The Buzz with ACT-IAC ACT-IAC

Have you ever tried to cancel an online subscription and ended up clicking around in circles trying to find the right button to press? If so, you experienced a "dark pattern" - a deceptive tactic of UX design that tries to trick users into doing something they don't want to do.

In the online age, UX designers have enormous power in facilitating our access to information and services. What happens when this power is used for evil?

To discuss this question (and more), we're joined by Colin Gray, Associate Professor of Informatics at Indiana University Bloomington and Director of the Human-Computer Interaction design program. They've spent the past several years documenting and classifying dark patterns and exploring the legal and ethical questions surrounding their use. 
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This week, The Buzz presents a session from ACT-IAC's 2024 Digital Transformation Summit.
 This panel of fedtech experts discusses the progress they have made in their respective agencies to leverage digital transformation to enhance the citizen experience,  focusing on policy and process impediments that can derail progress and how to overcome them. 

Panelists:
Andrea Fletcher -  Chief Digital Strategy Officer, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid ServicesRaymond Holder - .VP of Digital Growth, MaximusBeth Martin - Digital Services Expert, OPMRaj Iyer (Moderator) - Global Head of Public Sector, ServiceNowSubscribe on your favorite podcast platform to never miss an episode! For more from ACT-IAC, follow us on LinkedIn or visit http://www.actiac.org.

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About a year ago, we were joined on the show by Gabriel Zucker of Code for America to talk taxes. Specifically, a provision of the Inflation Reduction Act that directed the IRS to develop their own proprietary, free tax prep software for the first time in history.

Since then, the IRS has been hard at work. 2024 tax season marks the launch of the IRS Direct File pilot, a simplified tax prep tool available to residents of twelve states. It's free, easy, fast, and represents a huge win for civic tech.

So we invited Code for America back on to celebrate this win and discuss the implications and future of this momentous project. This week The Buzz is joined by Courtney O' Reilly, Senior Program Manager for Tax Benefits at CforA.

Resources:
Code for America's FileYourStateTaxes
IRS Direct File Report to Congress
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This week, The Buzz is joined once again by Robert Puentes, President and CEO of the Eno Center for Transportation. Last time, we talked about some of the challenges facing American aviation and the FAA.  The intervening weeks have magnified some of this as Boeing, under scrutiny for a series of engineering failures, has started seeing some serious turnover in upper management and a slew of promises to shape up.

So maybe now is a good time to examine a different transportation mode for your next vacation or long-distance trip. American regional rail, once among the best in the world, has spent the last 100 years shriveling up into a fractured network that captures only 33 million passengers annually (barely 1/30th of US airlines).  But that may be changing. Amtrak gained nearly 25% more passengers from 2022 to 2023, and billions of dollars of federal money are flowing into rail projects all over the country, courtesy of the Inflation Reduction Act and 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill.

With all this momentum, perhaps a new age in American rail is upon us? We discuss the past, present and future of rail travel this week on The Buzz.

More from the Eno Center: https://enotrans.org/issues-and-modes/railroads/
More on Permitting and Planning Challenges: The Green Transition Dilemma with James Salzman and J.B. Ruhl
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This week, The Buzz presents a session from our 2024 Shared Services Summit, in partnership with the Shared Services Leadership Coalition. Learn more at sharedservicesnow.org.

In this fireside chat, Maria Banks, Director of Federal Sales at Atlassian, sat down with Susan Dorr, Chief Information Officer at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. 
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 This episode originally aired on April 5th, 2023.

As tax season ramps up in earnest, and given the good news about the IRS's Direct File Pilot Program, we thought now would be a good time to revisit an interview we conducted last year with Code For America's Gabriel Zucker, the Interim Program Director of Tax Policy and Partnerships.

This interview focused on how the IRS could design a direct file system, what such a tool might look like, and Code for America's work in civic tech for taxes.
Resources:
GAO Free File Report
ProPublica's Investigation into Private Tax Prep Software
Code for America's Direct File Prototype
Code for America's Research on Simple Tax Filing
Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform to never miss an episode! For more from ACT-IAC, follow us on LinkedIn or visit http://www.actiac.org.
Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform to never miss an episode! For more from ACT-IAC, follow us on LinkedIn or visit http://www.actiac.org.

Learn more about membership at https://www.actiac.org/join.
Donate to ACT-IAC at https://actiac.org/donate.

Intro/Outro Music: Focal Point/Young Community
Courtesy of Epidemic Sound