The Realities of API Governance at a Large Enterprise Organization

In this episode of Breaking Changes, Postman Chief Evangelist Kin Lane welcomes Subramanian Krishnan, who is working on leading the API journey for the Technology Strategy Organization over at Citrix, to share some sobering realities of what it is like to realize API governance at scale across a large enterprise organization, providing some valuable insights you can apply to your own API journey.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
[Music]
all right here we are another episode of
breaking changes i'm pretty excited
today i've got an old friend of mine
that i've worked with uh several times
across government uh
api issues in federal government and now

(00:23):
um
Kelly Taylor
is the director of Colorado Digital
Services welcome Kelly
hey Kin thanks for having me
yeah thanks i'm glad we could make this
work we we were gonna try to make this
happen at another time but uh i guess
the internet was melting down and
and so we uh we were able to flex and

(00:44):
and find this other slot to make it
all work
but let's dive in um
what's the Colorado Digital Services
so we are a small team of product
managers designers engineers bureaucracy
hackers
that work for Governor Polis on some of
the state of Colorado's you know

(01:05):
toughest most unusual
software problems
it's a a fork from the U.S. digital
service i just know copy-pasted a
bunch of
ideas um and experiences over and
applied it here in Colorado
and um
you know it's been really interesting
because we we started the team uh

(01:27):
you know we are state employees we are
within the
the larger office of information
technology here in the state a thousand
person you know agency in the state
and we were really hoping we could work
on some meaningful things
and a couple of months into starting the
team you know covid came along so a lot
of our work is focused
on public health

(01:48):
on the covid response on kind of data
interoperability
and in that vein it's been a pretty
crazy experience and now that you
know here in the state we're 70
vaccination rate and um
you know our numbers have mostly come
down we're starting to get a chance to
work on some of the others you know
priorities of the state of Colorado

(02:08):
government which has been really great
nice
so why i mean in the context of Colorado
but other states why does the state need
a
a digital services group like this
now well
you know one of the interesting things
about the digital service model is
it's a tour service model meaning people

(02:29):
come into the government for some sort
of you know tour service like six months
up to two years
and that's how we do it here in Colorado.
There's other states like New Jersey
that have digital service teams
and it's nice because of what it does
is gives the opportunity to the broader
you know tech ecosystem here in Colorado

(02:49):
we have our Boulder Denver Tech Corridor
with a million awesome startups and tech
stars and foundry group and you know
lots of you know headquarters for a
bunch of cool tech companies you have a
lot of like the cybersecurity stuff in
Colorado Springs and Fort Collins and
and it's like this huge tech
community um
and it gives folks in that community

(03:09):
this nice interface comes into
government
to
you know help with all the experience
they've gained in the private sector and
apply that to some government problems
and then
roll back out to the private sector or
maybe like me fall in love with
government and continue on kind of
working on government problems
so the model is super cool and um and

(03:30):
it's something that you saw start um
about 10 years ago in the UK
with the formation
the um
GDS the Government Digital Service there
and then the U.S. digital service came
about after the
the crash and rescue of of
healthcare.gov
and since then there's you know a huge

(03:52):
ecosystem a variety of different ideas
and ways that that kind of tech people
can plug in and help
yeah it's a powerful model i mean
to set some context a little bit of
history how uh Kelly and i know each
other as i worked in the Obama
Administration
as a presidential innovation fellow so
this is 2013

(04:13):
and i had the pleasure working with a
lot of the smart people who were behind
the US Digital Services as well as 18f
and speaking personally as this uh
west coast Oregon i grew up in Oregon i
grew up very libertarian uh honestly
anti-government um i you know went into
the tech sector in the late 80s

(04:36):
early 90s really did a lot of startup
work really didn't have much interest in
government didn't care about government
really didn't believe government was
needed and then i went and
and worked for the Obama Administration
and it changed my team it not only
left me similar to you loving government
and we're in the problems and the scope

(04:57):
of problems, it gave me a new
appreciation for how this country works
or often doesn't work and so anybody
listening to this uh you know any of
these digital services model what
works for you i highly recommend it
if you can step away from your career
for a while because
it will change your view of the
landscape it will change how you see the

(05:18):
world uh and and and the role of
government and i would say that tango
between the public and the private
sector i think is is is really key so
we you touch on alluded to briefly so
what kind of stuff did you do in the U.S
Digital Services while you were in DC
so at the U.S. Digital Service uh

(05:39):
there's a bunch of different teams uh
kind of within the broader U.S. Digital
Service and so i was on the
health care team working for the centers
for Medicare and Medicaid services
and uh I had come from
IBM Watson Health and Alchemy API and a
couple of things like that so my
the background is a product manager
and so i started working on a kind of api

(06:02):
type of problems there of course hence
this podcast
right um and so i worked on a couple of
different things
in the government just like in the
private sector you know you see these
types of apis like transactional apis or
open data apis or kind of phi
pii type of apis where government's
the data holder
so i worked on a there's a program

(06:23):
called quality payments program which is
when doctors submit information to
the centers for Medicare
about the quality and the type of care
that they're providing they get paid at
a higher rate they get reimbursed at a
higher rate so it's worthwhile for
doctors to submit this data and but
submitting the data is cumbersome so we
worked on an api that could integrate

(06:43):
with electronic medical records systems
that allow doctors to automatically
submit data to CMS so that's like an
example of transactional stuff
and then but most of my work there was
on an api called the Medicare blue
button api
and this is a concept
that started about a decade ago from
people like Anish Chopra
that talked about how centers for

(07:03):
Medicare and Medicaid you know they're
they hold Medicare data you know CMS
administers Medicare in the United
States
45 or so million people 10,000 new
seniors come on to the program every
single day
and
every time a senior goes to the doctor
the doctor bills
Medicare for that so CMS has this

(07:25):
kind of huge you know
data store of insurance claims same
with the va you know the va provides
care to veterans
same exact situation a veteran goes to
va hospital
and you know the va pays that insurance
claim so those are the two places that
people like Niche Chopra pushed to
make data available to veterans or

(07:47):
seniors on Medicare who experience
looked like an end user you know a
veteran a patient a senior on Medicare
logging into a portal like
mymedicare.gov and downloading a CSV of
their data so that started a decade ago
and when i came along the chatter at CMS
and the US Digital Service Team and a
bunch of smart people

(08:07):
were was um hey we should turn this into
an api because it does not have
access to the information that's
powerful it's being able to share it
with apps and clinical trials and your
doctor and so on that makes it really
really powerful so that started down the
road of building this blue button api
while i was there so that was the
majority of the work over two-year

(08:28):
period
at CMS in the us digital service
so who are the consumers of that
api what gets built on that
api yeah so when you think about the
healthcare industry it's
you know it's like pharma companies
help you know healthcare and doctors
fitness type of you know

(08:50):
be healthy types of things
and um
and it's an array of all of those types
of companies
big and small so we had
companies that run clinical trials
they would integrate with the blue
button api so a patient is going to
enroll in a clinical trial
and the old way is that company saying

(09:12):
all right let's get you know
history on you let's get all sorts of
information
the new way is for the patient
shares their you know five years of
their medicare claims history with the
trial you know with trial software and
so now the trial understands what
procedures they've had what
prescription medication they've been on
and so on and so it's just a very quick

(09:33):
way so same
with you know electronic medical records
so a patient is in the waiting room
they're handed an iPad to check into
their appointment and you know certain
electronic medical record vendors have
integrated with this api so
the patient could you know touch to
connect their information
and now their physician has you know

(09:55):
five years of their claims history
these use cases you know
often go to like the personal health
record you know like apple health you
connect you know today apple health
integrates with hundreds of electronic
medical record providers like the
University of Colorado right down the
street here
and um soon we'll hopefully integrate

(10:15):
with claims you know using something
like the blue button api and other
private health insurance claims uh apis
and that gives gives the you know the
end user like me and you and everybody
listening
you know
all their information on their phone so
that stuff's very powerful
especially on the phone, you can start
sharing information with other apps
which is very powerful

(10:37):
and
you know this is an interesting area
because like with many apis you know you
can kind of talk like all day long about
the various use cases which is really
fun
um
with the blue button kind of in the
early days clinical trials ehr
integrations and lots of startups that
was the you know our first kind of
cohort of companies

(10:59):
we had as we were building the api we
had a couple hundred companies that were
experimenting with it and then you know
an api like that it's interesting
because as you go from sandbox to a
production you know there's a process
there of giving companies access to
personal health information
and um so you know that that couple
hundred companies goes way down to more

(11:21):
like you know 50 100 type of companies
that have been vetted and
and gone through the process but
it really it was a nice range so you
would see things like
a Medicare beneficiary wanting to
go from traditional Medicare to a
Medicare Advantage Plan which is a
different type of health insurance that
gives them kind of different types of
benefits

(11:41):
and so there were like cost calculators
and various things so you want to
determine you know you want to
understand the best plan for you you
connect your existing you know five
years of your claims history
and you know whatever
calculator you're using can say hey all
right based on what you just shared with
me these last five years here are the
best plans for you and there are a lot of
that kind of shopping calculator stuff

(12:01):
that we saw early days as well
so
you touched on a little bit you know
going from sandbox production
what's what were the biggest challenges
in rolling out an api like this because
it sounds like a no-brainer but
knowing that you know devil's in the
details what were the biggest challenges
of opening up that api
yeah so you know in government apis in

(12:24):
general are new and that's a that's a
generic statement but um they're
relatively new at CMS you know there are
a couple teams that were building apis
with like business partners
but this idea of an api that's public to
any developer that wants to use it
that sits on top of very valuable you
know information that needs to stay
secure

(12:45):
you know that's a big thing big new
thing for government and now many many
governments are
you know at all levels federal state
local or are starting to build apis like
this
um for us i think that the biggest
challenges were
policy related things like that where um
you know the first question when you

(13:05):
meet with with a lawyer from HHS or the
centers for Medicare and Medicaid was
okay how can we make sure that you
know we can trust the people who were
giving access to this information
you know the the third-party developers
and
it's an interesting question because
ultimately it's up to the patient
you know there's lots of legislation

(13:26):
one example is HIPAA the right to
access
that says patients haven't have a right
to access their information that's why
you can walk into your doctor's office
and walk out with a cd-rom of your
you know MRI of your knee or whatever
like that that kind of classic example
and an api is no different so a big part
of this was proving the case that

(13:48):
you know an oauth experience is very
similar to a digital signature you know
so that should count as a patient saying
yes i authorize this third-party app to
use my data
um so there was lots of meetings like
that and
and the third-party kind of app
developer vetting process was also brand
new so
i looked around at a bunch of different

(14:09):
you know how different companies did
like how Dropbox does it is very
different than another company you know
sometimes it's based on just general
usage like i think Dropbox was like
you'd have 50 users connected to your
sample app and then it could go to
production automatically
um very different than an app store
experience where like your code is being
scanned you know so
on our team we came up with our own

(14:29):
experience in our own kind of process
which involved the team vetting the
application um the dev team plus you
know folks from CMS um
security folks and we had you know
developer guidelines and parameters so
for example like you couldn't be you
couldn't resell the information you know
things like that
and as long as someone met the criteria

(14:51):
um and we felt good about it we would go
ahead and give them production access
now one interesting thing that's
happening is um you know how you scale
that so i mentioned Medicare you know
all of the information from
45 plus million people you know it's
comes into one spot
and so you have one team that kind of
oversees that but what when you have

(15:12):
programs like Medicaid which are now
building very similar
apis um you know 50 states
every state has multiple Medicaid plans
so you're talking now hundreds and
hundreds of
Medicaid plans so if you're a developer
at a startup
and the goal is to serve the Medicaid
population
with home delivery of prescription drugs

(15:33):
clinical trial enrollment personal
health record whatever the thing is
you're doing
are you now having to go to hundreds of
developer portals manage hundreds of api
keys and so on and
so that's kind of the next chapter of
all this stuff where it starts to get
really interesting
yeah some a lot of a lot of unknown
unknowns in there that that policy stuff

(15:54):
always surprised me and how like when i
first started doing developer portal
stuff at the Department of Veterans
Affairs you know a fundamental part of
of doing your api is asking developers
to like do little things for you hey can
you know we need help with this hey can
you do this and then i remember my boss
tell me hey
you work in government now you can't

(16:15):
tell people to do things for you
that's not how it works in government
i'm like but
like little things like that always
tripped me up and all the way to
you know i think we did a
benefits questionnaire
iPad app for uh disability claims and
and helping reduce friction for veterans
getting care and we we replaced

(16:37):
it all out mapped it to the legacy
system we're going to shut off the
legacy system this new iPad app was
great and then we found out that the the
funding for it was like
done through an act of congress and if
the legacy app went away the funding
went away and so we couldn't like
maintain the iPad app because the
funding disappeared and we hadn't done

(16:57):
the homework on it and so there's all
these little gotchas that i just i
learned so much in the process so
yeah so so
go ahead strike one of the most striking
moments in uh this
blue button api we built was the
lead engineer on the team Sam Ginsberg
he uh
you know the first thing that he did

(17:17):
as we started working on it was start
looking at the
the contract understanding the budget
understanding where the money was coming
from and i was like aren't we going to
dig into the code and like figure out
what's going on here and kind of start
going and
let's you know write some user stories
let's do some user research and he was
like
none of that matters until we're sure
and we understand kind of deeply how

(17:38):
this works and that is a
core kind of concept in working in
government is really
you know most of the private sector
experiences i've had besides the startup
world where you're you're really kind of
looking at the books every single day
is the money just kind of you
could just go do things and the money
was there
you know and if the executive wanted
you to do that thing you were never like

(17:59):
tracing the budget back to the source it
was just like okay i guess that's what
we're going to do next on the road map
where in government you really have to
understand the funding streams and so
when we started the Colorado Digital
Service
i started with a friend of mine Matthew
McAllister who had worked for President
Obama for five years and really
understood kind of the in and out of how
government worked and that was key
because he he could understand all the

(18:20):
things that we had to do
whereas i was like let's just go build
stuff and try to solve problems he he
understood how to how to structure it
right for success and that's super key
yeah that's a important quality and
skill i still have lots more to
learn on that front so was the blue
button did it achieve its objective or
is it like an ongoing rolling thing

(18:43):
yeah it's it's ongoing forever and
that's what's been interesting about
talking to folks in the state of
Colorado about our own api efforts is
you know these are not just hey let's
just quickly build it they will come and
we'll move on to the next project
you know it's like you you put these
things out there in the world and
they will be used forever and uh
especially when it comes to things like

(19:04):
personal health information and
um
and so with the CMS
Medicare blue button api you know we
we intentionally started small
we
you know gradually added more and more
third-party app developers we approved
for access as i was saying and um
you know went from a couple hundred

(19:25):
Medicare beneficiaries that had
connected their data to an app to
you know now tens and hundreds of
thousands and
and um
so that's kind of you know that
ship is sailing and it's they continue
to iterate they're you know as the fire
spec continues to mature like that you
know the api has to continue to update
and match the spec and the team is still

(19:46):
strong and lots of great things are
happening
um one of the interesting things that
came out of this which is it's also
pretty unique to government is um
as you know this Medicare api came
out um the administrator of Medicare at
the time said hey you know
we've done this now for Medicare i would

(20:06):
like regulation that
regulates
state Medicaid plans Medicare Advantage
plans
these plans on the exchanges called QHP
Plans
to also do this so this kind of shows
you like this you know you talked about
like the value of government government
sometimes has these really unique roles
right and one is sometimes government
can help push standards forward

(20:28):
sometimes government can use regulation
to kind of create like data liquidity
and
do things that the market is not
doing
and so that's what CMS did they
introduced this patient uh
interoperability of patient access and
interoperability rule that said you know
all of the various insurance plans that
CMS
overseas like state Medicaid

(20:50):
must build
these apis and it's not just the the
claims as i mentioned but there's also
other things like provider directories
and other things that kind of help
healthcare
data move around the system
so that in my view has been the
biggest success is yes lots of people
are using the Medicare blue button to
have access to their information and

(21:10):
share it with whomever they like
but it also has really moved the
industry forward which is wonderful
because it takes
moving it forward on all these different
fronts when it comes to health data
interoperability to make progress
because it's such a gnarly
bowl of spaghetti
well and i would add
it a third dimension is the

(21:30):
the precedent set by the
patient access interoperability rule the
regulations coming out of CMS is
influencing other industries as well and
and uh similar to how PSD2 in Europe um
which is a financial and banking uh reg
regulation out of the European Union

(21:51):
it's influencing regulation here in the
USA i just did an episode where we
talked about uh exporting PSD2 apps and
and processes to
Latin America to Mexico Brazil Colombia
and so this type of regulatory
occurrence really has
a it's shifting the landscape in

(22:11):
healthcare for sure but it's it's it's
it's much wider and so uh
so how does where does the fire
specification the fast health care in
our operability resources
which is a standard it's a mouthful and
a standard um where does how does that
play in in with the new CMS rules

(22:33):
well it's it is you know the standard
that the healthcare industry is
you know some move too and some moving
too
um
it is uh specified in some of these
regulations
um
you know with the interoperability of
anything like the standard play the
key role right because without the

(22:54):
standard things can't you know
gracefully and smoothly move around
um so it was really interesting while i
was at the U.S. digital service working
with CMS to watch the government's role
in standards development it's something
i knew nothing about i'd never worked in
standards development before
um and to why you know government they
invest in standards development so an

(23:17):
example is uh the office of national
coordinator which is the kind of the
part of the HHS that oversees like
electronic medical records and things
like that like a 15 million dollar grant
from the onc is what created smart on
fire which is now a key piece of how
third-party apps run on top of
electronic medical records um

(23:39):
so it's interesting seeing cms you know
provide funding for um teams to build
you know to be a part of fire working
groups you know in the fire standard
just like many standards, there's these
various resources and so one you know
there's the financial working group that
oversees like
the health insurance claims resource and
there's resources for like every part of

(24:00):
health care and um to watch cms invest
in that was a very really cool thing you
know code samples documentation um
when you look at the fire documentation
you know there's all sorts of use cases
and things like that and the
there's a couple of people who are
heroes in my book um
Mark Scrimshire and others that have

(24:20):
spent like their career
making progress on this narrow part of
the standard
that opens up you know
it enables this opportunity for all
sorts of things to work on top of the
standard so
um it was cool seeing government be a
participant in that ecosystem and
there's many others too like all the
health insurance companies you know they
were all kind of working on it and

(24:42):
it's it ends up being like this
this great group of people are
moving this part of it forward so
yeah again i think that that that
provides a model
for how to move other standards forward
within other industries i'm
going to be doing a few of these
episodes on the access act which is one
of a suite of legends legislation

(25:02):
that uh Biden's pushing through right
now
and it's gonna
[Music]
reign in the tech sector a little bit
and and apply apis but i would love to
see the model that was applied to fire
applied there
uh and and and make it a nice balance
between public and private sector and
and get all the folks at the

(25:23):
table and do it well because i was
i was involved at HHS in the early
fire conversations because it was being
used at uh Department of Veterans
Affairs and i didn't hold out a lot of
hope early on because it really felt
like a strong heavy-handed government
play but then over over the years and
then watching you i really saw

(25:44):
uh
really smart people take it in the right
direction and find the route right
balanced to kind of end up where we're
at today which i think it's it's it's
respected it's getting traction i think
this regulation is the the latest wave
of it i'm seeing it
get adopted in the travel industry as as
far as a uh covid 19

(26:06):
vaccination passport i'm seeing talk of
Europeans starting to adopt it
even though it's a U.S. uh North
American standard so i think it's
pretty healthy and i think the the CMS
rules are really kind of you know just
putting a lot of fuel on that fire so
that's good to hear that it's it's
evolved out of the blue button work so

(26:28):
so what does this mean
taking it down to your world now what
does this mean on the ground in Colorado
how does how does this play out
yeah well a lot of the things you're
mentioning are
part of our day-to-day so what
you know we we touched for a second on
the role of government
you know so government is the data
holder
you know government for example has

(26:49):
um you know all the immunization data
and each state rolls up to a central
immunization registry that each state
government manages
so we have our immunization information
system here in Colorado so do we have an
immunization api
because this is information that is
belongs to the patient you know
um so patients should be able to easily

(27:09):
access their immunization information
you see this um
in a variety of different ways from you
know digital vaccine credential to
logging into a some sort of immunization
patient portal to your records
my kids just you know we're halfway
through the summer here and they've gone
to a million different summer camps
every single one of them i've had to
fill out the same forms

(27:31):
paper forms faxed in forms you know i
should just be able to share you know
their immunization records with that
camp using some sort of
api experience um
vital records you know these are things
government is the data holder on lots of
different things and i think that we see
you know government
unlocking

(27:52):
a lot of this data for interesting uses
in the moving forward especially you
know things like the cms regulation
this patient access interoperability
rule you mentioned the word precedent
before that's what it does so our
medicaid team now is is working on
compliance with this rule like every
other state is so we're building these
apis
and

(28:13):
that is just gonna you know how the 17
other agencies in Colorado that are not
Medicaid
the pattern the playbook you know
it's like okay here's the developer
portal like here's you know how we
handle api security like here's how
we're thinking about identity and all
these things you know and so you'll
start seeing more agencies around the

(28:34):
government outside of healthcare
start doing this as well so
here in Colorado you know our team
specifically we're working on a couple
of really interesting things Colorado
voters passed a paid family leave
program in November so it's like this
green field program
will likely be an api first type of
approach because it's a type of program

(28:54):
that integrates with lots of businesses
you know and and so watching the state
government look at the problem that way
has been super interesting
we continue to work on child welfare
which is a whole other kind of api
discussion where you watch multiple
agencies
interoperate so when child welfare it's
the Medicaid agencies involved share

(29:17):
data with help the human services agency
shares data with community providers
with corrections you know it's a big
ecosystem of kind of internal apis
and watching that get more and more
sophisticated here has been very
interesting too so
those are a couple of things that um you
know we're involved with that it hasn't
been the covid

(29:37):
you know craziness of the last year and
a half
yeah well i mean it's
i mean it shows the power of apis you
know from my vantage point that you know
i think this is very much a healthcare
api discussion but it really shows the
importance of interoperability when it
comes to all of these areas and in
a mobile world where we're dependent on

(29:58):
our mobile phones why are we still
faxing you know to the summer camps you
know why are we still emailing and doing
this it's because government you know is
traditionally i would say five to 15
years behind you know where the rest of
the sector is when it comes to a lot of
these things so that
it's not just modernization of
government it's reduction and

(30:18):
reducing the bureaucracy and
kind of improving on processes and all
of that so it's super important
so in in Colorado how much is this is
government how much is of it is is
private sector like stepping up to make
things happen
you know when i first
moved to DC to join the us digital

(30:39):
service i barely knew anything about
government
and
um
i walked in expecting
you know
Tannish Gray Cubicles Software Engineers
you know working on with you know maybe
older programming languages
and uh you know really what i found was
no software engineers no product

(30:59):
managers no UX designers it was um you
know a program manager
or a deputy director that's a
project manager
in charge of a multi-million dollar
effort that was
really high stakes you know and um
and the private sector's role um

(31:22):
in building government software is you
know vendors build a lot of the
government software and one of the
trends that you're seeing you referenced
ten-fifteen years ago i think
that's exactly right you just look to
2011 look at the sophistication of
apis across all you know um industries
and um you looked at kind of the
evolution of product management that was

(31:44):
like a new thing like people were
talking about like agile software
development like it was a new thing
still and
that's very much how the day-to-day
feels but what you see in government is
you know job titles like product manager
ux designer now coming into government
so that's been a
a really really good thing
and you're seeing that kind of

(32:05):
it like it creates government being like
a better customer
to the private sector companies that are
building software on behalf of
government so a lot of people talk about
big government you know and a government
can't deliver and you know all the
criticisms of government but really what
you see is
is
understaffed
the civic people i see they work

(32:28):
harder than anybody i've ever worked
with including startup world folks
they're working usually two jobs so
they'll have like their full-time role
like visiting clinics or or distributing
vaccines but then they're also a product
owner on some team right so
they are overworked because there's not
enough budget to fund those folks but
then a lot of the budget goes to the

(32:49):
software that the vendors build
and so
what we think is one of the secrets and
the keys to
to making the government work better is
strong product ownership
you know
starting to see developer evangelists in
government and roles like that
strong UX and government that that helps
the government understands about
how you know become better at building

(33:09):
software
so that's like the you know unemployment
insurance systems child welfare systems
like these huge systems that are never
going away you know that's that's what
you see
and then the second part of the private
sector is like this massive ecosystem
that wraps around government so whether
it's
you know a network of community health
organizations that actually provides

(33:31):
cert you know these services to folks
or it's the development community that
is building like you know apps and
various things that help people
um or it's like the you know the citizen
scientists you know thing like in covet
you saw a ton of that where people were
using open data they were built like
vaccine finders and you know all sorts

(33:53):
of amazing stuff, covid trackers came out
of
you know the tragedy of the covid
pandemic
and so that's this like wonderful
ecosystem that wraps around
government
yeah and i mean
you really
touched on the number of things that are
near and dear to my heart as far as my

(34:13):
shift and how i see government and i
know you probably
deal with this i mean
Oregon where i grew up is very similar
to Colorado and trying to explain to
people how government works and once you
have that realization
and that intimate understanding that
these are human beings working in these
government offices like you said they are
often short-handed
they don't always have the

(34:34):
skills that are necessary to understand
where things are are at today in the
modern ecosystem they have the skills to
do their job but as far as you know apis
you know the cutting edge with apis and
developer portals and once you realize
like oh
to see the change that i want to see in
government
i need to step up and like like

(34:55):
government's run by us
and
and
and trying to explain people that the
reason why it appears dysfunctional is
because there's not enough of us
stepping up and doing this and back to
the you know calling people from the
tech sector to join these digital
services it's because they don't have
your you know i'm talking to our
audience your dx skills in

(35:16):
government go bring them there you know
there's a reason the developer portals
don't have the developer experience uh
that we're all looking for and so that's
like such a super a very important
aspect of doing this is like these these
uh you hear revolving door when it comes
to the government a lot but i think the
digital services for me are the next
generation you know version two or three

(35:38):
of that revolving door and people coming
into government and then going back and
coming and maybe staying and doing
this so it really is a a relationship
and then so the other part i try to
advise folks on is is get
if you run a startup spend the time to
uh to find out what it takes to

(35:59):
sell your services to the government and i'm
doing this with Postman right now um and
right now we're work you know our free
product gets used there but uh we do a
lot of advising and consulting and work
where we're trying we're on our
track for fedramp which is like you know
to get certified to sell to government
but i think there's just so many

(36:19):
doorways that you can uh get involved so
when it comes to the state level because
i think for a lot of us the federal
government is still very far away dc's
far away but how can people get involved
in
in just apis in general or tech in
general in Colorado what are some good
ways for people to step up

(36:39):
yeah so in Colorado we have a pretty
strong uh open data
program so we have this competition
called go code Colorado that's run by
The Secretary of State's office
um
our chief data officer is you know
an awesome advocate of all things apis
and we have
developer.colorado.gov which you know
continues to progress

(37:01):
and um like i mentioned the
Medicaid API is coming soon um so that's
that's like you know how you get
involved i would say today it's mostly
open data
Colorado does a great job publishing
open data this next chapter of
transactional apis you know phi pii type
of apis like that's not fully baked yet

(37:22):
that's coming
that's like the next over the next five
years as that you watch that mature
um
you know one observation of going from
federal government to state government
and but is just how disconnected
things are first of all um
that was a shock actually is really you

(37:42):
know the state feels like the state and
dc feels far away and when i was in DC
Colorado felt far away and we've never
talked about like what was going on in
Silicon Valley or anything it was all
about what's happening right there in DC
yeah and that's a mistake
um and you actually see people some
legislators and congress and so on
talking about like how to fund kind of
teams that help glue together different

(38:03):
parts of government which is very
interesting so again the state of
Colorado you know one of the things that
we worked on right out of the gate as
covet hit was the contact tracing
system
so in Colorado we have 64 counties and
of those 64 counties we have
53 local public health agencies so some
counties team up and create a local
public health agency and that's really

(38:24):
as close to kind of the end user if you
will you can be the local public health
agency is the one that is doing the real
work of helping people and um and all
the other layers kind of contribute to
that that final thing with the local
public health agencies running that
vaccination clinic or whatever
and um so all the counties
you know in order for contact tracing to

(38:44):
work right when i'm here in Denver and i
go skiing in Summit County and then i
come back to Denver like i've now
traveled across three or four counties
that day
you know and so counties need to be able
to interoperate
and it's such a great example of
you know the different layers of
government because in if the state of
Colorado can only do so much in state
government it's really about the

(39:04):
counties
and what the counties want to do and how
the counties work together and it so
it's it just continues to layer down so
as people get involved with
government you know think about it that
way it's not just going to the us
digital service or 18f and moving to DC
or or working remotely for one of those
groups

(39:25):
it's um
you know that you're like your cities
um city of Denver has a great team that you
know and uh
counties um there's all sorts of of
efforts like you know Code for America
where they have brigades in every city
there's a code for Denver there's a code
for Boulder code four columns coast of
Colorado Springs there's groups like the
U.S. digital response

(39:47):
which is a group of like six thousand
engineers and product managers and UX
designers that are
you know helping
government at all levels like there's a
bunch of stuff
um
and a bunch of different ways you can
get plugged in
yeah i
second that i mean
a lot of folks i think

(40:07):
over the last few years have kind of
gone back home trying to figure out how
they can do things at a local level i
second what you said about open data
kind of being the doorway and kind of
the gateway to a lot of this world uh
start small visit your local you
know and whether it's your city or your
county i would recommend at that level
um even over the state or the federal

(40:28):
and
pick one data set
build something
uh build a visualization on it clean it
up a little bit publish it you know if
it's a csv or if it's a spreadsheet uh
publish it as JSON on GitHub
tell the story of it maybe uh do a
presentation around it and then
get to know the ecosystem and understand

(40:50):
well who published that data what's
being done with it how can i help kind
of maybe reduce reduce load there and
then you'd be surprised what you learned
and you would meet people you'll learn
processes you'll realize that there's
human beings in your local county office
not just the nameless faceless things i
think the media and a lot of public

(41:10):
want you to think so you know definitely
start small and figure you know uh
do that
what sort of skills are you guys
looking for digital services as you
know you guys are looking to evolve your
team and help
uh other stakeholders be more successful
what kind of skills are needed most
yes so for our team it's it's product UX

(41:32):
and engineering you know and it's it's
really broad because especially for
engineering you know as you come in it's
it's you know a bad fit is hey i'm
really good at this one language
you know and i'm going to come in and
help because it's more like
there's i think in the city of Colorado
we have 300 that we classify as
enterprise applications so these are
things that are multiple millions
of dollars you know tens of thousands or

(41:54):
more of users of over 300 of those so
you base you see like every single
language you know in every single
platform across the state
um
so that's our team specifically um but
across the government um
like i was saying before you see a
really strong need for
product management

(42:15):
i think that uh
data science and
DevRel are like the next two
job titles you see in government one of
the big
problems in government one of my big
soapboxes is the job titles are
miserable
so you have like you know business
analyst number four

(42:35):
and what they really want is a product
manager
you know and business analyst number
four is a position for forty-one
thousand dollars a year
and what they really need is a product
manager for 150 000 a year yeah you know
and and by the way this person is going
to be in charge of a 50 million program
you know so it's it is so out of whack
and that's one of the things our

(42:56):
team has really been advocating for is
is to you know modernize and this is
every team you know all these digital
services teams and so on like this is
changing now in government so i think
that you start seeing more data
scientists come on
um and DevRel i think is going to be a
new frontier um you know we talked a lot
about the fire standard some of the

(43:16):
other things but that is just one piece
of it i mean that's like the the
foundation
but then you know wave a wand in the
state of Colorado has a couple of apis
then what like now this business side of
it all is um
i think going to be a big challenge for
states because vendors can build vendors
can map data to fire vendors can provide

(43:37):
apim vendors can provide security and
you know operations and all of that
but it needs to be the state that
provides the evangelism the product
leadership the product vision to align
with the programs and the legislation
that's you know and the people they're
building for
um so that i feel like you know that's

(43:58):
every level of government from federal
all the way down to you know the
smallest town we'll be experiencing this
i think over the next couple of years
yeah i mean i can't second the DevRel
thing enough and i owe you some work
in this area i'm going to do some some
some segments on this trying to
plow other folks that i know who do
evangelism developer relations in

(44:18):
government and then some folks in the
private sector who who are our leaders
like we we were talking before we
started the show about Adam Duvander who
uh was on one of our episodes before and
has a book called uh developer marketing
does not exist but he's a a DevRel
expert and how you know the importance
of storytelling the importance of

(44:40):
connecting with people um and i didn't
realize until i went to government i
knew this in the private sector but i
didn't know the benefit of this in
federal government and all levels of
government is
just having someone who will show up to
meetings and then cross-pollinate ideas
against other groups connect people hey
did you know so-and-so is working on
this over there and you should talk to

(45:01):
so-and-so and i started going to you
know go to uh department of commerce uh
gatherings uh tech gatherings in dc
and
someone would get up from uh uh
api group within department of commerce
and say hey we've done this api project
it's been great we've gotten a lot of
attention but we've only gotten two real

(45:21):
actual users of it and we're probably
going to deprecate the api after a while
because we just didn't get the demand we
were looking for
and then someone in the audience goes um
i'm with the national oceanic
administration and we're one of those
users please don't deprecate that api
because it's like super critical to
this program and this program and this

(45:41):
program and they didn't know they didn't
talk yeah you know and that's an example
of i think how developer relations
really uh is pretty powerful and so if
someone's listening here you know you
don't have to have hardcore tech
experience and be a coder to do
developer relations it really is a
people job and so i would love to uh

(46:04):
kind of explore that and i'll probably
be reaching out to you in the future
Kelly to talk more you know um
kind of get some of that because i
want to create some content that people
can watch i know healthcare providers
government agencies many are trying to
figure all this out right now and they
just don't understand why are
documentation important you know what do
developers need all of that so

(46:24):
um it's a pretty critical area and
yeah and i don't suggest people check
out
The Veterans Administration has a
project called lighthouse so if you
google va lighthouse you'll find some
really cool stuff and then uh
developer.cms.gov
and bluebutton.cms.i
that's good examples of kind of what's
happening today

(46:45):
um
and and i think that that's going to be
the model you know the blue button team
since the very beginning when i was
involved we have a full-time developer
evangelist on that team
and that was one of the the keys to
success
so i totally agree with you ken yeah
those are those are great models thanks
for sharing those i like those
so

(47:06):
zooming back out a little bit getting
back to i would say uh the Kelly of all
of this
why do you care about api so much
um
you know these
these technologies and these approaches
that
you know can create these combinatorial
effects as Elliott Turner from Alchemy

(47:28):
used to say and these things that that
unlock like more ideas i've always been
drawn to that
um
you know we i think some of my first
kind of real experiences with consuming
apis there was a company in boulder
called gnip one of my favorite companies
ever that became the twitter data team
and companies like that um
you know where we were building a social

(47:49):
media monitoring platform way back when
and just being able to go into gnip
and
it's like okay you know like i would
have an idea coming into work
and go and then
partially build that idea by the
afternoon and that that really
you know
has stayed with me for now a decade
later
um
and so that's really really what draws

(48:10):
me to this type of thing i and the more
i've been involved with this stuff the
more i've gotten involved with the
government stuff
you know this idea of of data that
belongs to somebody else being held
somewhere and not being available that
like doesn't feel right at all anymore
and then and as you look across the
world you can see like a bunch of
examples of that like whether it's the

(48:31):
data from your car
your own personal health information
like the data from your house like that
like all of that stuff is gradually
starting to you know it's unlocking
and um this data liquidity is happening
everywhere and i and i think that you
know the the fundamentals of apis and
how it stitches things together
is what's making that stuff possible so

(48:52):
i continue to be drawn to it
yeah you touch on one of the the heart
of
the part that i keeps me interested but
i also get disillusioned sometimes is
the the phrase the api economy is used
to describe this and over the last
decade i hear that word get used a lot
and most of the time it's applied
directly to an api meaning you build an

(49:13):
api people comment and you'll generate
revenue and and and and the world's more
more better off because of it that's not
the api economy in my mind it's the
things that
multiple apis enable uh you know that
that exponentially that innovation that
growth that new entirely new things you
know it's

(49:34):
it's how Twilio you know Twilio has done
fine selling sms services but it's it's
the the gig economy the sharing economy
the services that got us through covid
that were built on the Twilio API you
know it's the covid notification it's
it's my vaccination center being more
organized because of co because of the

(49:55):
Twilio api it's that type of enablement
that i see as being
the api economy and that's that's
what keeps me me you know paying
attention to this is what's that what's
that next thing what's going to happen
what's someone going to do that i
didn't even think of and i've been
thinking about apis for a long time so i
yeah i second that and i think that the

(50:17):
role of government here you know the
government will never build like i
always call those like functional apis
i'm sure that's the wrong phrase but you
know the stuff that we were doing at lp
alchemy api and then and then IBM Watson
like these they you know it
performs some sort of function when you
hit the api you know whether it's nlp or
computer vision you know image tagging
or whatever

(50:38):
i don't ever see the government having
anything like that it's more like that
the government is going to be like the
transacting with type of stuff you know
like making it easier for businesses to
do things maybe tax related things who
knows and then then the government has
the data holder unlocking
and um
you know i think that that's like going
to be the role of government you know

(50:59):
with a little with open data stuff kind
of as a sidecar um moving forward
yeah great
so
uh
more on the personal level you live in
Colorado
uh where's your favorite place to hike
in Colorado
well um yeah we're we're here in Denver
right down the street from Boulder where

(51:19):
Chautauqua Park in boulder is you know
i've been my love for 30 years now we've
been here it's pretty crazy
um
one of my favorite people in the world
Susanna Fox who was the cto of HHS
years years ago and kind of the person
that got me into the government stuff
i'm just
from a quick phone call um

(51:40):
we had a hike there the other day she
was in town on vacation so one of the
nice things about living in a place
where people vacation is people are
always coming through
so you get to meet up and kind of bump
into and go hiking with with folks um
as they travel through places like
Boulder
yeah that's i'm in a place where
people come through in the Bay Area but
it's not for the nature vacation the

(52:02):
other side of that so i have to work
harder at that balance but the Sierra
Nevadas is as a quick drive for me so
that's similar
um
so how do you how do you balance your
your world you know
in technology with nature and and
find that balance for you and your
family
yeah so for you know for us the

(52:24):
coved stuff just like everybody was it
was a very interesting year and with our
team
um
you know we were able to do some kind of
outside hanging out time which is really
nice and we do try to you know the
government stuff
the work-life balance has been the
biggest uh struggle i've ever had
working in government because i always

(52:45):
tell people who are like coming into
government or thinking about it like one
of the crazy things about it is the
relevancy
so i wake up every morning listening to
our local NPR station here and um
it is stories about things that i'm
going to be working on that day
and uh
you're surrounded by it 24/7. you know
if you meet up with friends they ask you

(53:07):
about you know state of Colorado
government things family asks you so
it's just like it's kind of like the
startup world where it basically becomes
your identity
and um so
you know
here in Colorado getting outside skiing
hiking running you know all of those
things have just continued to be key
always and that's true for our whole
team

(53:27):
and we all have our own kind of
activities like that
but it is it is a thing you know
especially in covet especially in public
health you know one of the stories this
year across the United States has been
the burnout of public health
civil servants
you know whether it's it's um
harassment which we had here in
Colorado

(53:48):
to um
total burnout you know this this feeling
of ultimate responsibility
of everyone around you to be vaccinated
to be you know free of cove and all
these things it's taxing
um
so we do
constantly talk about it on the team
you know this afternoon as our staff
meeting here for the Colorado Digital

(54:08):
Service and we'll check in with each
other
and we have all sorts of techniques
using emojis and
animated gifs and things like that we
use to kind of you know communicate with
each other about how we're feeling and
but it is super important
yeah
it's tough and i would say i have a lot
of friends in the tech sector i've had a
few
check-ins with with folks that are

(54:28):
burning out and saying oh i'm done
with the tech sector
and i'm using that as an opportunity to
say you know one checking on them hey
how are you doing make sure you get some
time away but also hey have you
considered maybe going working on some
more meaningful problems and government
could use your help so i'm using as an
opportunity there but uh you know i want
to be honest with folks about that that

(54:51):
these challenges exist on both sides of
the tracks but um it's it's all about
finding that balance
and you know it in government one of the
most interesting things is
you're building for everyone
you know and so that's
it's been fascinating you know every
single person you pass on the street is
probably interacting with the government
system

(55:12):
you know
and so the the health equity questions
like the accessibility stuff
it is foundational to everything you
work on and then
you kind of square that with
scale
you know so we one of the the efforts
that we worked on was called exposure
notifications with apple and google you
know you turn this on it comes baked

(55:33):
into the apple
ios settings and and it's an app you can
download from the play store on google
and
and uh you know two and a half million
Coloradans activated this on their phone
and it was used you know tens of
thousands of times when someone would
test positive for kovid
they would use it to notify people that
they had
been you know potentially hit exposed

(55:54):
and um so you walk around and everyone i
talk to is turn this thing on their
phone they're using it so that this
scale is and that's just in the state
you know when you go to the federal
government you're talking about the
whole country you know you just keep
going up and up and scale so
it is definitely not like uh you know
take a quick break and go from the tech
sector to government it's more the other
way around you know

(56:16):
um where it's like hey would you like to
come make less money and have a tougher
job you know
but but the thing about it is you know
is the the impact in the mission
yeah yeah i think that's the angle i'm
trying to get is the purpose definitely
it's not more pay it's definitely not
less work um it's it's the the purpose

(56:38):
and the meaning and trying to find you
know why are we doing this tech because
that's the biggest challenge i or
a struggle i've had with technology is
why why am i doing this why am i making
an impact
and when i went to dc i that scope you
talk about i was just blown away i mean
i worked at big tech companies and that
this scope is is
much much greater so

(57:01):
you know another part of this too is uh
with government, we always describe it as
is this relay race because it is like
you you work on something like the child
welfare system
and it's like your turn to make a
difference yeah and you make a
difference and then you hand it to the
next person and it's now it's their turn
and that's how things will be forever so

(57:23):
it gives you this interesting
perspective you know like as we're
ramping up various api efforts here
i know that this is like the beginning
of something that in in 10 years i'll be
checking back on you know i had an
interesting experience at the hems
conference big healthcare conference
where
when we launched the the cms blue button
api um people would come up to me we

(57:44):
were doing booth duty you know and
they'd be like hey i just wanted to say
hello i you know
i worked at cms eight years ago and we
helped get the blue button going and you
know it it just really reminded me that
it is it does take a village and it is
all of us you know
and it's a journey
it's definitely a journey

(58:04):
well thank you i'm
stoked to have been on this journey with
you and our paths keep crossing um and
and i'm guessing they will continue but
uh i want to thank you for your time
today great conversation
thanks ken
appreciate it enjoy the rest of your day
and hope you get outside and enjoy some
of that beautiful weather
we'll do all right

(58:29):
[Music]
you