Local Government Lessons For Policymakers in Washington

All right, it's Friday and welcome back to GovTech's In Case You Missed It. This week at GovTech, Joe has got another engagement today, so I'll be doing today's show solo, but I'm really excited because I get to bring on a friend from a blast from the past that's kind of been making waves and headlines, but also something that GovTech Biz covered not too long ago, and that was the kind of merger of Polkole and Balancing Act. And so I'm really excited to really focus on the show today as we look at local government lessons for policymakers in Washington. And so today joining me, we've got Nick Mastradoni and Chris Adams from the newly merged GovTech 100 companies Polco and Balancing Act to describe how local government best practices and civic engagement and budgeting can provide lessons for our federal leaders. So thank you so much, Nick and Chris, for joining today and kind of breaking down a little bit of what you've both been up to. It's made waves in the market, and I'm glad we'll be able to bring it to our audience today.

Pleasure to be here.

Yeah, thank you very much, Dustin.

So, you know, maybe just as a starting point, I'd love to, you know, learn a little bit more. Chris, I, you know, I've known you for a long time now, but, you know, maybe we'll dig into both of your backgrounds just a little bit, and then we'll kind of dive into our questions for today. So, Nick, let's start with you. I'd love to, you know, learn a little bit more about you and kind of, you know, your story and your journey through Polklo.

Dustin, great to be here with you today. Love the show, love getting to work in kind of the GovTech space. I feel like it's kind of confluenced a lot of my interests Background for me is born and raised in the Atlanta area, Notre Dame undergrad, met my wife there. I did Air Force ROTC and that set me up. I did 10 years active duty, so kind of a committed public servant for a long time. And somewhere along that road, they needed economics faculty, so I got a PhD in econ from UT Austin, taught out at the Air Force Academy. So I loved the public sector, I loved public service. I also love technology. My PhD in economics was in with a focus in econometrics and data science, and datasets were becoming bigger and more abundant and available, and the things we could do with them were really exciting. And so ultimately, after ten years active duty, I went over to Amazon for a little while and saw a great company in action. We were really rigorous as a senior economist there and data-driven decision making. Allowed us to be confident in making big, bold bets and doing really big, bold things. And I started thinking about putting those 2 together. Are there things that we could do with data, with confidence, to help governments make big, bold decisions for the benefit of their constituents similarly? And at the same time, was there a communication platform that could facilitate communities coming together? So that really was kind of like the motivation and An old buddy of mine from the Air Force who had gone to Google, we came back together. That's Alex Peterson, and that was the founding of Polco. And that mission from then continues to be our mission today. But that's just a little bit about my background. I'm broadcasting to you from— we have an office in Denver-Boulder area in Colorado, but I'm broadcasting to you from our headquarters here just outside of Madison, Wisconsin, in Middleton. So pleasure to meet you and be on the show. And We can go into more detail, but that's just a quick background.

Yeah, yeah, no, great to have you on, and Madison's a beautiful area. So, Chris, let's, you know, for those that don't know you, I'd love for you to maybe break down a little bit of your background and kind of story. You know, you've been in the market for a while and have been doing some amazing work. So tell the audience a little bit about yourself.

Yeah, great. Thank you so much. Well, first, I just wanna say it's exciting to be here, and it's really exciting to be a part of Polko now. So my background, my academic background, since Nick gave a little bit of his, is actually in ethics. So I went to Yale Divinity School, and I got a degree in ethics. And I've just been fascinated for my entire life by public policy, but also the role that fundamental values play and how productive or unproductive that can be when people actually have very strongly held values and try to bring those to the public square and try to use that to actually resolve the issues that are core to governance. And so then I went off to San Francisco, and I worked for a number of years there doing public engagement and community facilitation. And then I returned to Colorado where I'm from, and I started a company called Engage Public that was a face-to-face public engagement firm. And we really tried to help local governments with some of their hardest issues, trying to find ways for them to bring along the public and to educate the public and to help them become allies in making good decisions for government. Kind of the mid-2000s, we had been called on to do a number of projects that really called into question what the scope of government is, the services that government provides, and then to sync that with taxes. There are, you know, various times in our history there's been, you know, somewhat of a rebellion against taxes at various times, or at least even if not a rebellion, at least a suspicion about taxes. And so at that moment in the evolution of the internet, we thought, well, gosh, you know, could we create a way for people to better understand, learn about what government is doing, governments are doing, And then to provide some input on what they'd like them to do more of or do more fully or with a higher level of service, but then also really importantly help them sync that with what they're willing to pay for on the revenue side and the taxation side. And so we did that in about 2007. We did our first one for the state of Colorado. The timing was good or bad depending on how you look at it, because shortly thereafter the Great Recession hit and governments everywhere were making just dramatic cuts, and that really called into question, you know, how— what is most important, what is most core for government to do. And so our simulation got an awful lot of attention throughout the 2008, 2009, 2010, both during the Great Recession and the recovery from it. And as, you know, the country worked its way through that, we began to get incoming requests from local governments saying, we love what you did for the state of Colorado, could we actually do that for our local government? We really weren't set up for that, but in about 2014, we decided to go headfirst into creating a SaaS product that would be better, faster, cheaper, would do all the things that we had learned work from other contexts in terms of putting people in the shoes of policymakers and really make that just a much more accessible, available, and useful tool. And so that's where we— that's sort of how we came up as Balancing Act.

Love it. So 2 disruptive innovators joined forces, and I know back on February 15th, this merger was announced. Would love to hear a little bit of the backstory as to, you know, what, you know, maybe what some of the rationale was and how you saw the synergies between your 2 firms.

Yeah, happy to go into it. I mean, I think, you know, obviously technology and communication technology is an interesting area. You know, the printing press, the first time point-to-mass communication, TV and radio were just kind of, you know, still was point-to-mass. And I think what was fascinating about the internet now is the first time It's like mass two-way peer-to-peer communication. And when the internet first started, you know, delivering this enormous explosion of new communication tools, so many of them were not specifically designed for the unique environment that is government communications and civic communications. And we were shoehorning a lot of tools that were not designed for that unique application into there. And so I don't think that, you know, technology caused our current— divisiveness or polarization, but I think it did accelerate some trends that were already underway. And so what we wanted to really be was a dedicated platform for civic participation that helped bring people together in a civil and a constructive way. And I think you see some explosion. It was kind of slightly delayed relative to some of the general horizontal surveying technologies that you saw more tools that were designed specifically for the public sector. And I think Polco and Balancing Act were a couple of these tools. And now as that transformation, that wave is really coming in, we are really well positioned. We both have been experiencing like phenomenal growth and it's just awesome to see us helping communities help their residents in so many ways and start to realize like, not only are we growing really well individually, but man, the opportunity to grow really well together. And our tools were so complementary. We had known each other. And I think just as the complementary— complementarity of the tools is important, the complementarity of the teams, the mission, the alignment, the philosophy. And so the time just happened to be right where, you know, I think we were expanding, Chris was in an expansion position, and we just realized that the opportunity for them to be more powerful together. And we always had kind of the cultural and philosophical— I mean, Chris and I have been friends for years now, and it's really cool to get to be able to work together on a daily basis. So just a little bit about how we see, you know, these things that were happening and, you know, the trends we wanted to jump on.

Yeah, I love that. And, you know, you were both already recognized as GovTech 100 companies, so congratulations on that. And, you know, now this, you know, kind of joining forces, tell me a little bit about, you know, in your viewpoints, I'd love to maybe get both of your take on this. You know, what is this combination of capabilities, that platform approach, even Nick, that you were talking about, what will that bring to the sector? to this market? And, you know, why are you so excited about that now? And Chris, maybe we'll start with you for this one.

Yeah, so for me, this is just so exciting. Uh, Nick and I have been referring customers back and forth for, for years. Um, I'll just say the first time we met, it was a, a staff member of mine back in 2015. I think that might have been the same year I met you, Dustin. Uh, came across this company called Polco, and he was so excited about it. And so he did everything he could to arrange a call between me and Nick, and ever since then, I think we've had mutual admiration and respect for each other in terms of, you know, leading mission-driven companies that are really trying to help governments just, you know, operate as highly effectively and as well as possible. But one of the things that we've noticed, so Balancing Act creates simulations, started out just being budgets, but now we do housing and we've got a version for strategic planning and a version for climate, is that our tool has a lot of reach and it actually even has some appeal for residents to sort of, you know, learn. And in some ways it's a little bit fun. I don't want to overstate how fun it is to learn about a public budget, but it can be sort of fun because you actually realize that these decisions are consequential and that they're important. And so you're just sort of drawn to that, sort of my— what I initially said about values, it just sort of draws you in in a really valuable way. And one of the things that I realized that we were sort of missing with Balancing Act was while we had a tool that dramatically, dramatically increased participation in some areas of local governments like the budget. One of the big questions that we had, appropriately, from public administrators was, well, how do we know, you know, how can we be sure what this data actually means? And so we had, you know, some ways of thinking about that and making sense of that, but that's really where Polco comes in because Polco is just a data expert. I mean, this company has a data science team with 5 data scientists, and that doesn't even include Nick. And so what we're looking at doing is just taking that participation and that weighing of tough trade-offs and taking values into account, expressing them into a public policy issue such as where should we put new housing, or what things should we spend money on, or how should we set taxation rates, but then bringing this layer of benchmarking and data and social science that I think is just really valuable. And it just sort of rounds out the equation of what makes for good public engagement that's valid. for the public administrators and elected officials, but also useful and meaningful for residents.

And one that doesn't require a data scientist, which is another thing too, as we think about, you know, all of the workforce challenges, the ability to kind of democratize access to that knowledge is really key. So Nick, I'd love to get your thoughts on this too, you know, on that combination of capabilities now, you know, what does this mean for our sector?

Yeah, Dustin, you use this word, and I think it was really prescient, of platform, and I think that's exactly what this unlocks is You know, we've been doing engagement for a long time and then higher quality surveys and then translating all of this through some analytics, but there's a lot of communities out there that have a lot of innovation needs around them, and you expressed a couple there, right? Like, there are a ton of small and medium-sized communities that don't have survey science teams, they don't have data science teams, they don't have statistical software package data visualization capabilities, And it's like really hard for them to hire and build all these teams together in one place. And you, frankly, you need it. You know, since 2021 was kind of this watershed moment in response to COVID that federal grants went up 40%, but to win those grants, to perform in accordance with those grants, you needed to use data to demonstrate need, to demonstrate performance and track performance over time. And those are just, I mean, those are smart requests from the federal government. These are things— grantees need to do, but these were— they— the local governments were not set up in order to handle those applications. And I think our new platform of capabilities together helps us. Yes, engagement tools that we had were great and the analytics capabilities, but now together it's kind of like a one-stop shop. And so what we want to be viewed as from the point of view of residents of these communities, okay, yes, Polco is the place that I go to for civic participation. I will have awesome balancing act budget simulations, climate simulations, housing simulations. I will have those. And I'll also have surveys and other types of engagement. And this informs and feeds and drives outcomes in my community. Awesome. Okay, good. Now let's go over to the point of view of a government official, right? And the constellations that they were having to combine on their own, it was a complicated thing. It was like, okay, balancing act, but is that some competition? No, it's actually a complement to Polco. And so we're just making it easy for them in one place to go, is it strategic planning time of year? Is it budgeting time of year? What is it? Okay, great. I can do a budget sim. I can do my annual survey. I can get the results. I can track my data in Polco and GPAL's Track. There's all kinds of stuff. It just seamlessly works together to help the government officials. capitalize on the opportunities in today's crazy changed environment, not just the federal funds, but the public health change and that the economy is this real crazy K-shape. So there's just a lot of shifts everybody's working through. We get it, but I think our coming together helps them do more things in a single place well.

Yeah, and I think as you said, you know, this is really that watershed moment in government, and I'd love for you maybe to explain a little bit about, you know, what you're What are you seeing kind of in the current environment? You talked about some of those disparate systems that are there and how they may be going at it alone, but they really need kind of this bigger picture. But, you know, what is the current state of trust and transparency, you know, in government? And, you know, what needs to change now as you kind of look at, you know, even your capabilities? How do you see yourself playing in that? I would love to get your thoughts on that.

Yeah, so again, an economist by background, so I'll try not to get too wonky here, but it was a crazy impact on our economy from COVID right? Tech sector, think Zoom. Like some companies did really well, and then at the same time, think about like the service sector and restaurants, and man, they really struggled. And so, you know, for the longest time, we've tried to fix anytime we we hit a difficult road in the economy with some monetary policy, but that really wasn't the targeted tailored solution that we needed. It led to inflation, and in And which, which continued to even further help some of the good performing sectors, but not the others. And then if we're talking about local, each local jurisdiction is different too. And so this isn't a silver bullet panacea, one size fits all kind of situation. Each community on their own in today's crazy environment needs to go out there and take a look at the components of their economy. The struggles, right? And it's not just economic. We had a lot of the George Floyd tragedy and everything that was going on, racial tensions. And you have to take a look at what is hurting my community in terms of public health, what is holding my community back in terms of the economy, what is holding my community back culturally and in terms of trust in government and how we handle those things. And even the trends we saw over the pandemic, right, it's not just across communities and across these 3 different areas, but trust in government actually went up a little bit during the pandemic. And then now that we're coming out of it, Maybe some of it's being misattributed to the local level because of the inflation, but there's a lot of troubles that I think we, at the local level, carry over a little bit of trust. It's been declining, but we need to be deliberate to really hold on to and then to change that decline, inflect it back into an upward slope. And that means tackling these 3 big things really well, and that includes Getting an understanding of where— what your community wants and needs. And I was like, one last thing is there is collective intelligence in a community. We really believe it. We were inspired by this book, Wisdom of Crowds. So a government official shouldn't look at like, oh, I got all these angry voices. No, look, there's solutions out there among the people. So like, bring them together, listen to their ideas, gather their sentiment, use that data to measure your baseline and track your performance. I think that's how we rebuild trust. Transparency, accountability, and inflect the curves and get great outcomes from this thing that, you know, catalyzed a lot of change.

Yeah, I think it's a really good point. And, you know, as a former, you know, assistant city manager myself, it's oftentimes thought of engagement as you got to come to a public meeting and sign up to speak. But I think, you know, you've both proven that there's other ways that you can leverage technology to engage people. And it's not just those that want to complain, but like doing it in a structured way. And so I'd love to learn a little bit more about, you know, where's all this going and You've both been in the thick of a lot of different initiatives here that you're working on for local governments that are great examples for higher levels of government. So I'd love for you to share some insight there. Chris, maybe we'll start with you for this one.

Yeah, so for me, I mean, I think that the data issue is just becoming huge and to have a better way of understanding that, of gathering good data that you can count on is really important. But one of the things that we've noticed, and honestly it's broken my heart as the son of a 31-year public administrator with the City of Denver, who loved his job and felt like he was valued, to see the coarsening of debate and even, you know, just some of the really devolution of public participation that we saw some of that during COVID but I think it's not just because of that. And so this may seem like an odd thing to say, but one of the things that we really try to do by creating, you know, a relatively easy-to-create simulation for an issue like budget or like housing, is that we try to sort of reposition public engagement. So instead of what often tends to be the case with public engagement, which is that a public official, an assistant city manager or communications director or a budget director, just feels like— and we've actually heard this from some of our clients— they say, okay, well, tonight is a public hearing, I'm going to go and take my beating. And they just get beat up. And it just seems so unfair to me. And as somebody, as I said, whose father, you know, devoted his entire life and career to public service, it just really annoyed me. And so one of the values that we try to provide is this relatively easy way, taking advantage of, you know, good SaaS internet technology to put people in the shoes of decision makers. And it just makes me so happy when the feedback we get from a city manager or a budget director is, this gave our residents a chance, you know, just to sit in the city manager's seat and actually, you know, learn about, you know, the entirety of what we're trying to do as a government. and to then provide fact-based input that takes into account all the different competing demands we have and also takes into account the realities of what things cost. And so, you know, I usually don't say this too often, but in some ways what we try to do is we create a tool for empathy so that public officials can feel as though they're understood, so that they don't just have to go take their lumps from the public, or they don't just have to, you know, sort of do things over their heads so that they don't understand and hope that nobody discovers it. but we actually create that framework, that opportunity for people to understand the public face, the important public-facing things. And often those have to do with values so that they can understand them and then provide some input. And I actually think that's just really critical to our democracy and to governance at all levels moving forward, is that instead of just saying no to things or saying what we hate, that we actually, as residents, that we start to indicate what we're going to say yes to. And so one of the most exciting things that Balancing has done in the last couple of years is that we've adapted our budget simulation for housing. And so if there's a housing goal that a community has, um, you can actually create a simulation and say, we've got 600 units of housing that we need to find, or 1,200 units or something like that. And instead of just getting the typical participation that you might get on a housing plan, which is usually neighbors of a proposed development coming out and saying, no, no, no, we don't want that, we don't want traffic, we don't want things to change. You can say, as a community, we've got a problem with availability and affordability of housing, and we need an additional 1,200 units of housing. Here are our options. Please tell us what you would do to solve this problem. And so what we're trying to do is we're trying to create that opportunity for joint problem solving. And to the degree that it can rest on a bed of solid data and understanding of public opinion that Polco provides, I just think that's a really powerful thing for governance moving forward. I think it helps us move towards resolving those really hard problems that we're looking at at the national level as well as at local governments level with polarization and just acrimony.

I think it's a really good point. If you combine that tool for empathy, as you said, with what Nick was talking about with wisdom of the crowds and collective intelligence, all of the smarts of tapping into people more so than just having them sign up to speak, I think that's where the magic happens. Nick, any thoughts on your side as you look at all the work that Polco has been doing in the market? Any standout initiatives that, that come to mind?

Yeah, I, uh, so a couple do. I just want to emphasize something Chris said. I think that this merger kind of represents in a microcosm, uh, what is needing to happen at the local government level. In some sense, we are breaking down the silo between engagement, uh, and that engagement should elicit that empathy, just like Chris said. is breaking down the silo between the engagement and data. Those should not be separate houses, right? The assistant city manager, in terms of performance analytics, should not be divorced from the communications team and the engagement official. Like, they are a source of data, and that data should inform the communications. Those need to work in tandem. Chris's tools— we had some engagement tools, but Chris's tools are fantastic, and we now have a robust suite of engagement capabilities combined with all of our performance analytics. We have this amazing historical data set And so a couple initiatives that I think just highlight that really well is, is the seamlessness now between the budgeting and the housing and the climate sims that you had from Balancing Act now being in the same place where you get your city's annual surveys and the other engagement tools that they do on Polco. That's all in one place. There's the verification and the rigor that's behind the Polco engagements now in coming in behind the balancing act simulations that are there, the prioritize and the taxpayer receipt that they have also. And I would say the other big thing too is you combine— we've got this big initiative internally, it's called GPAL, and it's— we've been not only the resident sentiment data, but that's most effectively viewed in combination with other public sector datasets. And we have compiled virtually every public sector relevant dataset into this enormous data set. So government officials applying for grants, yes, you should use resident sentiment data, but you should also use it in the lens and combined with this, and then that should inform what you're presenting to your residents when you're presenting them their budget simulation trade-off situation. So yeah, this taxpayer receipt's really fun. It's going to have fun to have it on Polco. The budgeting simulators are really fun. The other engagement, the combination of those with all of our performance dashboards for the government officials. Man, our team in the back behind the curtain here is cranking like you wouldn't believe, and we're all dedicated to this mission of just delivering tools to government officials that— this is our mission. I mean, it's every time we say anything, it's to improve how communities communicate. They come together around their most important issues in a civil and constructive way, but that provides data that then informs in combination with other datasets that help the assistant city manager, the city manager, the government officials make great resource allocation decisions that improve resident quality of life. Every day, it's what we try to move the ball forward on.

I love that mission. So as you look at, you know, the potential and kind of, you know, your collective visions for the future, yeah, I'd love to kind of maybe hear from you briefly, you know, how could government operate and how should government operate? What's your vision for that? Nick, let's start with you for this one.

Yeah, I alluded to a little bit of it, but man, they are— between state and local government, it's like $4 trillion a year. It's like 18-19% of our overall economy. The ability, the communication channels, the trust, the brand, the impact that they can have— we can unlock a real renaissance in quality of life that I think far too often, you know, there's a sense of complacency around. And so And, you know, I'm not casting blame for how things were done in the past. Cloud computing has really come across the ability to build these tools, the financing that let teams like Chris and mine grow to be at these levels but still preserve their integrity and their vision. So, okay, good, we're all here together. What is this specifically going to unlock? I view my vision for a city manager years from now, and really it's not even that far away. I think, you know, these things are possible as our tools are coming together is hear from your residents, understand what the baseline is, which residents are satisfied with parks and roads, economic development, law enforcement, where are this— and it's not just at these levels. Let's get a little more granular by older residents, younger residents, by high income, low income. Where are the pockets that are underperforming? Okay, A, we know that, know that baseline. Let's go out now and let's be explicit with what our objectives are for our community. We want to really improve older adult satisfaction with parks in District 2 even. I mean, it's a— let's be specific. Let's get the city managers and the electeds on the same page. How are we going to do that? Okay, we have these initiatives. Let's run a great budgeting simulation around this, and boom, everybody's on the same page. They're conscious of each other's trade-offs, and you try things, and it's iterate. It's not once a year. I mean, some cities are even on 2- and 3-year survey or engagement. That's not frequent enough. Go out, test your initiatives, test your communication. You're getting feedback on it, and it's quarterly at probably the most infrequent. And by the end of that year, you're on the same page, momentum behind your initiatives, should be seeing progress on that, and you can demonstrate that, and everybody can rejoice together. That's the vision. the people moving forward together on that.

I think you had a lot of city managers that just said amen that were listening in, so, uh, so love that. Chris, what about you as you think about, you know, kind of the, the future? You know, what's the, the potential here and what's your vision for that?

Yeah, I think there's tremendous potential, and I'll, I'll put it in the context of a, uh, of a concrete and complex example. Uh, some of you might know if you follow ICMA or NLC or GFOA in particular that GFOA among those 3 is really leading this new initiative called Rethinking Budgeting. And it really, it came to the forefront during COVID because they realized, you know, things are— the things that didn't work became very exposed and obvious, and there became a need to do some substantial reform. But it really is a result of something they've been working on now for 5 or 6 years. But we are in this great opportunity, Balancing Act by Polco, to work with other tech companies that are really working in an unprecedentedly collaborative way with GFOA to understand what some of those challenges look like with rethinking budgeting and even why to rethink budgeting. And so we're thinking about, well, how do you make the budget process more nimble? How do you make it more responsive? How do you make the budget process take in data in a more responsible way? How do you use performance? How do you use benchmarks? A lot of the stuff that Polkow is the finest purveyor of. How do you, more importantly and very difficultly, how do you transform budgeting from being mostly about departments? So organizing the work around how things get done as opposed to orienting the work and the budget towards what you want to get done. So instead of saying, let's fund the police department at X and the fire department at Y, let's say, what is it going to take for us to become a safe city or the safest city in whatever state? And that's really challenging. So to bring planning into the budgeting process. And then the other piece, because, you know, we're always not too far away in this country from having a little bit of a crisis in public trust, and it's waxed and waned at various times. But then really importantly, what is that place for residents, for the citizen in the budget process? Is it just to complain about taxes? Is it just to say, why is my city or why is my county doing that? Or is it actually to take 10 minutes or so and to actually understand the scope of government, and once again, learn and provide input on what you would do in a certain circumstance. And it's just been so exciting. I have to give, you know, a big applause to GFOA for their willingness and their interest to actually welcome these tech companies, these forward-thinking, mission-driven tech companies, to help them not just rethink budgeting, but actually provide the tools to do it. So that's one thing I'm really excited about, and I think it's got applicability From the federal government right down to a sanitation district. I think, you know, any local government could benefit from something like that, and technology is getting to the point where it can be really, really useful, and it's highly scalable, and it's not onerously expensive.

Yeah, I love that. Well, the easiest question for you both is, where can our audience go to learn more? So those that are interested in kind of, you know, diving into this and really exploring the future and that platform approach that Nick was talking about to public engagement, Where's the best place?

Yeah, it looks like it's showing up at the bottom of your screen, but head on over to info.pulco.us. There's a lot of our capabilities there. At abalancingact.com, you'll see the simulations. Note that all the capabilities in both places are going to be in the overall Polko URL listed there. Man, it is an exciting time. I mean, I speak on behalf of our whole team. When we said thanks for letting us share the story and the tools that we're working on and the impacts that it can have for the industry, the officials out there, and all of their resident constituents. It's an honor to get to work in this area and appreciate the conversation, Dustin.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Nick and Chris, thanks so much for hopping on In Case You Missed It today. Chris, you have something to say?

I do, I do, because just tying it to the theme of today about the federal government. So we have this fantastic project that is not commissioned by the federal government, but it's for the federal government. We have this longstanding partnership with Bipartisan Policy Center to create a version of the federal simulation for the federal government. And we're just getting ready to launch one. I think it should come out next week. And we're really excited about that as the nation goes into a conversation about debt ceiling and the perennial budget issues and taxation and so forth. This could be a really— it is a really powerful tool to help people understand it. And one of the things I'm most gratified about is that we've had half a million users since 2020. We had a version before that, but just since 2020, we've had half a million users and 80% of them are aged under 28, which is so exciting. So stay tuned, go to one of those links, and it's going to be federalbalancingact.com. It should be released next week, and we're really excited about it.

And Dustin, I've got, I've got one last thing too. I'm just going to mention is, I mean, this is— I love that, that budgeting simulation for the federal government's an important thing. And, you know, it's, it's the same thing that we replicate within communities to build that empathy and understand the real trade-offs. For those interested in the data-driven decision-making approaches, how to use data and apply for these grants and do all these things, if you're interested, let us know or check over at ICMA. We're actually teaching a series on data-driven decision-making. I think it's earned some credentialing points through ICMA, but it's our team of data scientists. We bring to bear a lot of our historical data in there, and it's just a nice venue to— just wanted to bring it up as it was something we discussed today.

Yeah, and we'll make sure to put those links in our show notes. Well, Chris and Nick, thank you so much for carving some time out to share, you know, about this great partnership and kind of what it means for the wider sector. We're really excited to follow your collective journey now together. as you redefine public engagement in the future. And I really appreciate your time. And for our audience, thanks for hanging on and joining us for this week's In Case You Missed It. We'll see you next week, same time, same place. Thanks for joining.

Thanks, Dustin.

It was a blast. Have a great day. You too.