May All-Teams Meeting on Transparency: Open Governance Q&A with Ashley Fisher and Alba Sereno
On May 10, 2017, the Austin Open Government Partnership team invited Alba Sereno and Ashley Fisher to visit the City of Austin Innovation Lab to discuss the topic of transparency.
On May 10, 2017, the Austin Open Government Partnership team invited Alba Sereno and Ashley Fisher to visit the City of Austin Innovation Lab to discuss the topic of transparency. We wanted to learn from their unique perspectives from both inside and outside of local government. We wanted to know: how might transparency make local government more accountable?
The text of this conversation has been minimally edited for understandability.
Interviewer: Angela Hanson, Innovation Office, Open Government Partnership Subnational Pilot Team. Kerry O’Connor and Sabine Romero, OGP Subnational Pilot Team leaders, also contributed questions.
Before asking a series of questions about transparency, community relations, and local media engagement, we first asked Alba and Ashley to tell us about their history with the City of Austin.
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Ashley Fisher: My history is kind of circular. I started by serving on a City Commission, then came to the city to become a council aide under the “old” at-large district system, then a council aide in the new 10-1 single-member district system [Austin City Council’s shift to district-based representation]. So I was one of the few aides that straddled both of those systems. Then I came to city staff. I’m about to start a new job as interim publisher of the Austin Monitor.
Alba Sereno: I started out as a staff leader of a community coalition that we built from scratch with community, then became a city commissioner and took on a lot of similar roles working on different projects the city was trying to move forward, then I became a council aide. The thread for me has been to find different ways to hold the city accountable. I think this latest step is to see what this side of it has to offer.
Angela Hanson: Both of you have spent time on the outside and time on the inside of government. What do you think of this word, “accountability” and how does it change whether you are city staff, council staff, outside city government?
Ashley Fisher: It has changed a little bit for me because I’ve worked on multiple sides for a while now, so I have seen the various perspectives. I’ve also seen the ways that various groups are trying to further their own mission, which is perfectly fine for them to do. But it is helpful to recognize the big picture and how all these parts fit together. If you hear just the elevator speech of accountability, in a sound bite, whether it’s 3 minutes at City Council meeting [the typical time allotted for each speaker wishing to speak to Council] or a media clip, it’s different from reality. Sometimes holding someone accountable is a little more complicated.
Alba Sereno: There are many words associated with accountability- efficiency, and fiscal responsibility, and things about information, and transparency, or being responsive; so for me, there is a guiding star that is above all those things. All those things come into play. Ultimately, I am a die-hard social worker by training and philosophy and we have a code of ethics. The code of ethics references certain things in regard to equity, in regard to social justice, in regard to conflicts of interest. All these may come into play as I am trying to accomplish this greater set of things. I think you come across all these challenges. You may be trying to impact any one of these things. Sometimes the system might change.
Ashley Fisher: As a person who is interested in public service, you want policy that makes things better for as many people as possible. That’s not always what you get: when a policy is made to help the whole, if it upsets a small group of people, that small group wins almost every time. The masses that [a policy] is going to help is not going to notice or come to a City Council meeting, but the small organized team that will be harmed or offended does.
Angela Hanson: What is the antidote?
Ashley Fisher: I don’t know. I have been reading a lot about that lately. We see it over and over. A small organized group wins almost every time.
Angela Hanson: We were talking earlier in the day with the Open Government Partnership (OGP) teams about using plain language: [City] staff talking about their work in a way that is understandable. Do you have advice for the OGP teams as they do their work on this very conceptual topic of open government? How do they connect to the community and readers of local media and frame their work in a way that’s not so dense?
Ashley Fisher: I often think when the city is speaking outwardly, we think in terms of projects and departments. But if I’m a resident and I call about a pothole in the street and they ask, “what department?”, I don’t know. That’s just not how citizens look at us. We’re one big “capital c” city.
Alba Sereno: I used to do an activity to help people understand where the city intersects with them. Here’s how it would go: “Tell me your daily routine from the top, you get up, what do you do?” “I turn on the water.” “That’s the city.” “I went to the park or the rec center.” “That’s the city.” “I got to walk --- or I didn't get to walk on a sidewalk” --- “that’s the city.”
It’s a lot to process for people; to get involved with people on any given thing. The deeper down the rabbit hole you go on the staff side, the more technical things get, and it’s really hard to come out of that. So I think, in regard to outside communication, it’s about bringing it back to the question: “how does this intersect with your daily life?” that’s really difficult for some things that are not a pothole, and are more like the topic of equity. How does that come back to intersect with anyone’s daily life?
“I think when we look out at the community, we think of the monolithic ‘public.’ We have to get more and more nuanced.” - Alba Sereno
Writing for the lay audience, or doing for the lay audience, is something some fields have made really big strides in. For instance, in the public health field, how do you document an intervention that results in behavior change? I was part of an intervention about being screened for cancer. It was in a soap opera format. I would never come to you and say, “this is the reason you should get screened early.” Instead we showed videos with characters saying, “I’m so glad I got screened early” in order to make it in the context that people care about. Some communities use different jargon than other parts of the community for different reasons. So that’s a challenge. I think when we look out at the community, we think of the monolithic “public.” We have to get more and more nuanced.
Sabine Romero: It takes a lot to talk to people in their context, to understand what their context is, to reframe your message.
Alba Sereno: And if you’ve never had a lived experience that’s even close, that’s even more difficult. When you get to settings that require higher degrees, you are going to meet people who have never had that lived experience.
“The backyard BBQ crowd may not be interested in who gets this one contract on the City Council agenda, but they’re interested in ‘my city’ and how it affects their day to day life.” - Ashley Fisher
Ashley Fisher: People are so interested in talking about the city. When I was on council side, I felt like I was never ever off work. People asked me questions all the time. They are really interested in stuff that the city does and would ask questions or want to chat a lot about it at a backyard BBQ, but they don’t necessarily want to come to city hall and testify on a specific item. I don’t know how to translate that. The interest is there, but we have to learn how to target that. The backyard BBQ crowd may not be interested in who gets this one contract on the City Council agenda, but they’re interested in ‘my city’ and how it affects their day to day life.
Angela Hanson: Regarding distance from the learned experience, the city wants to hire the best and brightest technical expertise for the most complicated engineering jobs to make sure pipes go where they’re supposed to go. But maybe there could be more emphasis on empathy for that lived experience as a capability of city staff. How do you instill humility? What advice do you have in order to bring those perspectives into the work of staff?
Alba Sereno: Part of it is how organizational cultures are crafted. I don’t think this isn’t something that can’t be accomplished, or can’t be different, given a directed crafting of that kind of organizational culture. And I think there are disciplines that directly try to do that. And there’s all sorts of different things in order to do that. For instance, in my profession, every student has to take a social justice class. At this point in my career, I’m taking over the teaching of that. It’s a roller coaster to take people through something like that, and break down people’s conceptions and transfer an experience to people in a way that they can practice it. A lot of it is a willingness to communicate, even if you can’t come to an agreement--it’s a willingness. I see individuals across all city departments; some people land in hot water and some don’t. I think it’s about communication and willingness to see if there’s something missing from their understanding.
Angela Hanson: What role can be played by local media from an understanding perspective, and holding the right people accountable. There’s a difference between holding an individual accountable and holding an organization or a system accountable.
Alba Sereno: Organizations are composed of individuals. When you’re trying to change, you’re not going to do that by entity, you’re going to do that person by person. By incrementally moving each person. I want to put that out there in terms of how we get to change. At any time, you are trying to move individuals, not entire entities.
“If you wait too long, you may get criticized for hiding something. If you present ideas too soon, you can’t answer all the questions, which can frustrate people. You have to answer on the earlier side.” - Ashley Fisher
Angela Hanson: Staff may hold on to projects, thinking it’s not ready for prime time. Do you have any advice for these Open Government Partnership teams trying to do something new, trying to strike that balance? What’s enough transparency? Given that government is expected to be stable, there’s a fear of showing things that are only half baked. How does one strike that balance?
Ashley Fisher: If you wait too long, you may get criticized for hiding something. If you present ideas too soon, you can’t answer all the questions, which can frustrate people. You have to answer on the earlier side. One thing I have learned, is that to navigate public meetings, you have to have a degree of thick skin and resilience. I’ve seen situations where one vocal person says something about a project, and the whole project changes gear. It may not be reasonable to change direction because one person said something. I think you have to have thick skin and be willing to take some of that criticism and take all the input together and see how it informs the whole project. Don’t just change course with every little criticism. There’s fear about that, it can make people nervous.
Sabine Romero: How do you manage expectations?
Ashley Fisher: Folks often think when they get a seat at the table, that means what they say will get implemented. I’ve been in many meetings where I’m careful about making promises about moving forward. It is important to listen to the input and take it into account, and just getting heard is valuable in some ways.
“When you don’t give enough information [...] people go into their own sense-making, and the manifestation of that is the anxiety.” - Alba Sereno
Alba Sereno: How you listen and how you frame your response is part of managing expectations. Explaining the process is important, too. When you don’t give enough information about that, people go into their own sense-making, and the manifestation of that is the anxiety. The input is going to be included, or not included, and the criteria for that is really important for that. In the case of the majority/minority situation we’re in with the equity tool definition, there were some late comers to the conversation, and that’s a really difficult thing to reconcile. But, the feedback loop is really important.
Kerry O’Connor: If putting the backyard BBQ person in context is relevant, what about putting it in context for media?
Ashley Fisher: I had more freedom with the media when I worked on the City Council side. I found it super helpful. There were many media outlets with reporters that I built relationships with, and I would give them background information. You would give them history and the context. And it’s super helpful for them to understand and write an accurate story. I found it super helpful to have those safe, off-the-record discussions with media. My general rule is that was more challenging to do with TV news. But often easier with print outlets, depending on the person. With TV, you could presume they were recording everything, and it was often more about sound bites.
Alba Sereno: I think that’s a reflection of where those industries are going. You’d think they’re the same but they’re not.
Angela Hanson: When you say print, you mean...
Ashley Fisher: Statesman, Chronicle, Monitor
Kerry O’Connor: Is it possible to have any of these types of audiences excited or engaged about open government? They seem to be interested in issues as opposed to accountability, transparency, what technology can do. Sometimes I worry that holding these principles can fade away with a reporter’s interest.
Ashley Fisher: It’s hard to remember what people don’t know. We think, surely, everyone knows about it, we’ve been talking about it for weeks, but you get in a bubble.
Alba Sereno: The issue is who holds what power. And much of that power is derived from who holds what information, and who decides when different entities have that information. Most of the things I deal with on a day to day basis are about policy and implementation but along the way all the different hiccups that come up are about the other, the openness of the information.
Ashley Fisher: I almost think the openness has to come from the City Council side or some third party because in my limited experience on the staff side, you have to have multiple levels of people approve everything, and it becomes less chatty, more formal. City Council’s newsletters don’t have to have manager approval, and some sort of third party groups can talk about what happened at a meeting without it being watered down.
Angela Hanson: Thanks to both of you for sharing your thoughts and insights about transparency and accountability in local government.
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Alba Sereno is a macro social worker, economist, and language instructor. In the past she has practiced at the UN High Commission for Refugees, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Travis County. Her most recent work prior to her role with the Austin City Council has included leadership in the nonprofit sector. Ms. Sereno has served in various roles on city commissions, city task forces and nonprofit boards such as the Commission on Immigrant Affairs, the Mayor's Task Force on Institutional Racism and Systemic Inequities, and the Office of Innovation's Open Governance Program. Ms. Sereno is an adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Austin and St. Edward's University. Ms. Sereno’s motivation to work in public service and toward social justice stem from her early experiences navigating border life and a binational identity.
Ashley Fisher, as of June 2017, is the Interim Publisher at the Austin Monitor. Prior to that, she spent five years at the City of Austin. She worked as an aide to Council Member Spelman under the At-Large council system and then to Council Member Renteria under 10-1. She also spent time on the city staff side as a Senior Planner for Austin Resource Recovery. In addition, she has experience serving on a variety of community boards including a city commission, a neighborhood board, and an AISD Bond Advisory Task Force. She lives in the Mueller neighborhood with her spouse and two young daughters.