Learn the Words: Abby McQuade on How Vendors Earn Government Trust

Abby McQuade: We shouldn't think about the vendor-vendee relationship as being either unbalanced or even adversarial. We should think about it more as a partnership, as a coming together of like minds, as people all working kind of in tandem to help government to make good on its moral imperative to improve the lives of constituents, whether that's in a tiny jurisdiction or whether that's across the country.

Jud Neer: Welcome to the podcast of the Future of Work Practice at Infosys Public Services. I'm Jud, and in my 25 years of building for governments, I've found the hardest part is rarely the technology. It's the people, the policy goals, and the judgment about what to create in the first place, all the stuff required to turn potential into results. I'm joined today by Abby McQuade, Senior Manager, Client Services, and a colleague of mine within the Future of Work Practice. Abby brings to Infosys over a decade of experience working for multiple government agencies and has a proven track record of delivering projects successfully within that context. We're here today to talk specifically about how vendors can more effectively serve the public sector. Abby, welcome to the show.

Abby McQuade: So first, thanks for having me. Second, you are right. I've got experience on both the procurement side of things and also as a vendor. So I've got about a decade of experience working for state and local governments in my background. And one of the things that I had in my portfolio, in particular when I was working in the Office of Management and Budget in the state of Rhode Island, and then again during the pandemic when I was helping to run the Department of Labor and Training there under Director Scott Jensen and Governor Raimondo, was the procurement of technological services. In the case of OMB, what we were looking to do was to develop a custom budget system for the state, and this was to replace something that had existed since, I want to say 1992, and was an access database that our then budget officer had put together as a brand-new budget analyst because he thought that technology was cool back in 1992. And so we needed to replace that. So part of my purview as one of the leaders of the Management and Budget Office was to work with not just vendors of technology, but first and foremost, consultants who were there to work to assist us in figuring out how to get a vendor to vend us the technology. So that was sort of a little meta when we were working around it. And then, of course, at DLT, we come into the pandemic world, and we were procuring technological services as antiquated as phone systems and individuals to answer those phones right in the call center. And then, of course, we were looking at things that were as new and as cutting-edge as cloud technology, cloud services, managed services, which of course, is how you and I came to know each other. So, one of the things that was super prevalent, honestly, was a bit of a lack of respect for not just the individuals who were actually purchasing the services, but honestly, for the entire enterprise of government. And that's something that we see a lot today. 50, 60 years ago, dedicating your life to public service was seen as a noble enterprise. Individuals who were willing to take their hard-earned educations, their skills, their intellects, their capabilities, their talents, and dedicate those things to the betterment of everybody, were kind of seen as heroes. Over the last several decades, the narrative has shifted an awful lot, and what government employees face, in particular at the state and local levels, probably because all politics is local, is a perception of inability, a perception of a lack of education, and a sort of even wider perception of cluelessness. Combine that with a lauding of the corporate world, what you wind up with more cases than not is a very unequal, a very disjointed relationship between the vendor, in particular of high-tech services and the purchaser. And realistically, that's simply not the case, right? That the folks who are working in government are uneducated or less capable or less talented. I like to say this, not just because I want to provide support and encouragement to the folks that I worked with for so many years, but the reality is that even if people today working in government don't receive the same applause that they did 60, a hundred years ago. Government is still made up of individuals who have dedicated their education, their experience, their talents, their interests and aptitudes to bettering society. And what that means is that we shouldn't think about the vendor-vendee relationship as being either unbalanced or even adversarial. We should think about it more as a partnership, as a coming together of like minds, as people all working in tandem to help government to make good on its moral imperative to improve the lives of constituents, whether that's in a tiny jurisdiction or whether that's across the country.

Jud Neer: Yeah, I love that idea of partnership as a frame for that, and not just as this unequal buyer-seller-vendor-government framing. So imagine, if you will, that I'm a vendor that would like to do a better job.

Abby McQuade: Sure.

Jud Neer: Surprise, I am. And what are the sorts of things that you would recommend that somebody like me do who, while being in this space, I don't have an education specifically tuned to government beyond-high school civics class, and I'm probably not going to go get a degree in public policy, although maybe I'll read a book or two. I don't know. What would you recommend to someone who wants to come into this space as a partner?

Abby McQuade: So I think a lot of it has to do with what you're trying to vend and I know that sounds almost overly simplistic. But what vendors, particularly of technology, need to ask themselves is, are we selling services or products? Are they trying to partner with the government that they are attempting to sell something to? Are they looking to sit alongside those government staffers? Are they looking to lean in and actually learn something about the statutory requirements, regulatory requirements, the decades of policies and procedures that inform the day-to-day administration of government happenings? Or are they showing up with something already fully formed? And are they saying, well, this is going to solve your problems. I don't know what your problems are, but this technology is absolutely going to solve those problems. That is more often than not the approach that vendors do tend to take. They come with a product. They come with a, even if it's not fully fleshed out, something conceptual that leads with the technology rather than coming with the intention of vending services and partnership, where the outcome is, again, it's that meeting of the minds, and it is the creation of a solution that can actually solve a pressing public policy need in a particular jurisdiction or geographic area.

Jud Neer: Yeah, I'm hearing some about how not just coming with ideas, but listening for ideas, too. That perhaps there are good ideas already present that maybe just need some help in implementation.

Abby McQuade: Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the first steps that somebody who's looking to bring IT services or IT partnership to government needs to take is honestly figuring out what the subject area is. What is the domain? What is the expertise that's necessary in order for a person who is showing up at the doorstep of a Department of Administration or a Department of Human Services, what is necessary for them to know in order for them to walk into those conversations and say, I understand that I don't understand everything. Right? I know that I don't know things, and I know a little bit. I know enough to be dangerous. I've done a bit of research, but here's my basic knowledge level. Here's what I understand your problems to be, and am I right? Tell me what you need me to know in order for me to think better about how to ideate solutions with you.

Jud Neer: You mentioned research. Just very practically, what are some things that a person going into a setting like that ought to research ahead of time?

Abby McQuade: Most technologists don't have a background in public policy or political science, and we don't expect them to. But something that is fairly easy to do, but that very few vendors tend to do, is just a little bit of research on what the agency even is, what they do day-to-day, and what the programs they're administering actually are. How those programs touch constituents' lives on a day-to-day basis. And one of the things that we didn't have, or that you didn't have, when you were working with us in Rhode Island six years ago, was generative AI. Now, people have varied opinions about GenAI, and certainly there are places where we want to be cautious and, in government service, obviously, you're creating laws. You are building policies and programs that do impact people's day-to-day lives, whether somebody eats or gets medicine or can pay their rent. So we want to be as cautious and as judicious as we can be in the use of brand-new technologies. That said, for a technology vendor or a service provider, the use of GenAI to do a little bit of research and to get a precis on what a government agency does and how they do it is going to be a massive game changer.

Jud Neer: On a scale of read a blog post to go get a public policy PhD, what are some things, as a technologist, I can do to be better educated when I walk into a room to discuss technology with government?

Abby McQuade: Learn the words.

Jud Neer: Okay.

Abby McQuade: Learn the terms, right? Learn the difference between general revenues and federal funds. Learn the difference between Medicaid and Medicare. Learn what it is that creates a procurement in the first place. Are you looking at a grant, or are you looking at a competitive RFP, a sole source, or a single source? These things are all different, and it kind of feels to a lot of folks who are outside of government like it's a foreign language. It's not. And when I said before that GenAI can help to kind of give a little bit of a background on policies, procedures, and programs, it can also give you a glossary. It can probably even do a little bit better than that in that some of the work I've done around is it, as an agent of mine, learn some about me. Ask it a question like, given what you know about me, here's the situation I'm going into, what are my likely knowledge gaps? And write me a primer on what I need to know going into that conversation. In our practice, we try to be as AI-forward as possible, especially as we work with our partners. But even behind the scenes, it's not enough to simply say, where are my knowledge gaps? You also have to ask, do I have a shot in heck of actually filling this knowledge gap before I walk into this meeting? And GenAI can actually tell you whether or not you've got that shot.

Jud Neer: Yeah. There's a level of humility that comes with recognizing, hey, this is the amount that I can learn, to just know the amount maybe that I don't know. And understanding that I'm not going to replicate a decade of government experience in an afternoon with Claude.

Abby McQuade: Right. It's the same on the other side of the procurement. If I work in government, I don't think that I know software engineering, because I don't. And I'm not going to walk into a meeting with a whole bunch of engineers and think I know what the heck they're talking about. Same is true in the other direction. And it's not just the terminology, it's also the approach. It's the administration's priorities that need to be taken into account. Not to oversimplify things, but it is the dichotomy between red states and blue states, right? How does the administration, how does the legislature, how does the populace in any given jurisdiction think and feel about the particular programs and services that you're looking to build solutions around?

Jud Neer: I want to continue to think a little bit about the real practical nature of this. Is there something that you've seen, like let's start with the negative side of things. A signal or a thing that a vendor might say or do that just immediately you as the buyer, you're already tuning them out. What's Abby's don't-do list?

Abby McQuade: The tippity top of that list, like the apex of please don't do this, is approaching government buyers or approaching government staff members from a perspective of I know better than you because I've been out in this sector or that sector, because I've done this or that, or worked at X big company, not only is that going to insult and turn the person off automatically, or the people off automatically that you're trying to build a partnership with, but it also places you honestly on the back foot. Because what that does is it sets you up to fail because you don't know better. You don't have a decade or two decades worth of government experience and administration experience with particular programs and services. So entering a room as though you know what you're talking about when in fact you don't, that's the wrong approach.

Jud Neer: Yeah. Let's talk about the positive then. What's a simple way to approach, say, a meeting with a government buyer as a vendor that is a shortcut, if you will, that one weird trick not really, to earning a buyer's trust?

Abby McQuade: Absolutely. One of the things that we can all do a little bit better is think about how to use the language of pre-sales to set our future partners up to understand what's possible. Right? There's the term, the art of the possible, that we throw around a lot in technology, and what do we really mean by that? What we mean by that is ultimately not tech first and problem-solving second. What we should mean by that is: what is your problem? What is the ultimate solve you're trying to get to, and how can we back into that using technological services and what's available today to help you build those solutions?

Jud Neer: Yeah, I think there's a place there for an encouraging degree of optimism around that and maybe a little bit of we're all in this together, while we're talking about cliches, together, that a vendor, again it goes back to that word of partnership that a vendor is here to help someone achieve their mission.

Abby McQuade: Something that I've told technologists I've worked with in this space is to internalize that mission of that partner that you have and really try to feel their pain. I think that that's one way, even at an emotional level. We've talked about other various, using the right terminology and doing research, but there's even this emotional connection that you can make. Get to know those people that you're working with as people. Which is something that we've been able to do. And I think it made our work ultimately better together. I can say without a doubt that if we had not gotten to know one another, if you in San Diego had not gotten to know us working at the Department of Labor in the state of Rhode Island during the pandemic, we wouldn't have been able to do the things we did.

Jud Neer: So our last question, why should somebody do what you do? Why should somebody want to go into public sector technology?

Abby McQuade: I think the basic answer to that is it helps to make your fellow man's lives better. You can solve problems faster, you can solve problems more efficiently, more effectively, and you have the ability to give back in a way that, in other areas of especially the corporate world, you just don't get to have.

Jud Neer: Abby, thanks so much for joining us today. This was a lot of fun.

Abby McQuade: Thanks so much. Pleasure to be here.

Jud Neer: If you're in the business of turning capability into results for the public sector, we'd love to hear from you. This podcast is brought to you by the Infosys Knowledge Institute. You can find show notes and a transcript in the podcast section at infosys.com/IKI. The show is produced by Christine Calhoun and Yulia De Bari. Audio engineering by Dode Bigley. I'm your host, Jud Neer. Thanks for listening.