Interview with Kai Feder, Chief of Staff of the NJ Office of Innovation
(Taken from innovation.nj.com) Kai D. Feder serves as the chief of staff at the Office of Innovation, where he oversees the office’s day-to-day operations and advises the Chief Innovation Officer on strategic direction, leads projects and policy initiatives, and manages intergovernmental and external affairs. His career in government and public policy has spanned numerous issue areas, ranging from economic development and technology, to transportation and infrastructure, and has included positions in both the public and private sectors.
Rana Myneni: Governor Murphy created the Office of Innovation to improve the lives of New Jerseyans. How are you working to achieve that goal?
Kai Feder: There’s a number of different ways to answer this, and I think broadly, we’re looking at trying to solve public problems differently, but very generally speaking, the way we approach things is thinking about one, how we can create operations that are more effective and efficient and two, how we can deliver programs and services and ensure that programs and services and policies are aligned with what people need. Part of that is also involving the problem-solving process, so basically what we go through with almost any project from the get-go is problem definition. We want to make sure that when the State is developing policies, procedures, and products, whether it’s a new web app or whether it’s a policy to think about a new workforce program or something like that, we are identifying what the problem is that we’re actually trying to solve and think deeply about that. So part of this is looking at data, part of this is understanding what people think and feel and how they interact and experience with the government (and when I say people I’ll use the term user), and what I mean by that is essentially anyone that’s engaging with the state, it could be a business, it could be a student, it could be someone getting their driver’s license, what’s the task and what’s the experience that they’re going through when they’re trying to engage with the state government. When we talk about improving their lives, it’s thinking about understanding and having empathy for our users (i.e. the people of New Jersey) and creating an overall better experience for those individuals. That means both how they’re accessing and how they’re discovering programs, policies, and services, but then also the actual implementation of those programs, policies, and services so that we’re not making someone fill out 15 forms when they can fill out one, these types of things. The Office of Innovation is currently working in the COVID-19 world on an array of projects, but prior to COVID-19 we had been focusing on two big, meaty projects. One was focused on the delivery of workforce delivery services through our New Jersey Career Network project, and this was thinking about how can we help people in a very strong labor market where there was not high unemployment. New Jersey had a very big long-time unemployed population, and what we were trying to do was figure out what’s keeping these individuals from being employed and what were their biggest challenges, and that meant interviewing a lot of different individuals that were experiencing this problem, understanding how they were experiencing it, and then designing a solution with them. One of the things that came out of that was a digital career coach tool that helps people navigate through the job search process in a very simple way. Let’s say there are a 150 things, and I mean that, a 150 different things that you could be doing as part of your job search process: you could be working on your resume, you could be networking, you could be preparing for an interview, etc. It basically simplified and directed that process for the individual, because we found that one of the biggest challenges that people had was figuring out where they should be spending their time in the job search process. We also worked to connect them with wrap-around services, so if you were out of work, it means you don’t have income, it means that you also may need, for example, access to food, you may need access to housing assistance, etc., so we had to figure out the best way to connect people with those services but then also recognize that there’s (and this gets into what I was talking about earlier about truly understanding and having empathy for the user) also a lot of mental health stuff that gets involved when you lose your job. For a lot of people, their job is where they spend 8 to 10 hours a day- it’s part of who the individual is- and when you lose that job it’s an inherently traumatic experience, so also understanding and addressing the empathy side of this to have messaging and support programs to help address that part of the job search process as well is important., That’s one project example, another one is what we call Business First Stop, and it’s focused on streamlining the delivery of business services to business owners across the state. Doing business in the state of New Jersey can be a very onerous process, so how you actually keep it streamlined, how you make it so that it’s very clear what businesses need to actually do is helpful, and if I wanted to, for example, start a food truck tomorrow, I would need to know what all the permits are that I would need, what all of the sign-offs for what I have to do are for local health department inspections. Previously, all of this information was not organized in a central location so the business owner had to go out and find all of these details on their own rather than making it easy for them to be like, “Here’s a checklist. Do number one, do number two, do number three, do number four, do number five, etc”. So we created a rulebook for folks that didn’t exist earlier, with the idea that it’s going to make it easier for people to be able to create businesses as a result. So those are just a couple examples.
RM: You talked about “Business First Stop” and “New Jersey Career Network”. What other products do you have geared more towards the private sector, specifically start-ups and entrepreneurs, to help draw innovators to New Jersey and supporting the ones that are already innovating in New Jersey?KF: I think that in a COVID-19 world, the state has a lot of different programs and services that are out there. For the Office of Innovation specifically, what we’re trying to do is a number of different things related to making it easier, so part of the Business First Stop is to facilitate innovation by lowering the barriers of entry to create businesses in the state, to make it easier to do so, and also to connect people with various programs and resources that other departments and agencies might have. So, for example, while the office of innovation is not going to be the one actually administering an incentive program or some kind of program the state has (I would encourage you to look at the EDA’s array of business resources), you have to look at this from a comprehensive perspective. We’re not the only ones doing this, we’re doing this as part of the team and the state and across departments and agencies, so when you think about the question of entrepreneurship, there are lots of different angles. One is ensuring that people are not bogged down by state policies and procedures as much as possible, and the other part is making sure that they have access to capital, they have access to talent, etc. We’re currently working on, in addition to business first stop, another program that we just posted some information on the website yesterday called Data for the American Dream. One of the big challenges beforehand with scaling up and growing business in the state was finding talent, in part because it was a very tight labor market, but what we’re looking to do here is to create more transparency around training programs so that individuals know if they want to be a coder or they want to get some certification in nursing or whatever high demand tool there is, they can look at and access data on training programs, understand their efficacy, and understand the value they may bring. That’s going to help begin to allow people to think about where they should be investing their time, especially in high growth industries, so that you’re cultivating a workforce that can potentially supply those innovative companies and allow them to grow in the state. So we’re making that workforce connection. The EDA has a number of different programs and projects that are detailed in the state’s economic development and workforce plan that also addresses this question. The other big thing that I would highlight is our work around the Future of Work task force, so we’re looking at a number of issues relating to the future of work, thinking about lifelong learning and up-skilling, and how people are prepared for the jobs of tomorrow. I think that one of the key things to enable entrepreneurship in the state, is not just thinking about the entrepreneurs, it’s trying to think about what they’re trying to build, and again, having that tie into human capital and pipelines for talent that can provide the expertise and innovative minds to help these companies grow and flourish.
RM: Are there any projects or initiatives in your innovation lab or in general that you haven’t mentioned yet but you’re especially optimistic about?
KF: Looking at the context of COVID-19 and the state’s response, yes. We worked closely with the governor’s office and the Economic Development Authority to stand up two entities, one tied into business first stop and one is a stand-alone entity around the COVID-19 information hub, and what we’ve learned is creating a centralized resource for people to go to, like, “Here’s where you go for your information”, and then collecting a lot of data around how people are digesting information and what people are interested in, has been very telling in the sense that it allows us to better target our content and our communication strategy around what people are seeking. The evolution of that project is particularly exciting because it creates a new tool for people that want to engage with or interact with the state and information programs, policies, services, and potentially allows us to really begin thinking creatively about new ways to better communicate with the public. So that’s one, and the other one that we’re really excited about is our Innovation Skills Training program. This is something that we have set up and originally oriented towards state employees, and the Office of Innovation is not just trying to create better products and services within the state of New Jersey and for the people of New Jersey, it’s also trying to facilitate the development of a culture of innovative thinking, or, as the Chief Innovation Officer says, public entrepreneurship. We want to equip state workers with the skills and knowledge and approaches and tools to be able to think innovatively, think creatively, solve problems using problem definition, using data, using human-centered design, using data-driven decision making, etc., so we’re looking to continue to grow and scale in the months and years ahead to really create a stronger workforce for the state, which will, in turn, serve the people of New Jersey even more effectively.
For more information, visit www.innovation.nj.gov