Consulting and Advisory Services
Measurably better outcomes can cost less. We partner with governments like yours to build services that are simple, accessible, and easy to use—without the hefty price tag.
At Code for America, we see ourselves as a partner, not a vendor. Technology isn’t an endpoint, it’s a tool to achieve important and meaningful outcomes. We help governments learn new methodologies, test innovative solutions, and change their systems, all to make sure they’re delivering better outcomes for their communities. This is our vision for how all governments can and should serve the public. We are all in this together.
For more than a decade, we have built a practice around understanding, sharing, and improving the client experience of accessing government services. We use industry-grade, proven, tested tools and methodologies in areas of end-to-end digital service delivery such as qualitative research, digital outreach, and data analytics. We can do more than simply share those best practices with you or deploy them for you—we can work hand-in-hand to build these capabilities in your organization so they sustain far beyond any single project or engagement.
Services
We offer the following services and can work with you to customize an engagement to help you meet your goals.
Governments ask us for help in many different ways. We offer a menu of typical offerings from which we can work together to customize an engagement that best suits your needs.
Executive coaching and light-touch advisory
We provide leadership-level counseling on approaches, methodologies, and high-level tips and tricks on a variety of topics.
- Overall roadmap planning for upcoming transformation
- Vendor management, procurement strategy
- Rapid discovery (innovation) cycles
- High-level assessments and diagnostics on Delivery-Driven Government
- Organizational shifts (such as from a traditional IT mindset and approach to agile, flexible, client-centric operations)
- ~20-50 hours of advisory and research support from a multi-disciplinary Code for America team across program and product/technology expertise over a flexible time frame of ~3-12 months
- Can support on a specific project (like a large IT migration) or overall topics
- Activities include analysis, coaching, resource development, training, and other support to help solve critical digital service delivery challenges
Targeted technical support
We offer consultative engagements where we would work closely with your team on specific topics with pre-set goals with the dual intention on delivering outcomes and training your team on the topic.
Typical topics
- RFP development, vendor evaluation, vendor management
- Agile/Lean best practices, CI/CD
- System instrumentation and operationalization of tight feedback loops
- Data matching, analytics
- Human-centered design
- Qualitative and quantitative user research
- Digital outreach
What this looks like
- Teams of ~2-3 Code for America resources staffed part-time for ~1-3 months
- Working hand-in-hand with your staff to both deliver the work and also build capacity along the way
- Works best when there is a specific project and outcome desired
Staff training
We can offer half-day, day-long, or multi-day training sessions for staff groups on any of the above topics.
The Fine Print
These services can be funded through a variety of methods which we are open to discussing. As a nonprofit we operate on a cost-recovery model; all revenue is re-invested into growing and scaling our practice to serve more governments, and serve them better.
Funding options:
- Retainer contracts (with baseline number of hours per month and per-hour fees in excess of baseline) from government IT or outreach budgets
- Noncompetitive or sole-source contracts: Fee-for-Service or Time and Expense
- Competitive contracts via RFP: Fee-for-Service or Time and Expense
- Outreach or technical assistance grants
- Local philanthropic, community benefit, and individual grants