Rebecca Haywood testifies on civil service modernization

Yes.

I don't have a hard copy of my testimony, but I will share it after the fact.

My name is Rebecca Haywood.

Good afternoon.

I'm here today to speak both as a former New York City public servant and as the project lead for DCAS's 2019 citywide hiring assessment as a former DCAS employee.

It was the first comprehensive user-centered review of the city's civil service and hiring process for non-uniform titles, and the work has never been made public.

Today I run an organization where I advise governments nationally on civil service modernization and digital transformation and talk with candidates every day who are trying to get city jobs.

The issue that we're trying to look at is we're trying to make incremental change to a system that needs an overhaul.

It makes or breaks the city's ability to deliver key services, and we cannot keep using the same playbook and expecting different results.

There's a lot of great work going on at DCAS, but there's also, it's a lot of these small incremental changes.

There's a couple of things that I want to highlight that have stuck with me from what we learned talking to over 10,000 prospective employees and current city staff back in 2019.

about what the true challenges are and how we can address them.

The first is really around information.

We've talked a lot today about it's not a process that people understand.

It uses jargon and language that most New Yorkers cannot talk about.

And we found actually that most city employees who took an exam before they were hired already had a close friend or family member who already worked for the city.

It's exclusionary in a different way.

Because the exams are only offered typically once every five years or more, we're seeing lists established for five, six, seven years now.

If you miss your opportunity, you miss out, and the city misses out on a potential highly skilled employee.

Like Mike said,

staff report learning from their colleagues.

There's a lot of other things, and the last thing I'll hit on is really that we need to be clear about the data and information that we use, how we talk about it in plain language, how we use and provide the data

to agencies, to hiring managers, and make sure that things like the list of civil service titles and whether or not you can qualify for them are made available to the public.

It's currently only available on the city's intranet.

I have a list of recommendations and other information that I will share via email, but look forward to hearing more about what the council is able to move forward on this topic.

Thank you.