Dirt Simple

The California Adaptive Technology (CAT) Initiative argues that public-sector protocols, often seen as bureaucratic excess, can help front-line workers make government deliver, using two case studies at Crescenta Valley Water District (CVWD). A stormwater recharge ditch that took nearly ten years to permit was dug in a single day after staff used a local NGO's existing permit as a workaround. At CVWD, a unified shared list helped raise customer access to water data from under 0.2% over more than a decade to 93%+ today.