Your Equity Toolkit for Project Delivery

Are you interested in advancing your team's equity-centered practices? This guided set of tools was created to support you and your team in the adoption of practices that improve equity delivery with our agency partners.

TL;DR -- Here for the Equity Toolkit Soft Launch?

Our Dec 4 soft launch comprises 3 elements:

• Three flagship tools generated by the USDS Equity Team, directly for USDS project teams--to start using now.
• This Github Repo, which provides project teams with a broader grounding on equity in the context of our work--including key definitions, the historical context of equity work within the federal government, and extra resources.
• The USDS Equity team is now making itself available for 30-min consultations. Schedule one here.

Looking for Indigenous Sovereignty + Indigenous Governance Readings?

You can find them organized by their original NNI modules in the Native Nations folder

Overview

"Advancing equity is not a one-year project – it is a generational commitment that will require sustained leadership and partnership with all communities."

President Joe Biden

The U.S. Digital Service (USDS) recognizes the critical importance for the civic technology workforce to deliver on equity in its work to transform the way government serves the American public.

Did you know? USDS was mentioned in Section 7 of Executive Order 13985: Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities as a critical component in promoting equitable delivery of government benefits and equitable opportunities for the American public.

You can strengthen how we pursue equity in our work--there are many ways to get started. To help you and USDS teams advance the delivery of equity, the USDS Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Council (DEIA-C) developed a very initial version (V0) of an Equity Toolkit in Spring 2023, which has since been updated to a brand new V1 with three new flagship tools, as of December 2023. The V1 toolkit looks to equip USDS project leads, teams, and agency partners with a starter set of tools to develop products and services that deliver incrementally on equity. The USDS Equity Delivery team believes that no matter your role, equity is a part of the job and encourages continuous efforts to improve upon centering equity in our work.

This V1 toolkit serves as a starting point within a broader effort led by the USDS Equity Delivery Team (Celeste Espinoza, Jeremy Zitomer and Alexandra Bornkessel) to pilot, refine and launch a comprehensive suite of tools, resources, and frameworks that you can use internally and externally in your project work.

Who should use this toolkit?

1. USDS Project Leads
2. USDS Existing Project Teams
3. USDS New Project Teams
4. USDS Agency Partners

What is included in this toolkit?

Part 1: Preparing your team to deliver equity (contains ~10 equity tools that were originally aggregated and reviewed for the V0 toolkit in Spring 2023)

Part 2: USDS Equity Delivery flagship tools*

Part 3: What do we mean by equity?

Part 4: Situating equity within our current government context

Part 5: Tool: Equity Glossary of Terms

Part 6: Additional equity resources and tools

*New as of Dec 2023

Want Some Help? Reach Out!

Support is available and new ideas are welcome. You can book time with the USDS Equity Delivery Team for a more private conversation, schedule a consultation with us, or just ask a question using this Polly. This gets sent as a DM to USDS's Equity Delivery team team but not to our working channel.