who and what is a stakeholder? Do we consider the land a stakeholder? What is the full life cycle of what I'm designing, whether it's a product, a tool, whether it's digital or analog? And does it regenerate back to the environment, or does it continually extract from it? Other questions would be helpful is, you know, what do ecosystem services look like, and how do we as humans service them? And how do we support our team's design system so that we can continue to shift to create that change? Because a lot of design frameworks and approaches, like the double-diamond that we just saw a few seconds ago, follow this linear path. But a lot of real-world climate projects, like you will learn in today's panel discussion, they're not linear. Instead of designing a straight path, we want to encourage to start thinking about relationships and how these relationships interact with each other in a holistic way. And it's less about our own immediate human experience, but it's also about if we're designing with the full cycle in mind. [11:46](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=706) But speaking of questions, one other key question I've explored in my own work is, what is the Indigenous but also local wisdom in our communities and in our natural landscapes? And how can we learn from that and grow it, support it to grow, especially as we're doing research with our communities, as well as engaging with them in climate project? And that's our second key takeaway of today. One project that I worked with, a client that I remember, including with the Port of Portland in Oregon, we wanted to make sure that climate investments were accessible to entrepreneurs of colour, tribal nations, as well as local businesses. And ports are major carbon emitters, but with the right resources, businesses can play a really big role in reducing carbon emissions. But one thing I've learned from that early stage of that project and research is that Indigenous communities have already led climate action for generations. [12:47](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=767) We've had, in Kenya, the Paran Women Group restoring land through reforestation. In my own hometown here in California, we have tribal fisheries that are leading marine monitoring to protect culturally significant species. And in the past two years, California, our state, invested $100 million in research collaboration with tribal nations to support projects like their forest restoration and climate resilience in Indian allotment lands, which takes significant partnership, a lot of trust, and a lot of patience. But one of the big things I've seen engaging communities, especially in terms of research, but also climate action, whether they're Indigenous or just local to our community, is bridging this distance that happens in climate work that often is physical, emotional, and relational. Because the climate crisis can feel so far away if it's not happening in our neighborhood or to us. But research shows that when climate impacts feel closer, real, and urgent, people are more likely to act. And here are some techniques I've used in my research, but also in participatory workshop with communities. The first one is proximalizing, which is where in our interviews or in our co-design workshops, we have to show our communities how the crisis is happening close to home, in people's streets, their families, so that we can start shifting this abstract idea to something more personal and urgent. The second is personalizing, where we connect the climate issues to people's daily lives so they see themselves in both the problem and the solution. [14:30](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=870) We also focus on the now so that we see immediate visible impacts that motivate information, storytelling, and action more than this distant future threat. And the last is that we bridge. When we're asking interview or focus group questions, we try to emphasize the shared global identity that can help people feel connected to climate issues, even when they're far away. And this actually works in an experiment in the UK residents who write about Climate impacts in their own country felt a stronger connection to the crisis and likely even so, as well as for people who have watched it from other countries and saw the impact in different countries, they still felt that global connectedness. And this tells us that we can engage and communicate and collaborate with our communities by making the climate crisis feel local and enforcing our collective responsibility. And visual storytelling is a wonderful way for you to do that. [15:31](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=931) One method that I've used in my work is photo voice, where people document their experiences through images and captions to share their stories. It's actually pioneered by Caroline Wang in the early 1990s. It's about where they've used this technique globally to amplify unheard voices from youth to people with disabilities. And in a project with John Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, I explored how organizations implement Needless Monday using digital cultural probes. It's a participatory research method where participants use their phones to capture their daily experiences and then answer prompts via text messages. And just for context, Needless Monday, if you haven't heard about it, it encourages swapping meat for plant-based food once a week. So just to give you clarity about that, if everybody, for example, in New York City chose a veggie burger over a quarter pound beef burger for just one Monday, it would save enough water to fill 79 million bathtubs. [16:36](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=996) Which is wild. So food is a powerful tool for climate action. In this case, for this photo voice activity, I asked participants over five days, the first prompt is a flavor journey to walk us through those who've worked in restaurants, schools, and hospitals, what is a one plant-based dish that your community loved and made it memorable. And people were able here to take pictures and it really showed opportunities for how people are thinking about their relationship with food. But also, we made it fun. We've asked people to imagine an expedition kit or a survival backpack in their journey for Meatless Monday. We've asked people, what's your essentials in your backpack? Who are your allies? Draw some map of what's important to you. And it really built this unexpected connection across participants for them to see what are the core resources that are important to them and it created that relationship. And in open mic night, we asked people to imagine their open mic performance and to record a poem or a rap or spoken word about what are the creative strategies for introducing Meatless Monday and it helped us understand what climate positive behavior looks like. And all these you can still use in local government, in your community-based organization, in research settings. So this is not just unique in an academic institution. [18:01](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=1081) But the question is, how do we know if any of what we've learned from our research and how we are engaging our community is really going to make an impact when we're designing digital or whatever kind of climate related tools. Because a lot of our climate solutions don't happen all at once. They unfold in phases over time. So making lasting change requires us to track the right data and act at the right moment, so we can balance short term action with long term resilience. So that's our third key takeaway today is for us to design for multiple timelines and impacts. Actually, one project that Harold and I worked on with the Opportunity Project for Cities is focused on increasing urban tree equity and the city of Akron in Ohio. So the city was losing tree canopy because of storms, diseases, and development, especially in historically redlined neighborhoods. And the solution is what you see here on the screen, where they, as well as Google.org, our technical partner at that time, designed Canopy Connect, which is a digital mapping tool. And the purpose of it was to make tree canopy data accessible to the public and help us target tree planting in vulnerable neighborhoods and empower residents to engage in tree canopy efforts in their neighborhoods. [19:24](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=1164) But tracking progress was a major challenge. Data gaps actually slowed our action because a lot of the tree data was locked in vendor system, which made it hard to access and analyze. But also, there's no centralized records of tree planted or removed over time, so a lot of the tracking relied on word of mouth and it was scattered records. And some organizations had private tree planting data, but it wasn't easily shared across agency. And also the growth isn't instant for tree canopy. Just humor me, and I'm super curious, in the Zoom chat, how long do you think, on average, does it take for tree canopies to grow? Just say six feet. It could be months, years, put in a number. I see your folks at 10 years, any number in the Zoom chat. 10 years, three years, okay, 15, 16. Dang, y'all are pretty good. [20:26](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=1226) Irrespective of the tree species, we learned through our arborists and our conversations when we're doing impact evaluation for this, for Canopy Connect, that it takes, on average, 15 years to just grow six feet for the tree canopy. So y'all are pretty good. And I see here, you know, someone said, you know, my parents planted trees 30 years and it took 10 years just to get one powpow. That's rad. So I think the biggest thing that comes out of this is that cities need a way to measure impact over decades, not just through a budget cycle in our climate work. And it shows us that without long-term localized data, we can't track progress or make informed decisions. And tree planting, just as an example, is a really slow investment. And so our cities have to ensure that our work is, and our design of our solutions, is future-oriented practice. And we work with multiple timelines because rolling out some of these solutions that are systemic takes a lot of patience and persistence. [21:28](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=1288) So we have to be in it for the long haul. So one of the things to help us visualize this and communicate this back to our stakeholders, especially these long-term investments, is when we use techniques like the theory of change and the Three Horizons Framework so that we can start connecting these solutions into what time horizons look like for impact in the future. The Three Horizons Framework is a way for you to plan across multiple timelines, but you start with a set of assumptions. And then you change some of those assumptions to figure out what would impact that timeline. And the theory of change, you might have seen this if you've done program evaluation work, it's to help you map how and why change happens because of your solution. And you start with the end in mind, and it clarifies your goals, your outputs, your short-term and medium-term and long-term outcome. So in Akron's case, this meant that from our Canopy Connect solution, we're expecting from that solution to engage in the community in some form of outreach, tree planting interests, as well as tracking our tree canopy changes over time. [22:45](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=1365) And also improving our staff efficiency. So are we automating processes? Are we saving time for our staff through better data sharing? And our hope is that with those outputs is that we're able to lead to short-term outcomes with better awareness from the community to engage with us, with the city. Within one year, we're hoping to see more trees planted in underserved areas and resurfacing surface temperatures. And in the far future, we're hoping to see that our neighborhoods are healthier, our families are healthier, we have better air quality, and we have reduced heat disparities. And so with this, we're able to figure out what kinds of inputs we need to manipulate to figure out what that lasting resilience are. But only by measuring these long-term effects, we can truly understand the implications of our design. So a lot of these climate solutions that we're showing you, and also that you know of, are typically framed as universally positive. [23:48](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=1428) But they're not always equitable. On one hand, they can create environmental and socioeconomic benefits. But on the other hand, if they're not designed in equity in mind, they can cause harm and reinforce existing inequities. So that's our fourth and final key takeaway on my end, is for us to measure both intended and unintended consequences in our design choices. So for language-wise, intended consequences are the changes or impact that you're looking to make. These are our project requirements. And we're trying to frame it in a way that supports our organizational goal. Unintended consequences are what could happen as a result of our actions, and what we've learned from similar releases in the past. This is our way to figure out what could be missing from how what you've created could be used in ways that you don't intend, or the knock-on effects of what you do intend. And it also helps us figure out who benefits, who's left out, and what shifts over time. [24:52](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=1492) And I love this quote from Kim Goodwin, who said it best, Until we measure what we value, we will overvalue what we measure. And take tree planting, for example, since we're on a tree planting streak right now in this workshop. In Portland, Oregon, tree planting has been linked to neighborhood gentrification. There's also research in New York City that found that it has shifted the demographic makeup of disadvantaged neighborhoods. In my hometown in California, a wetland restoration project raised concerns among Native American tribes, especially in the Pavunga community, because it's a sacred site for them. And Native tribes have protested against dumping construction debris and dirt into that land. But in order for us to create lasting behavioral changes, we have to measure the long-term consequences, while still being open-minded to the unintended consequences that might become future design opportunities. [25:59](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=1559) Here's an example. So when I worked as a climate tech fellow with Rural Impact, my team and I was working on modeling future carbon emission reductions for a company that used an AI-driven analytical tool that helps smallholder farmers in Africa optimize their fertilizer use. So our goal and our intended model showed that fertilization optimization, because of this technology, reduce carbon dioxide emissions while improving crop yields and improving food security. And it also showed that there's also less nitrogen fertilizer weight. But there are also, on the other side, some unintended challenges. We modeled carbon reductions, but we didn't factor in nitrogen emissions, which is a gas that's 300 times more potent than carbon. We also intentionally didn't factor in water use because of the scope of our model, but some climate-smart technologies stream local water supplies. [27:05](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=1625) Plus, the African market is severely underrepresented in decarbonization modeling. Most data over-index on countries with the most data, like Egypt, and it leaves gaps in other farming regions. So that's why consequence scanning is such a helpful tool for anticipating that long-term impact of our design. It's a method that adds purposeful friction to the design process so that you can check the long-term effects of your product design. And it's a practice that actually fits within an iterative development cycle and allows your team to spot risk early and adjust course and amplify positive outcomes before scaling a solution. And I see here also in the chat, you know, some trees are invasive as well. And that's actually very pertinent, too, to figuring out how we're making decisions on what we're introducing to our new ecosystem. [28:05](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=1685) And if some of the introduction of those resources can potentially harm. So some of the questions that can help you start thinking about that when you're in your projects is what are the unintended as well as intended consequences of your product and your feature? Are we overlooking long-term risk or potential ripple effects? And what are the positive outcomes we want to amplify? Because not all unintended consequences are bad. Some create unexpected opportunities. And what harms do we want to mitigate to our organization, to our communities that we operate within? Because the process isn't about predicting the future. It's about designing responsibly. And the AIM or Act, Influence, Monitor framework helps you assess the ease of implementation of your climate projects versus the scale of impact based on the immediate action, the influence you have with stakeholders and how we track external risk that we can't control over time. [29:07](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=1747) So with that in mind, if you enjoyed that part of our conversation today and it resonated with you, I'd love to invite you to join BEC's Climate Action Community of Practice. It's a dedicated space for local government practitioners in the United States and its territories to address climate impacts in their communities through peer learning, shared resources, and target technical assistance. We're hoping to bridge between research as well as tactical and tangible real world implementation. So if you're interested in that, feel free to join us with the link in the chat. But with that, I'd love to hand it over to Harold to introduce our panel speakers and transition into a deeper dive conversation. Over to you, Harold. **Harold Moore** [29:50](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=1790) Thanks, Ilham. I'm Harold Moore. I'm your moderator for today's panel discussion. I'm also the director of the Opportunity Project for Cities at Georgetown University. I have Liz Boyer, the Climate Action Coordinator for the City of St. Paul in Minnesota, and George Valens join us. He's the Innovation Manager for Miami-Dade County IT in Florida. Before we dive in, a little bit of context. George, Liz, Ilham, and I all work together on what's currently known as the Opportunity Project for Cities, a 20-week program that helps local governments use data and human-centered design to create digital solutions for community challenges. We'll be referring to projects from St. Paul and Miami-Dade County, but don't worry, you don't need to know all of the details. We'll provide background as we go and drop relevant links in the chat. In the meantime, feel free to explore Beck's Digital Government Hub and the Topsy Resource Library for case studies on climate resilience and public sector innovation. [30:55](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=1855) So, to move us into our discussion, I just want to give just a quick warning. Feel free to use the Slido Q&A function to submit or upvote questions. We'll do our best to cover as many as possible in the time that we have. I'll start off with a question for Liz, if that's possible. Liz, cities approach climate teams differently. Some have a centralized sustainability office, while others integrated across departments and agencies. What does your work and your team structure at the City of St. Paul look like, and who do you collaborate with most in the city? **Liz Boyer** [31:37](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=1897) Well, thank you, Harold, and thank you, Ilham, for that wonderful context setting and introduction. I loved some of the visuals that you had there in those slides, so thank you. Thank you very much for that. Yes, so I work for the City of St. Paul in Minnesota. We started our our current kind of climate work structure at the beginning of our current mayor's first term, so about seven years ago. We, of course, have always had sustainability and environmental initiatives, you know, front and center. We have more frontage on the Mississippi River than any other city of our size along the Mississippi River corridor. However, really made the intentional choice of not having a separate climate office or a separate resiliency office, and instead embedding people who are doing the climate work into the departments where it is happening. [32:38](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=1958) So this work is led from the mayor's office, where we have a chief resilience officer in the mayor's office. But instead of building out more capacity there, he really made the intentional choice of, like I say, embedding people in departments. So we have someone in the planning and economic development department, someone in public works who works on our EV charging network, and then a couple of us who are in the Office of Financial Services, which might seem a little bit hmm, but that's because it's really the closest thing that the City of St. Paul has to, you know, sort of a central administrative office. It's the department that really has the most kind of contact with all the other departments. There are pros and cons to this approach. Our neighbors just across the river in Minneapolis have more of a centralized model and they kind of talk about it as like a consultancy kind of client service model. Pros and cons to that as well. I think that's a little bit more how it is in Miami-Dade, which you can hear about next, but we have really found that, you know, we have somebody on the real estate team. So when people are talking about energy efficiency or, you know, building upgrades for city buildings, we have a person on our Climate Corps team who sits at that table with them and then is always there to say, wait a minute, are we just, hmm, are we just talking about automatically replacing this gas boiler? Or can we take a step back here? Because I know that's how we've always done it. And, you know, can we think about potential electrification options or, you know, what other options are there? [34:18](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=2058) So yeah, that's kind of been our deliberate approach. **Harold Moore** [34:23](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=2063) Wonderful. Thank you so much. George, your IT team supports multiple city departments, whom you endearingly call your customers, including the county's Office of Resilience. Can you give us an overview of who you serve and how your team collaborates with leaders like Dr. Jane Gilbert, the world's first Chief Heat Officer? **Jorge Valens** [34:43](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=2083) Yeah, awesome. And Dean, thank you so much for the invite. And Liz, great to meet you. It's always nice to talk shop with folks and advance, find ways that we all overlap, both technology, climate, different practices in government. So yeah, in a nutshell, right, our IT department sees itself more as a strategic partner than a then you serve, you know, we will certainly reset your password as well. We're there for you. But, you know, especially now, IT as a function, both private sector, public sector, is shifting more towards we're there for you. We're there to help co-build solutions, understand the business, understand the functions that make you you as a department or as a resident, and then build solutions that are tailored to that. So our teams are, you know, a mix of dedicated teams to specific departments and teams that are more focused on supporting core functions like data analysis, GIS, or geospatial data teams. We are a department of around 800 people. So it is a large organization, but we try to move as nimbly as possible, try to meet the customer where they are at all times and and really try, you know, at least our team, you know, our innovation team tries to do that, start from zero approach. It's why our Opportunity Project for Cities engagements are always very rewarding. We love the idea of bringing, you know, that that technology solution close to the resident as possible. And yes, this is going to sound weird from an IT guy, sometimes it's not technology and that's okay. We're more there to help solution and to help solve that. [36:32](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=2192) Looking closely in our innovation team, just to give a high level of resource, our innovation team is a small and mighty team of about five, six people. We are divided into two, I would say two areas. So on my side and partnership with our enterprise architect is our research and development side. So we are looking ahead at emerging technologies. How can we intake and smooth change in our organization. Technology is rather rather hard to track. So being nimble and understanding and helping us intake change is very important. And then on the other side is a communications and engagement function. It seems pretty wild to have a communications engagement function inside of an innovation unit, but our CIO and our teams and our mayor take engagement very seriously. They want us to be always dialed into the resident experience. So it's actually really innovative that we have a communications component in our team, particularly, you know, our communications manager Eileen, who's fantastic. And she's a marketer. So it's great to be able to include that in our R&D process where we could say, okay, Eileen here, we did this thing, help us tell the story to our departments, help us tell the story to our residents so that we can maximize the impact of whatever it is that we're working on. So that is us. That's sort of where we're at in terms of where IT fits in on the public sector side. **Harold Moore** [38:07](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=2287) Thank you, George. So back to Liz. Climate action often gets attention for big high profile projects like coastal protection or grasslands conservation. That requires major resources and community buy-in, but cities also have to decide where they have real control versus where they can only influence outcomes. How does St. Paul decide which climate projects to take on? Can you share a specific example of a project and how you navigate a control versus influence? I was thinking about the city's work with city owned buildings. **Liz Boyer** [38:41](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=2321) Excellent question. We actually are in the middle of updating our climate plan right now. We originally adopted it five years ago and are in the middle of kind of the active community engagement phase for this plan. So I am out talking to people about this all the time right now. We have for the city of St. Paul emissions profile about 60% of the emissions from the city come from buildings, all the residential, commercial, industrial across our city. Of the 100% of emissions, 4% of our emissions come from city owned and operated buildings. And I give that as a little bit of context because in this first five years of our of our climate plans life, we have spent a lot of our capacity and resources on trying to reduce or eliminate the emissions out of our about 150 buildings that the city owns or operates. [39:43](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=2383) And that comes back to this idea of control versus influence, which is something that we didn't really talk a lot about in our first plan, the community engagement that we originally did around our plan. But now, you know, having these years in, it's really a key piece. There are honestly very few areas where the city has complete control over the things that are happening that are influencing our emissions and our owned and operated buildings are one of them. So we've put, you know, we're converting the city owns and operates a zoo, the Como Zoo, if you're ever in the area. It's a lovely place to visit, free. Donations are accepted and we are currently converting a couple of buildings there to geothermal heat. We're opening a new rec center that is solar and geothermal. But thinking big picture, you know, this is this is where we have the most influence. When we go out and we talk with folks, hey, we're updating this plan. What would you like the city to prioritize? We're developing this five year action plan. [40:43](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=2443) We'll often get, you know, responses like, well, we just need to decarbonize, you just need to decarbonize, like we just need to change the energy source for the city. Okay, and here's who actually controls how, you know, how all of these things are heated or cooled or energized, and here's where we have control and where we don't. The other kind of area that people talk a lot about is transit. And St. Paul is a little bit unique in that we are one of multiple layers of government in the Twin Cities metropolitan area. So we have Minneapolis and St. Paul, you've all heard of. And then we have Ramsey County. The city is in Ramsey County. Minneapolis is in Hennepin County. Above the county, we actually have the Metropolitan Council, which is a governing body that has legislative authority to make decisions in our area, and they actually operate the transit system for our area. So, you know, when we hear, it's really important that we make it easier to get around without a car. Our only way to add or expand transit lines in our city is to directly partner with the Met Council. The Met Council has to do that, not just with St. Paul, but Minneapolis and all the surrounding suburbs as well. [41:55](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=2515) So we're talking a lot about the control versus influence, and that's why it's something that I think we'll get to a little bit more later. Partnerships are so important in this work. The other thing that we'll get from people is, you know, well, we just need to make it, like, you know, we just can't allow industries to pollute how they're polluting. Like, we just need to, you know, implement a social cost of carbon or something. All right, so then that's within our borders, and then those uses will go just outside of our borders. Like, this is a zero-sum game here that we're talking about. So we need to be looking regionally instead of each of us just within our borders, and on top of the regionally, all the places where we have varying layers of influence and authority. **Harold Moore** [42:40](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=2560) Thank you so much. George, you and your team have almost a recipe for a structured approach to deciding which problems to solve. One example is LIHEAP, a program that helps low-income residents access energy assistance, which we'll link in the chat. Can you help us understand how your team decides which projects to take on? Why did you prioritize LIHEAP over other potential initiatives? **Jorge Valens** [43:07](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=2587) Yeah, sure. So I think, first and foremost, right, the best way that we align our work is with our mayor's priorities. You know, she's very clear in her vision, and that makes it very easy to identify priority areas that we can, you know, sink our teeth into as a team and, you know, analyze. With LIHEAP in particular, I think, for us, what made that make a lot of sense for an opportunity project for cities engagement, but more broadly for an innovation team project, is that it combined a lot of different areas that we see as common elements in social service programs, or in particular in government services, right? So it was an in-person application process. It had a lot of backlog of, like, file cabinets of applications, right? So for us, that presented opportunities for digitization, that presented opportunities for streamlining the residents' experience when applying. [44:17](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=2657) More than anything, it was a great way for our teams to really, and this is sort of where the priority gets refined, go out into the community and live the experience of that resident. Using LIHEAP as an example, residents who apply for this program are usually in a time crunch. They need to apply for this aid in order to, you know, pay their light bill, pay their energy bill so that they can have cooling in the home, so that they can have lights and cooling and all the things that we typically don't think about because our electricity is most of the time running, right? But more importantly than that, it helped us also zoom in on a particular component. So, you know, the, the great thing about being nimble in your priorities is that you kind of know where you're going to land, right? We, we understand, okay, look, our mayor's priorities are X, Y, and Z. [45:17](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=2717) So let's hone in on this. Let's, let's zoom in on this area and see what we can do. Then we think about, okay, what programs are in need? Like what's a priority program? Where can we jump in right away and make a difference? And how many pieces of that customer journey can we intake and then decide what is our further priority once we understand the LIHEAP application process or what have you. And then it's really just a matter of zooming in. In the case of LIHEAP, we, we saw that the, the, the challenge was, is that it was very hard to submit a complete application because there might be a mismatch of the cost of the customer's address on their driver's license with the address on their light bill. If that were the case, it would add additional days for them to be able to apply. So we wanted to zoom in on, on that particular component. So I'll, you know, to, to, to just sort of summarize it all, cause this is a little complicated, right. Is first and foremost, we're aligning to sort of that high level vision that our, our organization sets out. [46:20](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=2780) In that vision, I would summarize really from an innovation team perspective as things should work and they should, and they should be done in a way that is resident focused. You know, I, I say it a thousand times, our residents should see themselves and the things that we build, they should see us proactively iterating a product that to better serve them. In the specific of, of LIHEAP, we need to walk that customer journey. So that priority gets refined once we understand the different components of that journey and then pick that piece that we want to solve. And then I think lastly once we understand sort of who we're solving for and what we're solving, we're always looking, you know, from a priorities perspective, we are always looking for pieces in the solution that we can commoditize and use it over again. So the LIHEAP application process has a lot of, it is a complete solution but it has a lot of bits and pieces that we can take and repurpose for other for other programs or more importantly, that we can position as a solution to serve all our other departments. [47:32](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=2852) So for example, the LIHEAP component has a document AI intake component. That is a surefire win for digitizing documents, which is something that we need to do. So we're always looking for, okay, we understand where we're headed. We understand who we're serving in the direction that we're heading. And then we're also understanding all the opportunities that we see in that customer journey to, to solve that particular challenge, but to also scale those solutions to other challenges. **Harold Moore** [48:07](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=2887) Thank you. Let's, let's talk about community engagement, indigenous communities and people of color who face the greatest climate risks are normally left out of climate decisions, especially when climate projects focus on engineering and decarbonization efforts that feel distant or abstract. How is St. Paul making climate action feel real and relevant to these communities? What are you doing to make sure this engagement is equitable and inclusive? **Liz Boyer** [48:36](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=2916) I really appreciate this question. And we are, like I said, in the middle of our active community engagement phase, so I genuinely could talk about this all day. Uh, but I'm looking at the Q and a, and there's some great questions there too. So I'm really going to try to restrain myself so that we can, we can keep going and cover as many topics as we can. Um, so, uh, but for our climate plan update, we got a little bit of grant funding to do, um, a little bit more, um, intense community engagement than we would have been able to otherwise. And we put out an RFP and we put a lot of thought into crafting this RFP originally, um, you know, knowing that, uh, we don't always know the best way to connect with people, um, in particular, you know, we're in city hall. So how can we have trusted messengers, you know, to go out and talk with folks? Are there other, um, you know, uh, practices or ideas or strategies that are new and innovative and creative that, you know, are, you know, are that we don't necessarily know about? [49:40](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=2980) And we put a lot of thought into not restricting, uh, what we were asking for, but trying to have it be expansive and big, um, and we got some really great ideas and we ended up going, um, with a wonderful firm, um, to help us with the community engagement. But honestly, um, we've spent a lot of time talking about this now, cause we're wrapping up our, our active phase and beginning to go into analysis, um, at the end of March. It isn't always about, uh, like big flashy ideas or this great new tool. No offense to the tech folks, this great new tool that, you know, we unveiled that, you know, did all this amazing, um, it's, you know, it can be just about, um, you know, uh, super small and really manageable efforts. Uh, one thing that we've done is translate all of our surveys in to more than just kind of the main languages. Um, we have large, um, Somali and Hmong and, um, Karen communities here in our area, so translating into language, translating things in the languages that we may not have done before. [50:46](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=3046) Um, we're always going to get responses to surveys. We've done a couple of large citywide engagement efforts. People are going to show up to those. Yes. The people that potentially are most impacted or effective, maybe won't. You're working two or three jobs. Are you going to go across town? Um, even if there is free dinner and the mayor is speaking, you know, probably not. So a strategy that we've been employing alongside of those is really targeted listening sessions. Um, so these are almost like going one-on-one to invite folks or to ask them to invite other people that they know, could you come, we give people who, uh, who participate stipends for their time, we give them gift cards. Um, transportation is provided. Um, you know, nothing, nothing earth shattering or groundbreaking in St. Paul, uh, we generally have areas of concentrated poverty. We generally know which parts of the city we're going to get really robust engagement from without, without much effort, just put, you know, put it out onto social media and you'll get a bunch of responses from those neighborhoods. [51:48](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=3108) We know, uh, where we need to go, um, and be a little bit more targeted with, with our work. Um, so that those things like the, the listening sessions and the focusing and going out. The other thing that we've been thinking a lot about as we do this engagement, I, um, my position was, was intentionally created not to be like an engineering or a technical position. A lot of these solutions, you know, we have a plan in the works to, um, to divert waste heat from a wastewater treatment plant, um, and funnel it into our district energy, downtown district energy system to decarbonize how St. Paul, I can't, there's engineers who, who do that. That's all of that work is largely invisible to those of us who are living here and going around and feeling the impacts of the extreme weather events. And, you know, seeing our, our streets lose trees. How can we talk about the things that are happening? Yeah, there are, you know, there are big, there's big work happening and there are these big initiatives that are going on and they take a lot of engineering and it's going to take years and millions of dollars. [52:51](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=3171) That's great. How can we communicate about that? And how can I feel good about the things that I can still contribute as a resident on my street? Um, so a couple of things that we're doing really intentionally to try to, to try to get at that, you know, the storytelling piece, Ilham, you talked about this in your introduction as well, you know, making it personal, the, the personal connections, really being thoughtful about the amount of data that we share at some of these sessions. Uh, you know, I tend to, I, I want to learn and understand before I, before I contribute, um, there, there are so much data on all of these issues available. And so every, basically every climate issue touches every other climate issue. Like it's one of these things where you pull on a thread, everything is connected, right? So we go out, if you're going to start presenting, oh, here's these emissions, here's this emissions, here's this chart, here's how much percent from this. Here's how much percent from how much data do you really need to communicate a person to a person before you're able to ask a question in a way that will tell you, you know, I'm worried. [54:01](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=3241) My grandfather grew up thinking that air conditioning was a luxury here in Minnesota. He has an air conditioner. He won't turn it on. How, you know, how much data do, do I need to tell you before you understand that, that what I'm asking and the input that I'm asking, um, how, you know, how much data do I need to share before you can say, look, I don't take the bus because the bus stop that's nearest to my house doesn't have any shade. It's in the middle of this really open area in the summer. It's too hot. I'm not going to stand there and arrive at work all sweaty. Okay. You know, how can we ask those questions in a way that are, that that's really specific and targeted about your, about the design of your human experience to your point. No, I'm going to try to stop talking, but I really like to talk about that. All good. **Harold Moore** [54:52](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=3292) I've got, um, a couple more questions and then we'll get into our question and that answer section from the, uh, from the audience, uh, George community organized, excuse me, community engagement. Isn't just about listening. It's about testing and refining solutions based on a real world impact. Many cities can't afford to fail fast in, uh, their climate projects because of rigid policies and funding cycles, making quick iteration, uh, difficult. Your team has built a fail safe zone to test and refine solutions, uh, while keeping risks low. Uh, can you share an example like the pet shelter project where you adjusted your approach based on community feedback, how that process work and what lessons can we apply to climate projects? **Jorge Valens** [55:36](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=3336) Yeah, absolutely. So, um, we, once we started working with artificial intelligence and as it was revealing itself in our technology stacks, we were always on the hunt for use cases. And one of the use cases that came up, our, our chief information security officer was, uh, in a meeting one day and he sort of leaned back on his chair and he said, Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we had like a chat bot that would help you find a pet at the pet shelter. Uh, and the problem with that is that when you're in the earshot of the innovation team, we don't forget those use cases. So come January, we're looking for something to test against. And, um, we said, all right, let's give this a shot. And, and the great thing was, is that our animal services team, uh, has an outstanding database where they take very meticulous notes about, uh, each pet that they take in and that pet's personality and their characteristics. Um, so we said, all right, look, we're going to give ourselves a time box. We're going to create a fail safe zone. Uh, and, and that fail safe zone is sort of part of our innovation team process. [56:37](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=3397) Right. We're saying, look, in this timeframe, we're going to test this and we're going to, if it doesn't work, that's okay. We're going to all like be okay about this, but if it does work, we're going to commit to taking the next step. So I like to tell the story because it always makes us smile, but on my, our enterprise architect side was on his way to vacation and he's like, dude, I don't think this is going to work. Uh, but do this, do this, talk to this person, talk to this person. And if everybody knows what they need to do, you'll have a functioning prototype by Friday. I said, all right, go on your vacation. Everything will be okay. Um, the second he gets off the cruise ship, he's like, Hey, how'd it go? And I said, bad news is this thing works really, really well. So we're going to have to like, we're going to do this now. Um, so we jumped in and, you know, tried to work the solution, um, and really understand not just what it can do in the near term, right. Help us find a pet at the pet shelter, but think about the business application of it as well. Um, our animal services team, we did a little bit of a mini deep dive with them on the adoption process. [57:44](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=3464) And this is a great way to address not only the beginning of the adoption journey, help folks, help folks get ready to adopt a pet, but also help us understand what the decision process for adopting a pet would be like, um, what it, what goes through people's minds when they look for a pet. Um, so it gave us an, uh, a starting off point where we can map to that customer journey, um, and then combining that with, again, just the fantastic data that our animal services team collects. We were able to, to generate a proof of concept that is now going to be launching as part of a beta page that we're working on, um, that we're launching. That we're lovingly referring to as the future ready beta labs, where the idea that we can test things with the public and just see how they go. Um, but I think that speaks to sort of the larger process that we have, um, in how we look at R and D. So creating that fail safe zone is really important because for us, we need to be able to first and foremost, validate a use case, right? [58:51](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=3531) Um, our, you know, our approach to innovation gives us a little bit of an allergy to money. Uh, we do not want to risk our project by over-investing too early. Uh, so our approach is very much like, do not like, do not give us money to make this happen until we are certain that this will be a value that we are certain that we can actually do this and, and we can pull this off and usually what that means is, is first and foremost, we put together a very small, but mighty cross-functional team, um, you know, to, to a few points made in this presentation. We too love a good unconventional background in terms of, uh, areas of study. Uh, so, you know, we like to take that approach in solutioning as well. So it's bringing together, not just our developer teams, our data teams, but also bringing together security. They are your friends. They have a hard job. They are worried all the time. So be nice to them, talk to them early. Don't show up on their doorstep, uh, with, with something that they don't know about, but also bringing together our procurement teams, bringing together our business relationship teams, the folks. [1:00:00](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=3600) that are working closely with the departments that you're serving so that you can have as much of a complete group as possible to be able to vet that idea. And really, it's just a matter of, okay, like, we have two or three weeks, let's see what we can do. You know, I need to so-and-so for a couple of hours, I need so-and-so for a couple of hours, and like, let's just like, let's figure it out. And ultimately, we want to, in that space, remove as much risk as possible. Not just money, but it's also time investment, right? We don't want to overcommit human capital, because it'll take away from other departments and other teams and other work. So we define our validation point very specifically. But when we cross that validation point, in the case of ProfitMatch, where it works, we're going forward. We're going to, this is not going to just sit here and we're going to, you know, or we will push this forward to a point that it helps our departments. [1:01:06](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=3666) And then again, bringing that back to, all right, what kind of, what pieces did we generate here? How can we iterate this process? I think that speaks to a larger, another larger IT transition trend of project to product. It's really important that when we build something, we keep like, we keep an eye on it and we keep making it better, or we keep improving a particular part of the experience. Or, you know, it's as simple as squashing bugs every now and then, but the idea that we are going to put this out, get feedback, change it if we need to, is really important. Because I think you're going to learn something once, once that tool or that solution hits the field, that is going to cause you to come back and make some changes downstream. So this idea of, you know, we're going to build it. It works now that we need to keep building it. And then how are we going to maintain it long-term? How are we going to bake that in to our overall organizational strategy? [1:02:09](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=3729) Is it, are we going to hand it off to a team? Does it run itself? By the way, the answer to that is always no, but will it, you know, is the, is the, is the maintenance component heavy? Does it need to be with this team? Can it be with this team? Having those conversations early and often is really great because in an organization as large as ours, and it's something that we hear a lot in government, but it is certainly something that is spoken about in the private sector all the time. The number one question people will say is, okay, but like, who's going to like take care of this? Who's going to do this? And I like to run towards that question. I don't like to run away from that question. So my, my sense is always like, Hey, we need to talk about that and we should be talking about that, whether it's in the fail-safe zone or not. But here's where I think it should be. And here's where it makes sense and why it makes sense. And, you know, that specific use case has advanced our in-house AI capabilities tenfold just because we started with a use case. [1:03:15](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=3795) And I think ultimately speaking to that engagement point, going further back in our discussion to that customer journey, that customer journey is the engagement piece. It doesn't end. It is something that we intake at the beginning where we're like, okay, Hey, we want to build this chat bot that's going to help you find a pet as it, that you adopt a pet. Like, do I just need to go down there and adopt a pet to like figure this out? But more importantly, understanding that that customer journey changes when you introduce the tool. Right. So then when that comes out and people start adopting pets by going Apophic Match and, and looking up a pet, now the customer, now we've altered the customer journey. So we need to retest. We need to put out feedback in the form of surveys. We also love a good, like, Hey, let's grab a room at the library and just like invite people to come down and like use the tool and, and get some feedback from them. I always shout out our communications and customer experience team. They love their jobs and they are very good at getting customer feedback. [1:04:17](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=3857) So we build with them. We don't build and then call them. You know, I reach out to them early. We get a sense for where they're at so that we're not only just engaging residents, but we're engaging the teams that have like a downstream impact on, on the product. So yeah, that's, that's, that's basically it. **Harold Moore** [1:04:36](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=3876) Great, great, great. Thank you so much. I have one more question for you all, and then we're going to go into our audience question portion. I've we're, we're running a little bit tight on time. So I'll, I'll ask you all to be a bit brief in, in your response here so that we can have more time for audience participation. George, we'll start with you. Tech is often seen as a solution to climate resilience, resilience challenges. Things like early warning systems or interactive dashboards. But just because a tool is developed doesn't mean people will use it. If it doesn't meet real needs, it won't be trusted or lead to action. Many local governments struggle with data overload, analysis paralysis, or lack of local relevance. Your team developed the Cool Commute tool and the Opportunity Project for Cities, which collects data from transit users at bus stops to understand the conditions of their stops in the shade. This project started with one hypothesis, but quickly proved something different after collecting real world data. [1:05:37](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=3937) Can you walk us through that moment? What lessons did you take away and how has that changed your approach to building tech solutions for climate resilience? There we go. So, yeah, absolutely. Um, I, for us, at least the, the Cool Commute experience was, was great because it was one of those instances where our teams could have a hypothesis about what they thought was the, the issue that we were solving for versus what the user feedback revealed. Um, so, you know, we got in a room at one point and we're saying, okay, like, here, here's what extreme heat means to us. Here's what extreme heat might mean to a resident. You know, are they going to look at their, you know, Apple watch, or they're going to look at the temperature outside and they're going to say, oh, you know, it's too hot outside, maybe we're going to go out. It turns out that if you are a transit dependent person that, that needs a bus, you like, you have to, you have to use the bus and there are going to be times where you have to use it to go to work at a specific time or to do groceries at a specific time. So this idea of like, it's too hot outside, I'm going to like change my commute. I'm going to change my, my way of getting to the bus stop didn't seem so much the thing. [1:06:44](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=4004) Right. So, and we learned that when we started hearing from people in doing, getting out and talking to folks, for us, it was, it seemed to reveal itself as sort of a way for residents to communicate the impact of extreme heat. And for us, government entities, municipalities, agencies to be able to pivot solutions, whether it's in capital improvements or in scheduling of transit or whatever, arming ourselves with the, the data that we would need to augment our decision making process. You know, more than anything, for us to know if something works, we have to, have to talk to people. We have to, we have to go and, and, and, and do the work of talking to folks that is, you know, Google analytics only reveals so much, usage statistics only reveal so much, we need to talk to folks and see what's going on, whether it's through surveying or whether through it's through user testing, and then make changes based on that user experience. [1:07:52](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=4072) And it might be that, you know, for the first couple of years, a solution works. And then later on, something has changed. Google changes something in Google maps. And then now suddenly we're collecting extreme heat data another way. So we have to think about that, that product focus as not just, how are we going to like do the thing in a really great way, but how can we keep the thing relevant? How can we make sure that it is supporting our, our residents or supporting our target customer? And, and to the data transparency point, very briefly, our challenge is always that people, you know, typically tend to over collect rather than under collect. And what I liked about cool commute was that it was particularly like, it wasn't a particularly complicated application, but it was very elegant in the way that it just like asked you exactly what it needed to know. And not a thing more than what it needed to know. And that is a practice that we as, as public administrators and as public sector leaders need to have, there are data fields that we shouldn't be asking you if you're, you know, if you're applying for something, do we, do we really need the social security number? [1:09:04](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=4144) Do we really need to know your, your address or, or, or your gender or what have you? We need to start asking those questions. That needs to be sort of imbued in our collective processes. Like, okay. Like, here's the form for this intake. Here's like the form for this program, but like, do we really need this? Well, and, and I, I asked that question recently in a design sprint that we did. Um, and I said, guys, this is like a pretty wild thing to ask people. Like, do we need this? And everybody just looked around and was like, actually, I don't use that for anything. Did you use that for someone? I don't use that for anything. I'm like, awesome. Delete. Like we're, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna move on from this. And, and what does that do? It keeps people safe. Uh, it keeps their data safe, but more importantly, it makes the process better. So now it's like less intense. I will be hesitant to put my social security number into something. It will be a, a hesitation that I have. And when you want to engage folks in an application process, let's say in particular, uh, or you're collecting something from folks, you don't want them to hesitate, you want them to just know that the information that they give you is, is fine, or it is a sensitive piece of information that it is used for something. [1:10:17](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=4217) Yes. Wonderful. Thank you so much, George. Um, this is fantastic. Um, my final prepared question is for Liz, uh, St. Paul worked to make climate data accessible and actionable, uh, especially through your green careers initiative with Ramsey County, uh, what challenges have you faced in making climate related data useful for both, uh, the public and policy makers, how has your team worked through those challenges? **Liz Boyer** [1:10:42](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=4242) Um, I can tell you a very short, very sad story for this, um, in order to get to the, or make sure we have time for Q and a two, this was our top C project. And, um, I, we were working to, um, make available and make better connections between, um, green construction or clean energy jobs, however you want to define them and, um, job seekers, um, that we knew were out there and we did, um, I think through the top C project, a really great job of, um, not making assumptions and going out and talking with people, you know, job seekers and employers in, in, in the sector learning, um, and, and not going in with a pre-designed idea and how do we want to form this? We had, um, city of St. Paul and Ramsey County has a complicated partnership on workforce, um, solutions. Um, so we had it people there, people were, it was, it was great. It was great. It was great. And we got to near the end and there was, we didn't have a procurement, um, uh, um, sort of perspective. [1:11:47](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=4307) And there was a contracting issue that prevented us from embedding this code into the already existing, um, resources. So it's there and we're figuring it out, but it's another step that kind of delayed the implementation, um, of the project immediately. And we'll figure it out. We'll get there. And we learned George's lesson, like have procurement and everyone, um, at the table with you at the beginning. **Harold Moore** [1:12:11](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=4331) Wonderful. Thank you so much. Um, both of you all have given a really fantastic responses and I'm grateful for both your time and your experiences and, and sharing them with us. Uh, it's now it's time to answer some audience questions. Uh, thank you all for sharing your, your questions on Slido. If you posted something in the group chat, don't worry. We'll be copying those over. So nothing gets missed. I'll, I'll ask as many as we can get to in the next 10 or so minutes. And then I'll wind us down. Um, so, um, I will, uh, uh, just, uh, hop right in and, uh, start with the question that you see highlighted on the screen, uh, either of y'all can, uh, uh, take a chance at, uh, responding. How have you found ways to draw in people who are skeptical? Of these climate related approaches. **Liz Boyer** [1:13:01](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=4381) Um, yeah, I think we all spend a lot of time talking about that. I'm sure there are people in the room who also have, um, who have, I, I don't consider myself an expert in any way. I feel like that's part of why, when I go out and talk to people, I'm like, well, I'm just trying to figure this out. Like you are like, let's come together and talk about it. Um, one thing that I have found, um, is sort of a shift in how I think about it. Like, don't think about it as an environmental solution that I'm coming here to explain to you why this solution is right. Um, most of the solutions that we are pursuing right now are win, win, win, win, win. So figure out what is this person that you're talking to? Like, what is there, are they in, um, you know, economic development department and they're like, look, we're losing, um, small businesses. We can't be worrying about this stuff. Okay. So then let's talk about, um, you know, the workforce and how, um, this is a win for your workforce as well. The, this is where the job growth is coming here, you know, here are the data to explain about that. You're concerned about energy burden. [1:14:02](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=4442) Okay. So here, you know, talk about energy instead of climate, figure out what they're, you know, kind of in what, what they would consider a win. And usually you can make a connection back to a climate solution or approach. Yeah. **Elham Ali** [1:14:15](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=4455) That's also the same with also building partnerships to Liz, um, where, um, we're talking about the lingo, um, even within our departments, cause when I used to work in, um, local and state departments, it's also building consensus inside where people were skeptical of collaborating with us. Um, and sometimes that could even mean, um, talking their lingo of how could this impact their work, um, improve their own sense of connectedness to their community and efficiency. And I think that, um, that that requires a different level of like, uh, language to help them bridge that gap, um, of why they should collaborate with us. Um, and why they should, um, expend some of their resources also to us. **Harold Moore** [1:15:00](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=4500) George, might you have anything to add there, or I can move on to the next one if I'm— **Jorge Valens** [1:15:06](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=4506) No, I'm good. Let's keep it going. **Harold Moore** [1:15:09](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=4509) Cool, cool, cool. So I see a question here. Have you found a balance between technology like AI needing a lot of energy or water and the use of promoting it for—using it to promote climate awareness or change? **Jorge Valens** [1:15:26](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=4526) I can tee it up for you, Liz, because I'd love to hear your perspective on this, but I think from a technology side, right, we're really sensitive in terms of, like, just using resources in general for AI, right? And what does that mean? That means maybe don't build an on-premise AI solution in your organization. It's expensive. It is expensive. It is actually exceedingly, almost hilariously expensive in terms of just infrastructure investment, electricity, right? Like, it's cool to, you know, it's cool to play around with it on, like, a desktop or two, or, you know, you want to—I have not in any way destroyed one of my family members' laptops. That has never happened to me at all. Don't worry. Don't ask. But I think when looking at these types of solutions, taking a cloud approach is a little more responsible, is, yes, we are hopping on sort of an enormous data center, but we're also being very mindful of how we spin up resources when we use them. When we don't use them, cloud gives you an incredible amount of flexibility in that you can turn things on and off in off hours. You can be creative with how you allocate resources. You can be creative with how you spin up resources when you need something. So thinking of it that way makes it feel a little better, but more importantly, it helps us sort of stay grounded to the reality of, like, hey, if there are other people that are sort of doing this, we don't want to replicate that for a variety of reasons, one of which being the enormous resource and electricity cost that it would have. **Liz Boyer** [1:17:07](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=4627) I don't have anything really specific about AI, but the one thing that I would say is it is closely related to, you know, we think a lot about thermal energy networks here. I mentioned our district energy system downtown St. Paul. They actually get more than half of their energy. It's a steam-powered system, a networked system that goes throughout downtown St. Paul, and more than half of their energy comes from biomass produced from wood waste that is dropped off metro-wide into a city-owned wood waste lot as well, compressed and made into biochar. So how can we do more taking something that's a waste resource and making it a valuable resource? And the heat produced by AI centers, can you have closed water systems? I don't know anything about it, but these are the kinds of conversations that I think we should have instead of saying, oh, we have to use all this electricity and we produce all this heat and it's such a waste. What if we capture that and divert it and are able to use that then to decrease our fossil fuel use? Yeah. I'm curious. Sorry to cut **Elham Ali** [1:18:17](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=4697) you off, Harold, for this next one, because they're quite related in a way. For this one in terms about building buy-in internally, I'm curious about building also externally. So I remember we talked about the EV car share program at the city of St. Paul, and you've done external partnerships and collaboration beyond the city limits. So I'm curious if you can, and also George, for you on some of your partners, how you're thinking about building consensus first starting within and then **Liz Boyer** [1:18:50](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=4730) going outside through that. Yeah. The EV story is a really excellent story. There isn't a very fully developed transit system in Minneapolis-St. Paul area. It's really hard if you're not in the downtown quarters to get around. So we would have various car sharing systems, zip car, and we would tell people, look, you don't need to have multiple cars. And then they would go out of business because it's actually not a very financially sustainable model. So it was Russ Stark in our mayor's office who originally said, look, if we're going to be touting this as an alternative to individual car ownership, it needs to be affordable. It needs to be reliable. It needs to be sustainable. So he went to our car that was operating in the area at that time, city of Minneapolis, and said, how could this look differently? And here we are now, what, five years later, we have the first municipally owned 100% EV powered electric car sharing system that stands alongside a public EV. So we say EV and then EVIE. EVIE is the car sharing network. And then the EV is the public charging system because the other flip side of becoming an electric vehicle owner is you need to have a place to charge it. So we have public facing chargers that are available too. But you were right, the whole key was having this regional and networked collaboration. And we're actually currently working now to expand it into other areas of the city that it wasn't covered. And again, it's the win-win. You got to come back to the, it has to be the win-win. How can we find where the overlap is of our Venn diagrams of interest and figure out how we can build from there. And Russ is actually now working on the next kind of scale up of that is a municipally owned bike share system, because we have the same thing with bikes where there'll be private owned bike share systems who will come [1:20:52](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=4852) and go and come and go. And if people, if we're going to tell people to rely on them, it needs **Jorge Valens** [1:20:57](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=4857) to be sustainable. Dan, I think building on that quickly, just for how do you build buy-in internally? I mentioned cross-functional teams. I love to make people guilty of innovation all the time. It's a great way to like, hey, see, you did it. It's all right. It's all good. We did this thing together. But more importantly, that cross-functional team builds buy-in. It makes sure that everybody's informed. It breaks down barriers between different teams or different priorities. It breeds alignment. Without alignment, nothing is possible. Alignment to a vision is the currency by which anything happens. So really, forming sort of your Avengers group of folks that could solve that challenge is that first step to demonstrating not only just internal buy-in in your organization, but buy-in along the org chart **Elham Ali** [1:21:57](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=4917) and ultimately with a resident. You mentioned this a long time ago, George, but you said make change easy and better. And it's actually a very important tactic for stakeholder buy-in internally and externally, because you mentioned a part of our conversations is how do we make sure that some of the structures of our solutions are reusable for business cases? You're solving for different departments' problems with reusable components, like your code bases from the LIHEAP app that help families access like energy credits for them. And I think that in itself is what Liz is talking about a win-win. **Harold Moore** [1:22:42](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=4962) Yeah. Wonderful. I think that we are at about time. I would love to ask any more of these additional questions, but I think that I want to honor our agreement for when we got to wrap up. Thank you to you all in the audience for fantastic engagement, to our speakers, Liz and George, for sharing their insights. A special shout out to Agueda and Innovate US for inviting us to be a part of this discussion. There is a question that I can't answer about the resources. They've been scattered throughout the chat, but you'll also be able to find many of those in the links shared or the Climate Action Community of Practice. If there's anything else you'd like, we can also email those things to you if you care to, or show them later. All of our contacts are here, so feel free to reach out if you have any questions, thoughts, concerns, or just opinions about any of this. I'll hit pause there and just give a big shout out to Ilham for all of her fantastic work on this as well, and just thank all of you all for participating. Thanks, y'all. **Liz Boyer** [1:23:50](https://youtu.be/IhExTAQ-C2Y?t=5030) Thanks, everyone. See you. Bye. See you soon. Thank you very much. * * * Original page: https://innovate-us.org/building-inclusive-climate-resilience-with-human-centered-design-in-government · Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/), as stated on innovate-us.org