Call for Proposals

The 2022 Code for America Summit will be a hybrid experience held on Tuesday, May 17 and Wednesday, May 18. The in-person sessions will take place at the Crystal Gateway Marriott in the Washington, DC area.

You will be able to select if you are available to present in person or virtually and to let us know which day(s) you are available. We will do our best to accommodate your selections.

We’ll be selecting around 40 one-hour breakout submissions from a diverse group of speakers for both in-person and virtual sessions. 

The theme for Summit 2022 is building the path forward together. We believe that now is the time to set the right systems in place to serve people for decades to come, and we believe that these four tracks represent the best opportunity areas to drive lasting change. 

Service Design + Delivery: This track focuses on the end-to-end design and delivery of government services, which are at the core of what matters most—where people experience government. Delivery of services, technical or non-technical, was once viewed as an afterthought to policy decisions. Today, we know that a just and equitable government must get the implementation right. 

Policy + Administration: In many ways, policy and technology are two sides of the same government coin. Policy is how the government creates the guardrails for our society, and technological implementation is how those policies are brought to life. But there’s often a disconnect between the intention of a policy and its impact when implemented. This track focuses on bringing policy and administrative decisions closer to their desired real-world impacts. 

Operations + Management: This track highlights best practices across governments, where public servants are enabling the delivery of equitable outcomes by focusing on operations and management. We hope to showcase the breadth of operational excellence that helps deliver better government services, with examples from human resources, finance, and procurement, as well as cross-cutting topics like collaboration, innovation, and community engagement. 

People Power + Community: Over a decade ago, Code for America was founded on the belief that government can work for the people, by the people, in the digital age. We hope that anyone interested in creative problem solving and bringing people together attends sessions in this track, which will spotlight change agents and innovators who influence government to better serve all people.

Spanning across all tracks is Code for America’s vision for Human-Centered Government—how we believe government can and should serve the public in the digital age.

Just like our call for proposals, our Summit is open to anyone and everyone whose work touches government technology and civic innovation.

Here’s what you need to know about attendees:

• Usually, about 60% of our attendees are new to Summit. Think about whether your content is introductory level, or more advanced.
• Of our 2021 registrants, 40% worked in government and 60% were volunteers or worked in nonprofits, the private sector, or philanthropy.
• Many of our attendees are involved with the government and civic technology world in some way. For example, they are public servants (both technical and non-technical) who are involved in delivering government services, representatives of technology vendors who work with governments, nonprofit advocates and change agents, and local volunteers with Code for America Brigades across the country.
• Our attendees represent a wide range of local, state, and federal government and civic tech practitioners from across the country.

Sessions last an hour, allowing for at least ten to fifteen minutes for questions and answers. We strongly encourage no more than three or four people to be a part of an hour-long session, including the submitter. We’re eager to see how you would structure your session—it could be a series of short talks, a discussion panel, or interactive activity. Please do specify how you’ll use the time to deliver quality, engaging material.

For your submission, you’ll need to let us know:

• About you: Your name, contact information, title, and organization name
• About your submission: Your target audience, your chosen track, title, and description

• The submission deadline is February 10, 2022.
• We aim to let you know if your submission has been accepted no later than March 15, 2022. If your submission isn’t selected, we will offer you the early bird ticket discount, as we’d still love for you to join us at Summit this year.

We’ll be curating around 40 sessions across the two days of Summit. All submissions are reviewed by our content committee, made up of your peers in the government technology and civic innovation community. We review submissions based on the quality of title and description, how well they fit in with our themes and other submissions, and most importantly, for diversity, equity and inclusion.

At Code for America, we strive to foster a diverse, equitable, and inclusive attendee experience that meets our vision and values.

We prioritize this vision at the Code for America Summit because government must work for everyone, especially the most marginalized. That starts with having inclusive conversations about this work.

Please note that we may reject submissions based on DEI criteria, especially for larger panels where all speakers are demographically homogeneous. We strongly encourage you to include a wide range of perspectives in your proposals.

If our committee finds that your submission topic is relevant to our attendees but doesn’t meet our diversity, equity, and inclusion goals, we will contact you to make sure the session is representative.

All session speakers will receive one complimentary registration for the Summit, either in person or virtual. Additionally, we are pleased to offer each speaker a $250 honorarium.