The Buzz with ACT-IAC
The Buzz with ACT-IAC
Exploring the Integrated Value Network
The Integrated Value Network (IVN), a transformative tool for effective governance. Joined by guests Basil White, a senior informaticist, and Beth Martin, a user experience and digital services expert, the discussion highlights the significance of IVN in mapping complex government interactions. The conversation covers their experiences, the practical applications of IVN, and the innovative mindset required for future tech leaders. This episode offers a rich exploration of how IVN aims to revolutionize federal governance by enhancing collaboration and systemic understanding of value.
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Intro/Outro Music: See a Brighter Day/Gloria Tells
Courtesy of Epidemic Sound
(Episodes 1-159: Intro/Outro Music: Focal Point/Young Community
Courtesy of Epidemic Sound)
Yohanna: [00:00:00] Welcome to this fun episode of The Buzz. We're diving into the fascinating world of the Integrated Value Network, or IVN. Imagine having a comprehensive map that illuminates the complex interactions of government programs, strategies, and regulations. This is what IBN offers. It's a revolutionary tool for effective governance, and we're here to unfold its significance and explore its potential in transforming government structure.
Yohanna: Buckle up as we embark on this exhilarating journey through innovation and governance. Hello everyone. This is Joan Aya with The Buzz. So a couple of weeks ago we, we had our, our yearly event, ET and I, and I had a table. So if you were there, you probably saw me sitting at a table with my little microphone.
Yohanna: And they were, uh, a couple of brave souls that stopped by and they were not intimidated by the mic and they got to sit down with me. And so I, what I wanted to do is just expand on [00:01:00] our conversation from ET and I. So yeah, so that's what this episode's about. So please, uh, first introduce yourself.
BASIL: I'm Basil White.
BASIL: I'm a senior informaticist at a cabinet agency and a member of the Federal Innovation Council at ACT iac. Hi,
BETH: my, I'm a career civil working for the last 20. Areas such as user experience, digital services, and innovation.
Yohanna: Yeah, so these were the brave souls that sat with me and we had a very interesting conversation.
Yohanna: I don't think I understood all of the things, but I knew that it was like really exciting work. Like, I was like, oh, like when I went, went home that day. I was like, that. That sounds like a really interesting project and I, and I wanted to talk to you guys a little bit more. About it.
BASIL: Oh, sure. Sure. Thanks.
BASIL: Thanks, Johanna. That conference felt like a real turning point for us. Beth and I have been working on the Integrated Value Network IVN for years, and the panel at Act ix Emerging Tech and Innovation Conference marked the first time we had a chance to talk with that broader federal innovation community on how IVN connects the [00:02:00] dots across strategies, programs, regulations, laws, budgets, performance measures.
BASIL: We didn't just talk about value integration. We talked about validating a language for aligning value across the government enterprise and, and we talked about how it's not just a research effort anymore, it's a different way to understand infrastructure.
BETH: I'll second what Basil said and add that we had so many rich discussions at this event.
BETH: It feels like the project resonated with so many people and it seems to be. Just a perfectly right time for such a valuable tool, and we're really excited for the opportunity to share.
Yohanna: All right, great. That's, that's what I felt like at ET and I, I really felt like a lot of folks were there to learn to exchange.
Yohanna: There were a lot of conversations. I remember I. You know, just being a part of like, the events team going into the breakout rooms and like asking folks to like clear out. 'cause everybody was just so passionate after a breakout after, like, they just did not want to stop talking to each other. That's, that's the kind of like, that's what I [00:03:00] felt when I was there and it was my first ET and I, um, so yeah.
Yohanna: That's great. Um, so yeah. So can you guys, can you, can you all describe the problem space that you are? Tackling now and how you're positioned to to address it.
BASIL: Sure. We're trying to tackle the chaos and fragmentation in how the government understands and tracks service value. 'cause every agency has its own mission, goals, strategies, programs, and they're all well intentioned and they're all working really hard, but they're siloed because we haven't had a map to work from.
BASIL: To trace how delivering our requirements transacts value with other requirements in the system, and IVN provides that map of how delivering one requirement moves other requirements in the network closer to their own outcomes. And that's often from completely different chains of command, missions and budgets.
BASIL: And this project's positioned uniquely 'cause IVN doesn't replace your systems, it just overlays them. Like an airline roadmap laid over your timetable, so you get to see hidden dependencies that [00:04:00] improve collaboration and net value without changing budgets or staff or authorities. Another way I like to say it is that we're tackling the problem of trying to drag federal governance management kicking and screaming into late 1990s library science.
BETH: And we'll be coming back to that idea of, of library science later on. Um, and just to continue with the transportation theme that, that Basel brought up. Each, there's a story between the connection of, of a requirement or a, or a, or a component or a part of a source document and how it relates to another component of a source document.
BETH: There's, there's a story in that connection. We're able to help people tell those stories, and when you bring a bunch of those connections together, that has real impact. If you imagine a subway map, for example, you're going from one place to another, but you may not be stopping at each stop. You're, you're [00:05:00] going along a route, and once you've traveled to the end of that route, you, you have seen many things and experienced many things, and you wanna tell us, tell people about those things that you have seen and experienced.
BETH: So knowing that universe of what you own and how, how others have impacted your travel or your work and how your work impacts other people, connecting those silos, and more importantly, when we do that, we're able to to support the mission and goals, and that's a real game changer. We're not just working in our little slice of the pie, but we know that other people are impacting our work and we are impacting other people.
BETH: There's, there's that value chain where we're connected and that really starts to show that this is a large, complex system.
Yohanna: I really like. All of your analogies and all your metaphors. 'cause like visually, I understand what you're saying. Like, oh, I'm on a, oh, this is a stop. Oh, is there information here? No.
Yohanna: Okay, great. Next up, there's [00:06:00] more information here, like people getting on and off a train. I, I really understand that. I understand, I don't think I understand fully the Dewey Decibel system, but I know that that's a thing when it comes to like, cataloging and, and library science. So that's, that's also really interesting.
Yohanna: I, I, I like how you guys explain things.
BETH: Sorry. You don't have to understand how it works. But if you have a navigator to help you, that's the important thing. You'll have people you can ask for help and who will help you find what you need to.
BASIL: Right. My dad was a railroad. My dad was a railroad conductor. I don't know how Amtrak works, but I know how to get to Cleveland because they give me a map.
Yohanna: Right, exactly. A librarian, a railroad, you know, a subway conductor. These are the people that we look towards for direction. All right. Yeah. Um, so you guys are super smart people. Before we dive into your current work, I'd love to hear more about each of your journeys. What initially drew you to this, this interesting field, and what key moments, I guess, shaped your career?
Yohanna: Um,
BASIL: sure. I got my [00:07:00] start in program informatics during the Walter Reed Hospital crisis of 2007, where silos across agencies had caused some real harm. To Veterans Service members and families, and that crisis was not caused by bad program management. It was caused by a lack of a system map across the programs.
BASIL: And that was when I realized that governance isn't just about rules and budgets. It's about seeing and understanding the network of requirements that emerges out of those rules and budgets. My entire career has since been about building that map and helping others add their own requirements to the map to see their own value and increase the value across the system.
BASIL: My
BETH: background is in education, um, and I sort of found myself in government through having wonderful interactions with folks who said, you should try this. You should check this out, and I'm thankful that I was smart enough to be able [00:08:00] to do that. Um, I found myself in, in government my career, uh, started over 20 years ago to stand up usability.gov, which is a resource to spread awareness of putting people at the center of making government digital interactions user friendly and my advocacy in public service continues in that rain today.
Yohanna: I like journeys. I like when people share their journeys. 'cause you never know like where folks are coming from and what like, so for Basel it was like, I saw a problem, can I fix it? So that's really good. I like, I like everyone's backgrounds. I. Or when people share their backgrounds. So Basil as a senior informaticist, what I'm, what I'm understanding is like the original inspiration, was that crisis at Walter Reed or was there something else that kind of like inspired you to take on this role?
Yohanna: Or, um, I also wanna know with your approach to technology and architecture, like has, how has this evolved throughout the years? I feel like technology is so [00:09:00] fast these days.
BASIL: Well after. We saw what we were able to do with operations and program changes with that initial version of the IVN. With, uh, the Walter Reed problem, I started to realize how we could just keep doing that all the time.
BASIL: Like we had this one point in time map where we saw how everything integrated and coordinated to deliver value to service members and veterans and families. And I just thought, well, I. Why don't we just keep doing this all the time and keep adding things to it so that we can continue to communicate and coordinate and, you know, improve all its time with this tool.
BASIL: So, and what inspired me with that was the, the pain, the problem, the struggle of watching smart, dedicated people wrestle with, trying to track new compliance and trying to coordinate programs because without the map. The federal governance structure is just too messy and complex to see and understand, you [00:10:00] know, uh, the federal governance structure, that's all the laws and the policies and programs and, and, uh, budgets and whatnot.
BASIL: It wasn't designed to be seen, you know, it, it was designed based on problems and needs and goals. And so it's, it. As a result, those problems and goals and laws have yielded, uh, a, a logical map that we've never bothered trying. To, to draw, to visualize. And that's what we're trying to do. So like, 'cause early on I, I studied information in architecture and I thought it was about mapping the systems as intended.
BASIL: We have an org chart, we have the US Code of Regulations, and this is what we are. Well. It's not really the whole picture. The whole picture is designing for effect. You know, looking at the org chart and the budget structure and seeing how the data and the systems and requirements flow towards shared value, reverse engineering.
BASIL: The map of what real, what really is reverse engineering the map of what you have, the value you [00:11:00] build, so that we can see what we have and we can change it mindfully of those second order network effects. Like a lot of times we make things efficient, we make things more interdependent. It's just logical.
BASIL: Right? And the more interdependent things are. The more com complicated and more complex the connections are, and the more we lose by not drawing a map of them.
Yohanna: That's a lot. Yeah. So, so for Beth, for, for you. User design and, uh, emerging tech. I always think that it feels like you're constantly balancing innovation with basically ba basil.
Yohanna: So like, does this work? Will it work? Can we reverse engineer it so that it does work? How do you approach that challenge? How do you, how do you see this?
BETH: Well, I think we need to keep the end in mind. What are we creating and why are we doing, who, who does it serve? What does it help them do? We need to talk to people and find out their pain points and develop products and services that reduce friction and allow them to do the things that they need to do.[00:12:00]
BETH: So in the case of the IVN, we needed to scale it from a product with a, a small user base to a tool and resource that many more people will find valuable, but they don't have that deep expertise that that Basel does. And so over a couple of years, we've learned very much in that endeavor through iteration and we look forward to helping others gains value from the use of that tool.
BASIL: Uh, yep. Beth's pain points approach works 'cause it's grounded in empathy. Iteration, an iterative process or usability expertise. Make sure that the innovation doesn't outpace the user's readiness. We talked about being a teacher and being a professor before. A big part of our work is meeting people where they are.
BASIL: Where are you? What, what's the value you provide and how can we show you where it fits in the structure of the government? When we developed IV and she designed it for usability, not just for technologists, but for, you know, program owners and frontline staff. You know, insight without jargon and, and [00:13:00] tools that can grow and become more complex as the user's understanding improves and, and that mindset that.
BASIL: Brings, keeps the IV unusable even as its scope continues to grow.
Yohanna: And when you say that it was created like that, it was code, it's like, like how was it that it was like made,
BASIL: uh, it was made as a mind map.
Yohanna: Oh.
BASIL: As a network of nodes. And we took someone who said, okay, well this is your boss and your boss owns fleet management for, you know, your.
BASIL: Cabinet agency, this is your boss, represented as a subnetwork of value. And where that subnetwork connects to the entire federal governance structure going up to the constitution of the United States. So this is you as a nerve cluster of value. And this is where you fit into the brain. This is where you fit in Uncle Sam's brain.
BASIL: And
BETH: I'll just add onto that if I could. Uh, basil has a, a background [00:14:00] in, uh, technical writing, technical communication. And in his world, and in in my world as well, you know, we talk about boxes and arrows, uh, as a decision matrix. This is, um, you know, as he said, a, a mind map where things are interrelated.
BETH: And in one instance when we took that mind map, uh, it looked like the Basar Galactica. Um, how things connected, and we found things that were like little constellations that were not connected and we consider them like little, little orphan programs that they're not connected. So those are opportunities where we can say, we need to connect these two, the, you know, to the, to this larger mind map.
BETH: And it might be that some things haven't been added yet, or we haven't, we haven't made those connections yet, but. If we have a pretty solid mapping and these things are still floating out there, you know, we, we need to, to do some investigation and connect them because [00:15:00] they may not be getting the, the support and they, they just may be siloed and, um, you know, they could benefit from the connections or connections could benefit from connecting with them.
BETH: And, uh, you know, in another instance, we had something that looked like, um, a spaceship. Um, you know, because we, we had these two main stalls kind of at the end, but, but the body of the work was in the middle. It's, it's really interesting how this mind map, you know, and continuing this, this metaphor of transportation, you know, we're in the space age.
BETH: Um, it's, it's amazing. You can connect many things and it's like a library. You can have a law library. You can have a literature library. It all connects and it's, and it's this platform neutral environment. In some examples, we're using Excel and others we're using, um, a relational database. It doesn't matter the [00:16:00] platform, but it's, it's the framework that connects the value and it's the decisions and how those relate, whether through law or policy or, uh, you know, another validated connection that begins to build that mind map.
Yohanna: When there's a disturbance in the force, you guys know like there's a disturbance in the force, like you guys know where to go. Yes.
BETH: Yes. Literally, and Basel could talk more about this, I'm sure, but if there's, if there's something that will impact these programs and it's in a draft format, you can, you can find.
BETH: All dimensions of the, the citing authorities that make those impact the laws and regulations that will impact those programs. And it will be on one side of, of the line. And if you look on the other side of the line, we will see the programs that will be affected. And you could say, oh, wait a minute, we need to make some proposed [00:17:00] changes to this because if, if this.
BETH: If this becomes, uh, the new mandate, then these programs will be affected and we need to coordinate with that. So that that is, that is a, a really strong way to see what those disturbances in the forest will have as ripple effects.
BASIL: I find our lack of program optics disturbing
Yohanna: all these Star Wars references.
BASIL: I wanna give a quick scenario about that role. I wanna give a quick scenario that might explain how the role of someone in this system could change based on seeing the mat. Imagine a situation where you and some other folks are competing for the same contract, competing for the same grant. Okay? So those other folks come in and pitch their solution, explain how their solution's gonna deliver on the requirements in that opportunity, and then you go up and say, here is how my solution.
BASIL: Delivers on the requirements [00:18:00] in your opportunity and break. Break, how it delivers on the requirements of your boss, how it delivers on your strategic plan, your performance measures, the executive orders that are signed that direct your department and you know, the priorities of the president and the performance metrics and the risk register that y'all are trying to get off of, blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada.
BASIL: And then the person on the other side who's listening to that looks around and asks the other folks how did. Does your solution deliver value to my boss's priorities? And they're gonna lift their hands up from side to side and give the polar bear salute and you win. That's the scenario we're trying to create for our members.
Yohanna: Uh, what I'd like to know is, I guess earlier in your career, were there any challenges that that helped you? I. I, I lead like today, lead in, in this project or understand some of the things that, like, are happening now. I know that in my life there are things that happened to me earlier in my life where I'm like, oh, I, I went through this lesson a couple years ago.
Yohanna: Now I understand why I went through this [00:19:00] particular lesson, or,
BASIL: sure. Early in my career, I was asked to manage the editing of a five year strategic plan for a cabinet agency with no visibility into. How it interacted with anything, where it came from, how these were going to be measured, why we had to do this, you know, why is what's in it, in it, why, what's not in it's not, or any of those questions.
BASIL: And so I did some research on my own and I asked a lot of smart people and they explained to me that every cabinet agency has a strategic plan because there are laws that say that we have to, and those laws actually empower. Directions and orders that say how that strategic plan is to connect to other things.
BASIL: And so I started putting those connections in the strategic plan, which improved how we communicated it. It improved how people adopted it, and it gave people the evidence they needed to leverage that plan to actually do things because they didn't just say, we have to do this. 'cause the strategic plan says so it's that we have to do this because the [00:20:00] strategic plan says so and it delivers on these other things.
BASIL: Which is why the strategic plan says for us to do this in the first place, we could connect strategies to performance metrics, to priorities, laws, orders, everything. And so the more evidence you have to make your case that we need to improve service to the citizen, the more likelihood your change is going to have lasting value and your changes will be adopted.
BETH: What influenced me? In coming to this point in collaborating with Basel was, uh, about 10 years ago, I was involved in a leadership program. We had to do a rotation and I found myself working in performance management and his office was just a couple of blocks away and we, uh, had a cup of coffee and I was telling him about what I was doing.
BETH: And his work at that time really helped to connect the dots for me on what I was doing and how it was [00:21:00] affecting at, um. You know, at, at the agency level. And I got really interested and he was very kind enough to, you know, spend some time with me to explain what this, uh, what this meant. And drew some pictures for me that, um, you know, started the conversation rolling.
BETH: And so we have been collaborating ever since and. Um, you know, in tandem with that, I, I learned from some very smart people, including Basel, that we need to be able to help people use the tools they need in the way they need to use them. And we need to talk to them about, to learn about those needs and to find ways to fix the problem collaboratively so that they are the angels of change.
BETH: And then we need to get out of the way. Um, mentoring has also been a key way to pay it forward for me. I have learned a lot under, you know, yeah. Uh, Basel, you know, I have, um, gained the perspective of what's involved in policy and strategic planning, and it [00:22:00] has had immense, um, benefits from me personally and professionally.
BETH: Um, so I, I have really valued that and where, you know, where this collaboration has led us. Um, so, so for me, this collaboration that we have with, with other folks who have taken an interest in this work, communicating about it and, um, helping to, um, spread the word on it, has just led to some, um, immense opportunities and collaborations that we never would have expected.
Yohanna: All right, so the dream team, I would like to know what are, uh, major trends in emerging tech that you believe will have like a really big impact in the next three to five years?
BASIL: Sure. We found a way to use program integration as a means to innovate, but new priorities and laws like the Evidence Act are driving us [00:23:00] into a new era where integration itself is the innovation.
BASIL: For example, AI is powerful. It's getting more powerful every moment, but without the integration across the governance documents about, without seeing the map, it's just going to guess. And I would like to give the AI the map of our federal governance structure before it writes the structure for us. You know, I like there's this rise of structured causal data models like IVN and, and.
BASIL: With those we can train AI on the ground truth of what our structure really is so that it can understand why things matter and not just make inferences based on the org chart and the law. And, and I think that's gonna redefine decision making in public service. And I think it'll also, uh. Create a role for AI that is easier for us to trust instead [00:24:00] of telling us what to do to validate what we're doing, find the supporting evidence that's in fact in the law, that would guide the decisions and you know, maybe form some interesting questions like the ones that we're asking each other today so that we have.
BASIL: A broader vision. We have a bigger picture, we have a more reliable map of what we're working on, so we can make smarter program choices.
BETH: And I, I think we're entering a, an era of what's new is old again. You know, we talked about library science skills earlier. They support good research and a critical review of what technology can provide us.
BETH: We need to be skeptical and ask good questions. Is this information useful, valuable, trustworthy. We need to be able to take data, evaluate the information, gain, synthesize the knowledge, and communicate the wisdom and our future workforce needs much support in those skillsets. So I, I, I really like the [00:25:00] direction that Basel was going about.
BETH: You know, we, we need to be forward first.
Yohanna: This also sounds like going past just an LLM, like just creating your own, but like making sure that what you have is, pardon?
BASIL: We know what the AI is telling us is true. Well, well, how do we know that what we're saying is true? There's a, there's, you know, there's all these laws and rules and so on.
BASIL: That makes it really complicated. It actually has a very specific type structure that we operate in, and that's the bad news. The good news is. Those laws and rules and orders are so prescriptive that there is an explicit model that comes outta the federal governance structure, and we've shown it to about 4,000 people, but whether you've seen it or not, we live in it.
BASIL: You know, the, the, the airline flight map is the airline flight map, and that's where the planes go, whether you see the map or not.[00:26:00]
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Yohanna: So on that note, can you give us an example of, of a project or, or technology that you've worked on that, that you believe will have like a real lasting effect, like an airplane, you know, like the airline maps.
BASIL: Sure. My proudest program integration moments came from the earliest version of IVN born during the Walter Reed crisis in 2007.
BASIL: I was part of the VA DOD Senior Oversight Committee staff office charged to solve those problems. And we were responding to real harm [00:27:00] to people that was caused by fragmented oversight of wounded warrior care problems. And we discovered when we unpack them. That no one had mapped the interactions of those VA and DOD programs and that lack of systemic visibility had a measurable human cost.
BASIL: So we started building the map, and that map evolved into the IVN, for example, the program that lets service members transfer their GI benefits to their spouses and children evolved from the evidence in that early version of the IVN. So we were able to resolve a potential conflict between program changes.
BASIL: How do we recreate the best GI bill possible for service members without. The program being so good that it threatens retention so that, so the people don't actually, you know, some other people actually the willing to stay in the military long so it doesn't conflict, you know, with the [00:28:00] incentive of, of giving a great college deal, uh, doesn't serve as a disincentive for retention.
BASIL: And so we said, well, why don't we let service members give their GI bill to their spouses and children, so all of a sudden. What could have a, a program improvement that could have threatened another program? Metrics actually improved the program metrics because we looked at the problem systemically, we could see the map of the interactions.
BASIL: So what caused what started as a crisis response became this framework for intentional collaboration.
BETH: And on my end, I'm, I'm looking forward to the future. Um, with the people who will be collaborating with us, that will be the lasting impact that we're seeking to provide. But to answer your question, there have been notable wins where we've helped to create a five year strategic plan and outline for innovation justification for a requested budget increase or requested increase in budget, alignment to [00:29:00] strategic goals across the chain of command and awareness of what's owned.
BETH: For talking points. Each of those were meaningful to the people in the organizations who asked for those products to aid in their, in their overall goals. We created custom data sets for, for those purposes. We have a public data set as well. But, um, in each of those instances, those were very meaningful and turning points.
BETH: Um, they were small wins, but they were, they were big wins for, for those, uh. And organizations.
Yohanna: That's great. Thank you so much for your service. There's so many things that are just invisible to us, like you don't know how things work. You know, you don't know why they're, they were, these processes were put in place.
Yohanna: What I've been learning is government contracting and like emerging tech, they, they intersect in like strange, complex ways. What's, what's a, what's a misconception that you all feel. When working in this space that you wish more people understood. 'cause I, I'm [00:30:00] understanding this a little bit more live right now, like, oh, I understand.
Yohanna: You know, my, my father was a Vietnam vet. He wasn't wounded, but, you know, he'd had to interact with the va 'cause he, I think he needed like a knee surgery or something. So I'm like, oh, okay. This kind of affected my, my life personally. Like I, this is something that I had no idea was happening, you know, behind the scenes.
BASIL: Sure. One of the things that we talked about at the conference is I. Despite the fact that we all want to provide citizen focused services, customer focused services. For example, you know, for veteran services, we want to provide veteran focused programs. We can still get caught up in the mindset that we have a set of boxes and arrows to run a program and that.
BASIL: We government employees are the agents doing the work. And as a result of that, sometimes we can inadvertently treat the customer, the veteran, the citizen, as this [00:31:00] precious berger egg, that we move through the boxes and arrows instead of the agent doing the work, performing the actions in the process. And then we, as their decision supporters, are providing information and people and money and things, you know, to help their movement.
BASIL: I think the biggest misconception is that value flows in one direction, from budget to program, to contract, to contractor, to agency. But like we've been talking about in reality, value emerges from that network of interaction of those people money and things, and I. How that network got to be, what it is, why those interactions are what they are.
BASIL: I mean, you know, contracts bring innovation, but agencies bring contexts and, and agencies in the offices that create those contracts exist as emergent property of interactions, which are publicly available and can be known and can provide a [00:32:00] context for those agencies creating those contracting opportunities and those contractors delivering value.
BASIL: Not just to what's stated, but they can an start answering the why. They can start delivering mindful of the mission and the priorities and the budgets and the laws and the, the problems that led to those things. That there's, there is an opportunity for some real evidence-based mindfulness and how we create and deliver, you know, 'cause I think when both sides map how their deliverables impact the big picture of shared outcomes, I think everyone gets smarter.
BASIL: I, I've seen it happen. You know, and that, and integrated value networking gives us this common map of value. So we can work from a shared map and government and industry can see and know what their progress is going to look like when it interacts with each other.
BETH: I think too, add on to that, um, we have talked about this in the past, but we haven't talked about it here.
BETH: When we take [00:33:00] the source documents, for example, from one party and we connect them to the source documents of another party, they're going to use different words. They're going to have similar concepts, and we can connect those, those concepts together. So for example, if one organization says, Hey, we want you to do some of these things.
BETH: And we use that as providing value to that. And what we're doing internally, we are taking our internal documents and saying, we're going to be responsive to these requests, and here are the activities that relate to those. What you have now is a way to communicate. And you know, I, I mentioned earlier about, uh, awareness of what's owned for talking points.
BETH: If, if you are needing to talk to your external stakeholders, for example, [00:34:00] and they say, Hey, we want you to do these things, then you'll be able to say, we are doing these programs to attend to these priorities that you have given us. And then internally. You can say to the people who are running the programs that are being responsive to those priorities, these are the things that we are being asked to do.
BETH: And depending on who you need to talk to, you're able to use the, the words and the concepts that are meaningful and important Yeah. To, to those particular stakeholders. And that can work very well when, let's say a consulting company wants to propose business to, to an agency, or wants to work together with another company to bid on something.
BETH: Or if we're looking at grants and you want to analyze areas where you have strengths based on what the brand opportunities are, you can map [00:35:00] what you have to what the. The other party has and find commonalities where you can work together, look at new opportunities, you can talk about similar concepts and use the language that those people are using, and it, I think, will really help in bringing together more collaboration and also understanding the other party's perspective.
Yohanna: I'm really excited for this efficient future. I don't know about y'all, but I really, I really can't wait for this future to be really efficient. Um, so let's fast forward to five years. Where do you, where do you see yourselves? What are the breakthroughs that you're, that you're aiming for
BASIL: five years from now?
BASIL: I want every federal agency to map their value in a shared, integrated value network so we can collaborate on how people, money, things, budgets, programs, performance measures. Deliver mission outcomes as an interdependent [00:36:00] integrated system because we are one, we are an integrated system of people, money and things, but we don't see it as such and we don't interact with it as such because we don't have a map.
BASIL: I, I think the IVN breakthrough. Isn't a tool as much as a new mindset that our government and how we govern is a value network and we can view, add, edit, change that network mindfully and consciously with 21st century optics. We
BETH: talk about the integrated value network with three goals to communicate, collaborate, and support continuous improvement.
BETH: Right, right. So I would love to see this. Uh, enshrined as Basel described as this tool that has the capacity to support portfolios across agencies and be connected to many and varied sources. Government is complex and where agencies support a specific lane in these portfolios. Imagine have how having this [00:37:00] information at your fingertips would support important decision making at the fraction of time it takes in a day call.
BETH: For example,
Yohanna: a few weeks back we had a, a. Another event at, uh, ACT IAC event. It was a contact center event, and they were kind of touching on how like, you know, omnichannel and how all the innovations within the omnichannel are, are kind of panning out. But also I, you mentioned it earlier, skills and mindsets and how, you know, the old, old tech is, is new and how to verify, uh, information, stuff like that.
Yohanna: I, I wanna know how we can get there. What are some, what is the mindset? What is the skill? For the next generation of tech leaders, what is it that we need to get to a mapped integrated government?
BASIL: I think we're gonna need systems thinking systemic curiosity, and maybe an attitude of humility that comes from being able for the first time to look up at the [00:38:00] entire universe of the federal governance structure and seeing your part in it.
BASIL: I mean, as citizens, we, we are part of that network. I mean, either, you know, as agents or objects of it, but we're part of it, you know, and, and that curiosity piece is, is being curious enough to look at an org chart and say, is this what it is? Is, are, are these assumptions valid? Uh, and, and, and the humility piece I think comes from being humble enough to admit that success depends on how well we meet our responsibility to understand the first, second, third, and fourth order effects of our work and how our work delivers value to others' outcomes and not just our own.
BASIL: And, and I think this, the system networked optics of IVN is gonna reward. The people who have the capability to think like connectors instead of builders.
BETH: That's all you put me in the mind of Tom Cruise and Minority Report with, you [00:39:00] know, with the sci-fi, you know, moving things around or that scene in, um, the edge of Tomorrow where you know they've got the.
BETH: They've got this map, you know, it's holographic. I, I think it's, I think it's really interesting to, to what, to add to what Basel said. The understanding of this complexity is important and to visualize it, it's, it's wonderful and great. But to reiterate what I said earlier, we're entering an era of what's new as old.
BETH: Again, like library science, rhetoric and logic. We need to be able to take data, evaluate that information, synthesize it, and communicate that wisdom. That part is critical. In, in working with, uh, graduate students. Um, I, I also teach UX design on occasion. Um, they are very smart. They can use the technology, but to logic their way through the decision and substantiate that being that, being that, uh, person at the table [00:40:00] to, to do that I, I think is, is a real challenge.
BETH: So. If, if this is a means that we can support our future workforce, I, I think that will really help them in support of those skill sets. If they, if they come to the table with that and if they practice it, it's, it's something that we, we really need to, um, inculcate, um, you know, for our, for our young people.
BETH: Um, because, you know, as we talked earlier, we have data sets. They may not be reliable or trustworthy. So we need to have people who are trained in critical thinking skills. I
Yohanna: think I So, so you went Minority report. I went Ram Dass. We are all connected. We are all one. I went very like mystical. That, that
BETH: too.
BETH: Yeah, that too. We are, yes. Absolutely.
Yohanna: I don't know, I don't know why I went like super tical. I also, I, I like this term of like systemic humble curiosity, I think. There Minority Report or Ram Doss, if that were like the Venn [00:41:00] diagram, maybe IVN is right in the middle. That like creates, yes, Anne,
BASIL: I see it as Keanu Reeves at the end of the first matrix film.
BASIL: But instead of standing in a business building and seeing a bunch of agents, uh, I. Walk around the US Capitol and I just see all this green code of federal requirements moving back and forth.
Yohanna: Exactly. Yeah. That's the great series. Who doesn't like the Matrix? Um, so one piece of advice, if you were to be, uh, Morpheus, what is the one piece of advice that you can give innovators trying to like break into this space today?
Yohanna: Red pill, blue pill, no pill.
BASIL: I think Morpheus would say that the integrated value network is part of a system that has rules. So I, I would say her piece of advice is to try to see federal governance as an integrated network of value for citizens that we live in, uh, [00:42:00] that network of value for us and the US Constitution, and to start participating in that network.
BASIL: As such, I, I think the innovation of value integration is not technology. It's not a technological solution. It's the attitude of seeing the code in the matrix of federal governance and. How we interact with that code now so that we can interact with it smarter. I think when we can prove how our innovation helps people solve a problem smarter, we're not just delivering solutions, we're innovating the people side of it.
BASIL: We're innovating how people engage with the problem. And I think those are the innovations that endure. I would
BETH: say, you know, continuing with the, the Matrix, um, idea. Don't necessarily take the pill, be the pill, meaning, um, be the, be the agent to make things better. I. Tap into what you know, what you're passionate about.
BETH: Seek deep, deeper knowledge if you have to. When you find that depth, you'll have the ability [00:43:00] to find ways to innovate.
Yohanna: All right, good. Besides cinema, what excites you the most about what's coming next for you all and, and the industry I guess as a whole?
BASIL: Well, I'm excited about how the series is gonna continue with the superhero team up of the IVN collaboration between Act ix, federal Innovation Council, and the Institute for Innovation.
BASIL: So we're gonna use the IVN to build a shared framework to let our public and private partners in ACT IAC literally see the map of how their efforts align across the federal governance structure. So, you know, we're starting a shared infrastructure with ACT IAC members. For value integration across government.
BETH: I'm just excited for everybody to have their own IVN,
Yohanna: like a, like a personal IVN in my pocket. Just I could pull it up.
BETH: Yeah, exactly. And it's, it's a framework. You can connect the framework.
Yohanna: Okay, great. This has been a such a fun conversation. Are, are there any things that you'd like to add?
BASIL: Sure. I Acti Act [00:44:00] members can follow the IVN framework project@actiact.org.
BASIL: It's uh, act act.org/project. Activities slash integrated Value network IVN framework, but you, I think you could just search for act iact.org and search for integrated value network and probably find it. So that framework project site is where we're documenting our journey and sharing tools and inviting collaborators, uh, and being part of an open source movement for mission alignment.
BASIL: So if, if any of your listeners have ever asked, how can I help government work better together? Understand my role in it and what it could be. This is your invitation
BETH: and we're also findable on LinkedIn and we'd, we'd love to share the public data set, um, our how to manual and the resources. Um, we're, we're just really excited to, to share this information with folks.
Yohanna: Okay. Great. Thank you so much for your time. This has been such an amazing conversation. I learned so [00:45:00] much.
BASIL: I'm really grateful for your interest. We both are.
BETH: Yes. Thank you so much. This.
Yohanna: I'm trying to have, I'm trying to have a, a systemic curious, uh, what is it? Systemic humble curiosity.
BASIL: Ooh, nice.
Yohanna: Thank you for joining us on this episode of The Buzz.
Yohanna: I hope you found our discussion on the Integrated Value Network. As interesting as we did, stay tuned for more conversations and insights in future episodes. Until next time, stay curious. And connected.