so if we ask ourselves why people don't take care of what's going on in russia, so the media or entertainment. sometimes they make some kind of awful things to persons committed audience that everything is going right because when they speak about our troops in ukraine, they say that we are right and here in washington my colleague at the institute visited ukraine and the people in the hospital to have no but have no hands, no feet, they are victims and when we speak about conflict between ukraine and russia it's not a conflict, if they wore. we have radio station

representatives that is well known. i may representative of a well-known radio but it seems to me when our editor-in-chief is asked why putin needs you to broadcast, there are several reasons. first, they should get some use from the source. it is a good source. the second reason is that we need a showcase if some person from the west comes to moscow and asks where is the freedom of the broadcasting they can answer the. and the third reason it seems to me that's very important is

radio has no meaning as a source of propaganda when there are elections in russia you can see the people who will be our politics on any channel but if you listen there are also people from opposition, and they do not have enough audience to get their voices for voting. it would have enough true if i say there is no freedom of media in russia. there is freedom of media that sometimes they have a very narrow audience because there are some internet media as the daily journal now that are now

forbidden and there was a small detail. in 1975 for instance, if somebody accused the person of spreading information he would approve it in the court and now they can close the district with the ability in this sentence so when you are in washington and britain and europe, you can find this very website no problem. maybe some of you remember that several months ago it was a conflict between the den chief of music, mister with them they have the arrangement of the conflict was the director of

one of our journalists and they tried to force us to fire off this gentleman and in a vindictive says that he had prerogatives to do it and he did do it and later said that he would try to fire him himself. and since then, this conflict but it was also a very interesting stage when they had people from some other structure try to make an attendant journalist to do something about you can say there is no independent journalist in russia may be all right because it was, it seems to me that it was the soviet right and some writer who said kelly who tries to influence

you and i will answer pay you so i think that the whole situation was in russia, is rather sad because there are some restrictions of getting information my belief from my big friends from nine got stuck, i don't understand how they work really because they have their own list of victims on the political situation in chechen. i know that there are journalists so they do a lot of things to do various jobs but it's rather difficult in russia i know of the many journalists i rated two are not at the kremlin but sometimes some people try to meet them to offer them something google not long ago it was published in social net about the young journalist who wanted to go

from several special service and he said i want to meet you but i don't want to meet you, she said go all right, we can offer you some exclusive information. you will be proud of us. she said she doesn't like it and then she was scared, she thought that next day they will come to her and you damage and she began to clean her house and she found very interesting things to she was scared a lot again and then decided that she would not be afraid of them no more so i know some people who i invited who are figures of persuading and i know the specifics for him, for them know also the situation that's connected with noble severe's a

couple years ago when mister buster he can, he took one of journalists from nova gazeta in the forest and he said i will kill you and i will myself investigate your assassination your cup after it it was very ridiculous story for journalist from moscow, me among them. we went to the building of protractor and we wanted to make some restrictions with brussels, the streaking to bring a journalist to the forest. we had no time to do our work because all of us, we were arrested. there was one of its cold out, there was me, there was negative nova optical ladies and gentlemen, it was not the order of self-evident ago it was some wish of those people. everyone said we had some list of those people who would vote

to protest. on this day, next day and so on. we were speaking in this for a couple of hours without various heroes of spirit and of course nothing bad would happen with that but sometimes journalists, especially rum internet media, if they are arrested they take action. sometimes they have broken devices. sometimes they are decent. sometimes, it seems to me that there is no way out because every russian person has ability to get information from their media, from internet, from so on but nobody does anything because i think that the number of protesters is very small.

after the bullock nutcase, many people had to immigrate and those people, they are access people. i know i have a member of my own family who worked on the election who participated in the state action and he was arrested six or seven times and after it went there, next time he would be imprisoned so when he emigrated from russia, he wrote me a mail that in israel they are our hundreds and thousands of those people. some of them tried to go to europe countries and it seems to me that it looks like this loss of shop because intellectuals are leaving russia and i heard that mister goody who emigrated from russi , every month in paris comes with his advisors. and they have some

consultations. they want to attract some collect questions to believe and my questions, why his he there? why is he not in russia? it seems to me that the whole direction in which the whole society and media among them is not perspective. it's no good as to meet. >> thank you. >> thank you not tele. >> ladies and gentlemen thank you and thank you for this ability to digest to you people such crucial topics on human rights . maybe some of my words will not be understood but sorry. >> don't apologize. >> so i'm not going to talk

too much because as he said, i prefer leading dialogue and questions and answers also but when i was going here in the metro, i emigrated at least nine topics that i am going to address to you. it's not the least of human rights problems in russia but it came to my mind for thefirst time. first of all , the relation's human rights cause a trial concerning session got. and you may know that she was sentenced to 22 years of prison term and last week, it was a

roundtable at the kennedy institute and i said that i had some doubts that they are going to change for all this for officers of russian intelligence because she's pretty much, she has pretty much well for russian government because she is member of ukrainian parliament and she is delegate to the parliament for council of europe and she's a hero of russia or sorry, and those officers of intelligence, it's just a russian official statement that they went there on their own, they were not officials and there would be no

exchange and at the same time mister terry visited moscow and he had a four hour speech with his generals and a four hour speech for our meeting with putin and the question of flushing got was also discussed on these meetings and finally it was a proposition by russian government as they say that we exchange session got for the total amnesty for all levels, all fighters and yesterday i read that the american government wouldn't accept this but it's very strange because you know, russia talks with the united states about flushing got, not with ukrainian government vehicle because

actually, the russian with putin's position, it's my own personal opinion that putin's position that ukraine is not an abandoned state, it's a pocket manipulated by the united states government. so he prefers to talk to the united states and united states officials not be ukraine. okay. so that's the problem this causes because i watched these process, i know the barristers who affected share, the judge refused all the documents and phone printings and so on. that's the first problem.

the second problem is the recent constitutional courts, ross and institutional courts about the international law. it's about the european court, about what's more important, the judgments of european court or the russian legislation and the constitutional court ruled that it could reverse any of these european courts judgment if it's conflicts the constitution. it's a very wide interpretation and of course i suppose it was my age suggestion because of the mucus case, the you clunky case because of the huge amount of compensation that russia must pay. the next thing is the so-called

spy cases it's a trend now, there are plenty of them . i don't personally, it's my good friend juan pablo barrister who produced with those cases. as i have already said, plenty of them and for example, men worked in some secret service can years ago and then he filed a resume to some foreign company and he is spy and he could be sentenced to 20 years. it's all a problem as it trend is now national. next thing is explosions of foreigners. for example, from a native town i was in some cases a translator to some foreigners who were just forced to leave

the country and three americans from my native town, they were exposed and they were in detention center with illegal immigrants from pakistan for several days and you know, the most obvious thing that i would have plenty of, these are types of visa but the main types are business or travel. or vacancy holiday and they entered the russia like business visa, just to provide some lectures or something but the court, russian court says no, business, you do some money so you're right about your

visits. today you are forced to leave and now they couldn't enter russia for five or 10 years. the next thing of course is this station about ngos. the so-called law for florida engines so my organization or it was announced like a florida engine last year or liquidated the organization because it's like a yellow star, our official position, we should work like this. we are not engines, we are independent organization with independent human rights lawyers and we allocated to organizations, one organization like received foreign money, yes, foreign grants. british grants, council of

europe grants, yes. but this organization didn't make any public statements, press releases, demonstrations and so the second organization didn't receive any money but yes, we did some press releases, we wrote this mass media newspapers and so on. and those organizations are also declared as foreign engines. so okay, we say we tried to play on your side by your rule . if you don't want it, we will be like independent lawyers with no open books, with no , w don't want to tell about our

farming and so on. okay. well, that's not a problemfor us . but the most important thing i'd like to say in the final part of my speech is the problem of torture. so i am a member of a committee against torture so it's my topic, it's my issue and you know, torture is everywhere. brutality in the united states also, of course. in china, in europe also. but the problem is that how the state reacts on this tactic. i mean it instigates respect and that's the task of our organization for example so we are not trying to conduct torture.

we tried to combat torture but we know that police brutality is absolute. [audio lost] instigators manag , to instigate effectively those cases and that's our task. and the most problematic region in russia of course if you are talking about torture is the chechen republic of course. and, the shares of policeman in rotted because for example in our small organization we managed to have 110 convicted police officers for torture cases. but none in the chechen

republic because the federal instigators couldn't work there effectively and they say, i had many conversations with those federal russian instigators, they say i couldn't question a simple chechen police officer because he would convict me or maybe worse. that's all. so there are plenty of criminal cases but there are no convicted police officers so i can speak about for example conditions of the tension. i guess i have already said i can enter every prison of my region but as you know, as you may know there is strong economic qualities in russia and they cut everything that is possible. for example i had many conversations with prison authorities. they say we do more to reach

every single dog in prisons. there are no dogs now. just guard dogs. it was an economic crisis. so instead of. i mean, just things got worse so i think those are many topics that i just wanted to speak about if you have any questions, please, thank you anton. and we'll start there. the question and answer session and i'd like to ask the commission to do all the following and if we can answer the question whenever you want. myquestion is , russia is a country with a long history.

it's at least 3000 years of organized, formalized state. in a more prosperous time, less, worse economy, people kind of need better life, worse life but it's always with political power. there was never any other system in russia ever. it always was the system wherein everything was decided by somebody on the top of the country and very much policy was based on what kind of person you have at the top. it always was, russia is an imperial russia, soviet russia, post russia always was the same system of power. extremely hierarchical. tell me if i'm wrong, i don't see how, i'm a historian. it's always, russia is textbook

propaganda. it always was a country of propaganda and it always was country of human rights violation. so all this statements, are kind of what you guys are trying to avoid our, you can see the historic heritage with that so why do we have hope that this will be different? after the breakup of the soviet union, now it can be a democratic country, nothing has been changed really so do we really have any arguments to believe the country can be changed so drastically to be no light imperial style of internal policy? if there will be respect for human rights and it's the ability for that so how long this will take and what should we do about people in the united states or other countries because every effort so far to try to there has

failed. thank you.>> the microphone is here. you know what? i, i've got at least three friends who were now in their 50s to go on is in his 80s and another one is in his 50s and another is in his late 40s. they all used to the alcoholics. for most of their lives, most of their lives. no, one is american. anyway.it really doesn't matter. one who's in his 80s now, by the way. and this guy who is in his 80s, he quit drinking when he was45 . okay, so he's lived for like 35 years at least ever since,

sober, absolutely clean but when he was quitting drinking everybody around him was saying, you've been drinking all your life. you don't know any other examples. you don'tknow what sobriety is all about . you hardly remember when you were sober. it was probably when you were a teenager, whatever but so, there's no hope. the guy is been 35 years clean, happy, family, everything so of course not every parallel works but how i would answer, i mean of course there's all this. otherwise how do i, what's the use of living or gathering here, arguing, trying to figure out you know, ways of thinking of scenarios for russia, describing all the problems if nothing can be done? i'm not a historian but i would

not completely agree with you nikolai as far as the history of russia is concerned. i mean, if you take the entire history of russia meaning not the russian empire but russia as you remember we have a name russia then it's it's at least 1200 years and for the first five or 600 years before probably the 14th century, no. i mean russia did have democratic tradition. you got the public, even if you take that he had russia where, i mean if there were democratic traditions by today's standards, not only by the standards of that remote past and history as compared to other countries. i mean the key of russia was

pretty much a democratic state. one hell of a lot more democratic than a lot of countries of europe at that time. yes, for the past six, seven centuries russia has been an example of autocratic rule where the violation of human rights everywhere but then again, if you take your, it's ahead of russia three, for centuries but about three or four centuries all about if we look at the world, at the history of the world? the roman empire was there for thousands of years and then it had to, it collapsed and had to change so what i'msaying is we must . we meaning the citizens of russia who care and the citizens of the world whocare , americans care because you're not really caring in 1917 but

the consequences of what happened in 1917 in russia, i mean you are still workplace including terror is in my opinion exactly the consequences of what happened to the russia and the world in 1917 and then the cases that followed so definitely we've got to do everything we can to find a way out, to find a better solution for the russian crisis to change russia. >> nothing says to me even my idea is not popular for russians. we are proud of living in a great country. i don't want to live in a great country. i want to live in a normal country. i think that if i'm not mistaken, after 1945 the world coalition restricted abilities of germany to have army and

some other things. i think that someone will come and russia will be forbidden to emigrate country. maybe it will divide but the only thing our so-called patriarchy declares, we live in a great country. we have sections, whatever but we live in the great country. i don't understand it and my idea is to stop the greatness of this country. and i think that i do that better than they do. >> i have a very pessimistic position on this issue so i shouldn't talk about this, sorry . [laughter] thank you. go ahead. introduce yourself. >> hi, i'm michael brody. i'm an environmental guy now at

au, formerly at the epa and starting the epa some15, 16 years ago i started doing a lot of projects there and after retiring from there i've done a little teaching, i've been all over russia backpacking, camping , all sorts of stuff but i like to start by saying thanks to my compatriots russian jews who moved to israel, thanks to put in there a lot safer. thanks to putin, the chemical weapons are out of syria and the weapons grade uranium is now out of iran so we need to have a little perspective. now, if you look at us interventions over the past 25 years do youreally want us to help you? you see evidence that that would be , that that would change something you guys care about? i mean, even look at bosnia and kosovo today. there slowly but surely becoming state. we cleared out the serbs and the saudi's have moved everything in so what would you think we could do that would

sort of help the general welfare in russia? thank you thank you. want to take this? >> well, in 1991 i asked that 3 and a half months hitchhiking around this country and it was a great experience and i remember i was at the same question, how would you like the us to help the soviet union because we are still the soviet union and my friend and i, we said help people not the governments because back then the us was civilizing, giving credit to the russian government and pretty much those credits i assume were stolen. and we believe that the best way the west would help the soviet union back then and i still think it's the best way

how the west would help is helping develop private enterprise, helping and educating people.i understand what not, is talking about whe she's speaking about the picture of the position in russia . and i want my country to be happy. i want my people to be happy. and i think if they asked themselves seriously, they will answer they want to be happy, not great. in terms of size, empire and so on. but i'm definitely against the situation where the us would invade russia or you know, make some restrictions against russia like russia should never have nuclear weapons or whatever weapons solely because yes, i don't believe this will work.

there are some people in russia, not many but there are people in russia who hope for a popular revolt that would be supported by the west were financed by the west and they say that west should do anything to rid russia of putin. what i think the west should do everything to change russia, to help russia change, the initiator should still be from the russian people. if the initiative comes from the outside, russians will never forget that. so this will always remain in their memory and they will remember that we were change from the outside. they will never forget that. and there's a difference. there is a difference. again, i understand the logic but there is a difference between the nazi germany after the war and japan after the war and today's russia. i mean, we may regret that that

there is such a difference but there is such a difference. and sometimes, yes. i do believe that russia should receive a very hard lesson. a very hard lesson. >> from itself, from themselves you know? probably the previous lessons were not enough. i mean, seeing what we have right now. but i'm definitely against from any sort of intervention of this sort you are talking about. the sanctions, you mean whether they are good or bad, useful or not? >> with a wet out those sanctions russia would have come to the economic crisis is going to right now anyway.

solely because the system of governance is wrong. simply wrong. it can't rule the country by personality this way of saying, i mean it's the rule by personality. it's the authoritarian rule that eventually brought russia to what ever wrong news and the foreign policy russia has made, first and foremost has brought russia to the huge mistakes, if not crimes in domestic policy and russian economy. so sanctions, not sanctions, russia would be there anyway. >> i cannot agree with this. i think that when we speak about the lesson, what could be more than the lesson of television? it was first putin selections, my father was imprisoned in

1958. he went to work for putin. i shouted at him, what are you doing? he's another kgb killer. i cannot believe that lesson would be not enough. why? world war, then yes. fighting is hard and then after that we can talk of the west and so on. this unfortunately it hasn't happened and we don't want that to happen i'm sure so what would you suggest question mark in terms of practical steps? you would suggest or americans to do what? >> i don't see that americans should do something instead of us. you are quite right in that but i don't think that when you talk about sanctions, we both i

think realize know that sanctions work not against the leader. they work firstly against us so because once you have problems with that. there are several situations, the law of the document. he works against children who died. they started dying after this law of their doctors so i think that sanctions were not against the leaders but my friend who was just a russian ombudsman, he always says in very big support of the west is the ability so i don't know about stopping this movement of realpolitik but maybe he's right. >> i would speak about practical stations, about your question how do help or maybe

not help. since 2000, our organization received many many grants from nations, the mccarthy foundation, national endowment and that's okay. nobody didn't care about it. what it all started after crimea and ukraine situation and so now we are like the government so i think if there are, if there is any liberalization maybe just when our political leaders make a deal about ukraine, crimea and so on and syria maybe i think if there is any authorization maybe after that the station willbe like previous years , just we could receive grants

and could work, we don't execute any orders from any foreign country. we work independently so i think the crucial thing is to explain to people and to russian officials how the system works. i mean just, we have some grants, we write a project by ourselves and we do everything that we we want to do. we don't institute any orders. so i think that's the crucial thing and now russian government of course is not very tolerate two ngos who receive money so i think that's the future issue that we could discuss later thank you.

i will tell one thing because that question, i have to rational all the time. why americans should be concerned about the situation in russia. a while. the reason for you guys to be concerned about the russia 10,000 miles away? and if you are concerned that it's because of something in our national interest, that's why. and you are concerned because of your interest. wife russia should change? to satisfy your interests? your vision? and this seems like closed circle, even this question i asked russia many hundreds of times. why are you guys trying to change us? let us decide. are we going to fight you like an award, we have nukes under control so what's your united states interest? why historic situation in

russia and unfortunately american government doesn't give a clear answer why. what you want? what is your objection? what's your goal? to have russia as a democratic country, okay? but why if russians don't want it. they don't want to have american-style democracy. what's your business? why china doesn't teach russia how to live? why like india, sometimes united states doesn't give lessons to put in. why american president and department of state give a lecture? i want this side, i know the way it should be done that way but still, you have to answer and americans have a question, what's our interest in russia? what do we want to see? to follow objections and you are right, it's not always good. so that's a question really,

not on the side and that's what i would say. and i will go back there. >> hello, i'm elaine salerno, an associate director of the byu you wisconsin international ukraine in the university. and i really do appreciate the panel and the perspectives put forth. nikolai, you started off with a really great point about the history and how the history is and i'd like to ask in context with that, we often thought of culture is the thickest form of binding of anything and so whether we call it history or maybe we should be calling culture which is to build up over hundreds of years,

thousands and so maybe the culture has been described here and other people have read about, meaning the culture or the dynamics in russia are unique into russia as its culture is unique into america or england or germany and so forth so while we are looking at that, how would this end russia, the people of russia addressed the issues that are important to russia and russia as larger in the world to be able to succeed successfully for russia to be a part of the world community versus the current status which is not necessarily in the interests of russia in its role in the community?

i'm actually seeing natalia and start stop speaking almost on the same page but with a different take on how to accomplish that. would each of you approach, how could it be done within russia? it's not about the us or germany or so forth to tell. how would the russian people, to make this so? thank you. >> you know what, i mean if we talk about culture, if we talk about psychology, this can take really ours of discussing so let me just say this. i was staying with my friends house in los angeles just a month ago and he had problems with the infestation of rats.

really that was a few problems and chasing them to the quarter, setting traps did not prove a helpful tactic so because their bodies would rot in place and the owner would attract new generational rats but he finally figured out that away should be crafted for rats to come out or come down from the book and he should try to make it impossible for the rack to get back so he made this metal thing, you know like a metal board around the wall of the house so the rack could come down and never come again so my idea is that sooner or later, this will happen. the russian elites will just

have to to gather sit around the table with representatives of the opposition and they will not do this because they are so good. they will do this because it's in their self-interest because they will do this cause they want to. they will want to survive. they will not want to repeat the destiny of their predecessors what i talked about earlier, yeltsin area or soviet era elites, so on. and they will have to work out a set of rules which would change russia into a country ruled by law rather than personality and this is where the us i think should help because this process will require things like guarantees from the west, from the western leaders, from american leaders also. guarantees that the members of

the russian elites will not obey their families, not be prosecuted and stuff like that. i mean, it's a long process that will require negotiations and the joint work of the best minds and intellectuals from both russia and the west. that's taking about technically how this transition could be made but talking about culture, well, yes. we do have this historic tradition and yes, it's like with any human being. and again, speaking about this example of an alcoholic, what needs to be done for him or her to stop drinking. one day they have to find themselves . they will be on the edge of death and that's when the person has to face this choice. death or a new life?

and this is where i agree with natella. yes, russia probably needs to find her in a situation like that and the fact that it has not yet chosen the way of democracy, civic freedoms and stuff is probably because it hasn't yet found itself in a situation like that with all this and the revolution, everything. but we don't want this to happen in the form of a popular revolt in russia because any revolt will be to really unpredictable circumstances including finding nukes in the hands of a group of people like this committee of training for example where it can explode anywhere. but i do believe culture can be changed.

i mean, everybody we can change themselves. we can change ourselves. every person can change him or herself without betraying him or herself and educating peopl , talking to people, changing their minds by means of television, internet, lecturing, everything. as a journalist i can tell you for sure, give me or natella and we can make a dream team of russian journalists if we make it to russian national television and spend like several months, i can tell you the culture will change. people will change. the way propaganda has worked in the past 15 years, we've seen how quickly we change the minds of certain people. it can work the opposite way too. and so i absolutely believe there is a chance and i will personally do my best to take advantage of that chance

because like any other thing, the country falling apart, the civil war in russia, everything else that can happen, this will not make the world a better place. >> can i say something. >> just give me a second.you want to change, just to dramatize it. you want to change it as you think it is right for russia. the people in charge, they think this is right for russia also. the one way they will not see russia people as a subject like good people or bad people. but that is talking about the beginning. a democratic leader like a bunch of these country, more democratic? we have less democratic countries but it is basic defense at every channel. that's why i say the thing that needs to be done is change the country.

no, no. from personality to rule by law and that's why am talking about at least getting together and making a set of rules, changing the country. that's the major points. >> don't be afraid of something like that at all? >> i'm not absolutely sure this will not help. >> i think that 10 years ago we talked about the problem of soviet union. now this channel changed a lot so i don't remember the question. i asked him but he answered. it is not enough blood for existence of russian democracy. >> absolutely. i was quoting yavlinsky, a famous russian politician and yes, it's true. he says russia pays for

democracy with only three lives meaning the three young men who died on august 19th 1991. and yes, that's true. that's a fact. >> i think we can add many lives to the three and it seems to me that awaiting when mister putin will give the channel, it's something fantastical. i'm also sure that informing people what's going on is also not enough because i have told over there, everyone can see internet information about action, about innovation in ukrainian, about anything but people do not go to the state actions. my quote is to mister putin himself because i think that there are a lot of people who

don't take care about politics but some days, some days there are power with special science and when he goes to the pedestrian crossway, sometimes somebody takes the business of somebody's husband, wife so there are many abilities to be offended by this power, these authorities and they are top journalists. i don't remember who wrote the subject, they begin to protest but they were for invasion to primary. they were before the law of the marcus and so far and so forth. i think this is restrictive laws, they will do some kind of service, and make a scene and other people who suffer from it, they should take their

neighbor to the hand. i know this also sounds a bit fantastical but i think this will come tuned.>> and? >> commentary from my political view, for example the applicants come to us and we say we are foreign agents and the person says, i don't care. we say we receive money from road. a person says i don't care. so yes, the person who faces police brutality, torture or adversity and has seen atrocities or his son is abducted or disappears, they don't care about who helps them and it's every country. united states, germany, china and russia so it's not a problem of culture. it's the issue of human dignity. i think.

so everybody could face police brutality and human rights violations, detention, legal detentions and so on. so i think the culture doesn't mean here. thank you. >> okay. mitchell pohlman, i've been involved in russian relations and in one form or another for many years. in exchanges, doing elections, monitoring, media projects. first the comment and a question.

comments, nikolai, why do we care about russia? it's really very simple. they have lots of nuclear weapons pointed at us. that's all you have to say. so long as there are nuclear weapons pointed at the united states, whether controlling the button, what's going on in russia is going to be of concern to people here. it's really that simple. mister castle, he himself said so obviously we are going to take an interest and the complete opposite is true as well. but i wanted to go back to our conversation earlier about what happened in the 90s and the people exchanges because i remember that time very well. there were lots and lots of exchanges. there was lots of attempts to help russians and on the people level. some with private funding, with small grants, some with american funding but as i said, now everything is foreign agents. it's gotten harder and harder for people, for americans to help russians on a people level and it didn't just start recently left we forget, the

peace corps has been in russia, i believe it was 2000 that was closed down about 15 years ago on the grounds that it was a spying operation and if you have people in charge in the government in russia who viewed with suspicion if not hostility everythingcoming out of the united states , we can only do so much and i would like to add that quite a few russians don' even seem to realize that in the 1990s we did provide a lot of help to russians. i do a journalist here , rosinski who commented to me in the top where he went in for the first time that americans had paid the salaries of nuclear scientists in the early 90s yet never heard that before and he's a journalist. you know, the economic catastrophe of the early 90s, we may or may not have made a contribution but it was going to happen anyway with the collapse of the soviet system no matter what we did and i

would like to hear russian journalists such as yourself talk more about that rather than just accept the line that oh, all the help we got in the 90s was useless and so on and so forth. those free-market systems, if that's what you want to call it the economic system we have in russia today probably wouldn't exist if it weren't for an expert's from the us, from europe, people like andrews hazlitt for example. >> mayor dubinsky international broadcasting bureau. so the logic that in the fight between the television set and refrigerator, in the relative freedom of internet in russia because we know that russia has the most number of internet users in the european countrie , the tv set with media with

actually, how do you explain that? that people who have access to internet and can get any kind of information still prefer to stay in the majority in support of putin? thank you. former economic assistant and us consulate with a question. i was working in my office over 20 years and i was observing how elections are done in russia and when i read that the kremlin wants to make a legitimate parliamentary election system in september. how? even ahead of the election commission, even his honest person, she is only a warrior

in her field. what about election commissions in polling stations? they don't know how to help plan elections. they don't know how to manipulate, how to get the results. how do you get the selection session? >> i am not sure i'm right but my idea is they want to change brands from magicians to a very honest and sensitive ally. and maybe it means they want to change something but i'mnot sure it is possible to do . >> .

>> they use social networks to post, or whatever. and that come it takes time. that's what i believe. television or refrigerator. at one point, at one point they will kind of combined, come together. and if there is a good thing about the economic catastrophe rush is pretty fast running, is that soon more and more people

will feel it. and more and more people will realize come will understand that it's now the state works. it's exactly this so-called vertical of power. that is the reason why the refrigerators are becoming empty. and they will understand it's the television also. the television has played a great role in their refrigerators eventually becoming empty. so when more and more people will realize that, when more and more people will realize that they have to think for themselves, that have to use their own brains, that's when they will start reading more books, reading articles on the internet. and not only posting cats and stuff, i mean, this process takes time. i just wanted to comment, well, definitely.

i mean, i personally know about a lot of u.s. programs and exchange programs and educational programs. and so on. and yes, i keep telling, i mean, i keep sharing all the information i have with the students when i lecture in moscow colleges. when i just talk to people, talk to journalists, well, of course. and when you are saying it has to stop now, yes, it has stopped. and just come right out it is very difficult to launch exchange programs or educational programs, but then again i'm just saying it doesn't mean that we've got to stop trying. i mean, everybody, their own place, i working as a journali journalist, yes. i used to nation television at my disposal when i was in my 20s. now i don't have that because i've been on the blacklist of national television channels of the past 10, well, 12 years.

but that doesn't mean i have to raise my hands and just switch to travel journalism. i've got to make some money. we all in our place have to do something, if you think of what we can do. and i'm sure that's what i start with. the russian, both the russian people, on the one hand the so-called ordering people, and the russian elites will really soon have to think again about their place in life in the face of russia. but it's the elites who eventually will just have to gather and think of magna carta or something with it. because history no such examples that at least have gathered in the past to change the rules, by which even, even if it's thanks to those rules that they have become -- all their fortune and power into one.

for the sake of their own survival they will just have to think of major change. this major change will have to happen. >> i would like to make a brief comment about the question of why you guys need to interfere in our affairs, and russia's affairs. well, maybe it's a very optimistic and idealistic your maybe i'm an idealist, but i presume that there should be a balance, i mean, it's after world war ii, the united nations, so yes, i don't suppose it's a fifth column. i mean come ngos who are funded by foreign countries because it should be a balance. who stops russia to open ngos, combating police brutality integrated. i always ask russian state

officials, well, let's do commit against torture in the trinity. i would certainly work there against police brutality. we have in many cases in the united states and russian people always love it, you know, news about police brutality in the united states. yes, yes, they have also torture. so it should be a balance. ngos should be independent in every country. united states sponsors the ngos in russia and russia largest ngos in the united states. that's okay because they should be independent of you on human rights issues in every country. because when an ngo sponsored by, for example, in russia sponsored by russian officials, it's not an ngo.

because that organization says all is okay. they just shake the hands with a state officials, prison officials, and that's all. concerts, holidays and so on. so i think that should be a balance him and maybe it is idealistic but that's me. okay, thank you. >> i promised you guys be back tonight, so there. we don't know what to do, so we got our list and i think you have to think smarter. we have to get smarter now come and to find a way to united states and russia to work together. and let's thank our speakers and to thank you, guys. [applause] and i hope i will see you soon on cgi. thank you. [inaudible conversations]

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>> if you missed any of this panel on russian domestic politics you can find it online at c-span.org. tomorrow night on c-span, and issue spotlight on opioid addiction. we will hear from her recovered addicts and their loved ones. ted cruz on his sisters addiction and death and look at debate in congress over how to combat the epidemic. c-span spotlight on opioid addiction tomorrow night at 7 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> tonight on c-span the supreme court cases that shape our history come to life with a c-span series landmark cases, historic supreme court decisions. are 12 part series explores real life stories and constitutional drama spent some of the most significant decisions in american history. >> john marshall in marbury v. madison said this is different

if the constitution is a political document. it sets up the political structures but it's also a law and if it is a lot we have the courts to tell what it means and that's fine on the -- that's binding on the other branches. >> the fact it is the ultimate anti-presidential case exactly what you don't want to do. do. >> who should make the decisions about those debates. lochner versus. the supreme court said it should make the decision about those debates. >> tonight we'll look at the case but denied blacks citizenship under the prosecution and invalidated the missouri compromise. scott v sanford tonight on c-span and c-span.org. >> u.s. digital services and tech experts from silicon valley to washington, d.c. to of government information systems problems. the agency estimated by mikey dickerson conformal google googe employee who affects a healthcare.gov website.

he and his team spoke at the computer history museum in mountain view, california. this is about one hour 30 minutes. [applause] >> and no for tonight's program. and october 2013 the obama administration faced a very large domestic crisis. healthcare.gov, the portal the nation was supposed to use to sign up for health insurance under the affordable care act was in shambles. it was several months late and more than 300% over budget. it looked and worked, or didn't work out like the internet of 1996. the consultants and experts who would build it for the government were warning it would take millions more and more weeks not months to fix. and then something quite amazing happened, largely due to the created of the president himself, not a real team of young engineers and project managers from silicon valley came to the rescue. working day and night from

maryland they completely rebuilt health care.com in a few short weeks. the total cost was in the single-digit millions and the new site version 2.0 was a complete success. 18 million americans have signed up for health care because of it. from the startup environment emerge to remarkable digital efforts within government but president obama now called the 21st century equivalent of the peace corps. one is the use of digital service. the other is an organization called 18f. together they're calling an digital professionals to washington and other places around the country to lift the 20th century government bureaucracy and its technology into the digital century. the effort is quietly taken government by storm. the agencies have experienced it now say they will never go back to the old way of doing things. tonight we have three founders of use ds and making up with us along with u.s. digital services officer assigned to the department of education. we are going to explore with them is quite revolution from its roots in the darkness of

health care.com 1.0 to the bipartisan victories that is now winning in washington today. please join me in welcoming mikey dickerson, hillary hartley, haley van dyck and lisa gelobter. [applause] >> high, guys. >> hello. >> as you can see the president refused t-shirts understood not in t-shirts and they are not all guys. [applause] in fact this is the most unique panel that we have had tonight for a number of reasons and we are glad to have you here. i'll tell you what. rather than by trying to introduce what each of you does and what you're doing now, why don't you just introduce

yourselves briefly. i would like you to add what it was you were doing just before you started doing what you were doing now. mikey, let's start with you. >> i am mikey dickerson. i am the administrator as the color of the u.s. digital service. that is a government word that means manager. [laughter] and right before gather to do this, if you count this as a healthcare.gov story you're talking about a second ago, then right before that i was a rookie just across the street with google. i was a slight liability engineering manager. >> hillary? hi. i'm hillary hartley. i came to the federal government for the presidential innovation fellowship, and at the end of my fellowship we launched 18f. it is a much more dramatic story there, but i've actually been working with government for,

gosh, about 20 years, which is crazy to me. but it was always sort of thing outside. when i found out about the presidential innovation partnership if you like the right time both in my career and also in sort of where i saw government going and what i wanted to do and how i wanted to have an effect on the services that all of the use in your daily lives, the fellowship felt like my fix to these like into government for a short stint and have been there ever since. >> a short stint. >> it was supposed to be six months. didn't go home after six months. >> lisa. >> i am a lisa gelobter. hello, good evening. i am the chief digital services offers a just department of education. i've been in government a whopping eight months. my first day was april 6 it before that i had done zero cynics to actually buy before this i was running digital for b.e.t., black entertainment television network, viacom

network. >> great, thanks. >> i name is haley van dyck and i'm the deputy administrator, and before usgs i was breaking a t-bone study to use ds set up and created. >> that's great, thanks. what is the problem? [laughter] who's going to take that one? >> hopefully someone else will jump on that one. >> the problem is so multifaceted it's hard to start describing. succinct as possible, the biggest issue is that the private sector over the last two decades has been an incredible amount of time and energy improving itself and getting really, really great building digital services that delight citizens and people across the world. so all sorts of innovations that we don't think of as innovation anymore taken place in the last few decades.

design, clock, all sorts of things. the biggest problem is about all of those gigantic transitions have completely skipped over government. government is still sitting back in the early '90s back with all of these areas workload is illegal, what users need are dropped from everything from how we build digital service that we write and think about policy. and that is as essential as possible the biggest issue. there's another side of the problem inside government, which is the government is good at persisting and is gotten incredibly good at developing processes that maintain the status quo. to the incredible detriment of government. that is such a pervasive concern and failure, or kind of concern of failure essentially that it has created this downward spiral where the status quo has become the riskiest option.

and government has really heartbreaking itself out of this mold. what we are going to do is come in a break that cycle and bring in the private sector best practices that are very, very normal to every single person in this room and transplant those in the government where they are much less normal and radical and actually try and shift or raise the bar and shift with the status quo is today. >> it would be really easy for us looking from the outside in to say that's just so typical. this is the federal government. down again, kind of ossified, status quo. it would be a very simplistic way of looking at this. what you guys about and actually digging into working in these agencies is it's a lot more both subtle and complex than just simply the simplistic view that we might have used. can you talk a little bit more about both of those things? >> i would like to talk a little bit about 2012. the group of people started the presidential innovation fellowship. it really was the mvp of this

movement in terms of saying we know that there are amazing brilliant people inside the agency who live and breathe their job come and live and breathe this they did all they want to do is do the job that is helping to be better. so for whatever reason many of them are stuck against walls or they don't have the in house talent to get it done. done. they of try to do things and maybe that's gone awry. and so thought park and to the folks that saw this neat and said let's see if we can entice people from the tech sector come people from industry to come in for a short boat and boat tours of duty, six to 12 months, see if we can attract of this new type of technologists that has sort of come as todd likes to say, heart the size of jupiter that her mission and, in fact, oriented, giving in, give them partnering with the people who have amazing ideas who are just stuck for one reason or another.

is imparted and see what they can do, see if they can shift. added work. i think that's really what we we all building on today. yet you can take a survey and you can say that is blowing up and that is blowing up a many to help out here. at the end of the day the people on the ground trying their hardest to get that done and are stuck for whatever reason. >> i would add, someone who is partner with an agency and embedded within an agency that is 100% true. and they are welcoming this change and they are embracing the change in asking for more change. i had somebody said to me when i came in, we thought you would be wearing a cape. like they are inviting us in to doing more than just software but to talk about how to change come out in a culture change come out of a culture shift. how to think that using the methodology we do for software development, things like center design and human centered design thinking, thinking about how to put the customer first and foremost and how did you take

that and extended beyond tech. how do extend into policymaking into a legal user centered government. the agency's come any tools in their arsenal that can add to actually fix that can make things better pay and passionate day in and day out. they are all in. >> the name todd parkas, and for those who don't know, todd was one of leaders agreed the presidential innovation fellowship and as a former cto of the government and one of the cofoundercofounder s and real drivers behind use digital service and he's sitting right over there. so high, todd. [applause] >> you can probably stand a. a shout out for todd, i if this whole team of people sitting over there just waiting to recruit at the end of the night. if you're interested, make a beeline to the first two rows over there and talk to them. you've talked to what the vision is and you have defined the

problem a bit and lisa, you talked about how it is taking shape. mikey, i'm going to roll the clock back a little bit to healthcare.gov. these things were not come through they were not happening, the vision for today and, in fact, mayb may be the things the most representative of the problem we are been on display. talk about what you encountered when you guys came in to try to clean this up. >> sure. [laughter] this is a little bit like reliving the drama of the past. so might answer to that has changed over the last year and a half. i know som some of you ever been taught what is before. there are many layers to what was going on there, and at the surface if you just walked in as an engineer and walking a look at a bunch of other engineers, to see what they're doing and how they're doing it, and it was total insanity like when you first look.

they were 55 different companies, contracted to work on different parts of healthcare.gov, which is a fairly complicated operation, but it ain't that complicated. they were, i don't know, conservatively, nobody can visit another piece of insanity. literally nobody knows how many people were engineers, developers, what if you want to call them, tactical roles on the project but leaves hundreds. they are in dozens of different buildings. that only do they not have any kind of habit or custom of working together. they were in most cases explicitly for people from communicating with each other because the way contracts are managed in the government. and this was set up and there was nobody, the government reserve for itself the job of courtney how all this is going to go. the problem was the government doesn't have that skill set and i'll just leave that where that is. [laughter] i could leverage on that but the government just was really equipped to do that job.

and so what was going on just made zero sense. so a lot of the things we did that helped them like a lot of stuff we did that was like a battlefield medicine that helped a lot in a very short period of time with stuff that seems silly to even explain now, such as having all those people meet together. like, sometimes. in a place. you mentioned in the introduction the makeshift headquarters up in maryland. yeah, there's a operation zampa still there, still going full blast around the clock. clock. we still of people t but about although i'm not sure they are exactly the type because it's not a high volume night on thursdays. but it's still there. like, like installing marketing, that was a thing that had not been done. so without that, like these hundreds of people who are responsible for little teeny pieces that will all have to collaborate together to make the distributed system were,

literally didn't know whether the site was up were not other than by cnn. so that's exactly our margin was for the first three or four weeks or so. >> you mentioned your view has changed. they used to be one thing and it's not another. what's changed? >> so all the stuff i said is still true, and you will still find behavior like that when you walk in a look at a project that's going super well. it's just a footnote why got to the point comes to asking this question, start peeling back the layers, there's a lot more to it and it goes t to a just a second ago come like a simplistic come a very simplistic like a two sentence explanation would be the government is stuck in the past, and we use that as shorthand when we say that and it's true enough. it's harder to figure out than that. the government does not actually stuck. it does change. it moves forward for whatever forward happens to me at the time. it just does that at a pace which is a lot slower.

and it was designed to be this way. that's what's so hard about it. how many people, i mean for the people in a job like ours, like politicians run for office and say what their vision is to government run more like a business come more efficient and faster make decisions quicker. we don't want the government to do that for the most part. we don't want social security to radically change behavior between this year and next year. that would be not popular, be not good. people are dependent on those benefits to level the rest of their lives on and that's not a business to want disrupted. nobody wants to. the government was designed with a value that is written into the constitute a but it will get equal protection under the law. that's another constraint that businesses to operate with. like nobody is building, like take whatever tech company wants to look at any restaurant over there, picking up an into every single one of them has put some

thought into who is their target market and their target market is not the whole entire united states of america. .. what are now required. we all use websites that are accustomed to these things and yet the government has not been ready to do that and is only just now getting outfitted today -- to do it. why is it taking so long? we are 20 years in the worldwide web and probably way -- not as long but probably 15 good solid years into planet scale e-commerce, does it have to do with the way it's structured, no one has been the quarterback,

what would be your theories about that? >> there's a lot of factors that go into that is how we actually buy and procure services and unfortunately i kind of alluded to earlier. governments are through long flow processes particularly procurement. that's how you see how the private sector operates and how government does today and what we are trying to shift and change. we still buy software the same way we buy battleships which is through five-year long requirements, you know, gathering phases before we start coating anything, and usually it's another five years after that before we push anything to production and let users touch it. that just simply doesn't work

anymore as anybody here in the room knows, and so i think -- but those processes are propped up through low-intended set of rules and regulations which mike was alluding to, was well intended and for great purposes but are kind of clashing as we start looking at digital services and are able to move quickly and adjust to services. quite frankly, even for the private sector weren't a thing 15 years ago. some of the innovations have happened rather fast and government isn't design today move -- designed to move that quickly. i don't know if he would like to talk about the actual gpa, innovative way of buying services from the private sector. >> go for it. >> absolutely, one of the things

that came out of the innovation was something called the rfpe, request for proposal and trying to disrupt how they get done. they can often be 300 pages, maybe even a thousand pages long. as hail y -- hailey alluded to, the way government buys things and in particular with the case software, so one of the excerpts, we are running two big experiments right now. kind of the notion of marketplace, just to back up very quickly, sort of designs in the ecosystem, the digital coalition as you saw in the picture that john shows and so 18f is a consult angie inside the federal government so make

essentially build a decision, build a product for you or are we going to help you figure out what it is you need and how you're going to need it and who is going to build it for you and kind of with that context, one of our lines of business is sort of a round of acquisition services. the bpa. for vendors to get into a pool who has been prevetted and precleared and can do business with the government very easily. concept of the bpa in and of itself wasn't -- wasn't radical. how we got vendors into it shook things up a little bit. here is

an api, set of data, here is an api, here is the problem statement, build us an app. we want to see how you do it and we want to make sure you understand what we mean by user design and user research and all of your code is going to be open source. we want to be able to see it and judge it. and so we gave them two weeks to build something and at the end of that, we picked, i believe about 17 companies that are now in the pool of precleared, precleared vendors that operate like all of us do -- like operate like our teams do that use methodologies that have the laser focus. >> two weeks, are you kidding? >> yes. that was kind of the point. there's the concept in our

world, the minimum viable product. that's all we wanted. we just wanted to see essentially that you could build something, that you could connect the data and some some output and you understood all the ways that we work. some of the results surprised us in terms of there was one -- >> in what way? >> there's one story and i will not say the name of the company, they actually sent an us an e-mail during the question phase and we did sort of the fip call phases of this procurement and during the question and answer phase asking for the data on a cd, on a disk because they didn't understand the requirement, there's an open data and you need to work with that. >> what's an api? [laughter] >> there was some surprising

moments, by far, we now have 17 really awesome teams that we can -- our inboxes, intake is exploding. we only say yes to about 10% of the projects that come to us for various reasons, but the main reason is because we simply don't have the people to do it. so bpa is going to allow us to scale in a way and to partner with the business community in a way -- it's going to be revolutionary about how software gets built. like hailey said, really raising the bar and setting the new standard and having business come along with us to spread that out throughout government contract. >> modern software techniques. i ask people what are you doing, i use modern software techniques, is that essentially what you're talking about? >> essentially.

>> let's -- one more process question and then i want to dive into real stories about things that you have been doing or working. >> opportunities. >> explain, yes, are you reading my notes? [laughter] >> someone explain the relationship between usdf and 18f. >> yeah. so to start when we look at government over all it's really important to -- you know, from the outside it can feel like an institution and really important to recognize that it's much less like a single company and more like an entire industry that needs disruption. in order to do that we came with a three-layer technique how we can insert agents at each level to help catalyze that change. the three layers real quickly is

first the digital service that mikey and i work at and we deploy teams into agencies, the most talented people we can possibly find to go work on the most mission-critical important services at agencies across government. the second layer is also part of the united states digital service, one of the most important things to disguise these teams so that they become part of the host environment and start working on the transformation from the inside. and then the third layer is 18f, has incredible superpower that the first two layers don't have, they can operate in function like a business. they have the incredible model where they are fee for service. their clients are paying, so any agency that wants to work with them and can pay them can and

this brings in a huge opportunity to actually to scale in a way that we can. so these two work really well together in terms of, you know, kind of top down, being able to drop in to where it's needed and 18f can work from the bottom up and help scale a lot of the common services and, you know, functions for the agencies. >> yeah. the business models are different, and like hailey explains better than i do, you need both of them, they both are going to provide, they're both critical piece of the solution. being cost reimbursed in 18f, general services administration is the home agency for 18f and the agency purpose to provide reimbursed services to all the rest of the government, that means that they are not bound by a congressional appropriation and how big they can scale up to. they're in a better position to build things that are going --

to build a product, say, the shared service and maintain it for a long thing. that's the thing that doesn't make out of the white house the way we do. it has one disadvantage kind of like vampire rules where you have to be invited and have to do an agreement before you can go into a place that might need your help and we have from the white house we are limited from the size we can grow to how much congress wants to appropriate for us. we will only do a fairly small number of things, we are not set up in a way to build and sustain something for decades. we can certainly take on stuff on the scale of months or a few years or well positioned for that and we have kind of kool-aid rules that you can go through the walls. [laughter] >> and why is it called 18f? >> it's our little to 30 rock. general headquarters in dc are

at the corner of 18th and f. i don't know if anybody has seen the silicon valley hbo show, they are brainstorming and we totally did that. we came with about 4 that we sent up to the lawyers and 18f was the only one that really didn't pose any problems. but it's stuck. i really like it. >> i love that story so much. i was really hoping like area 51. i don't know. [laughter] >> little dark about it and there you are at the corner of 18 and f street. that's really cool. let's talk about digging in and getting things done to develop a revise services and lisa let's start with you because you're in an agency that touches everybody in the country, education, in some way and you guys have done innovative things. talk about what you have been up to.

>> absolutely. my first project was college score card. >> college score card. >> has been successful. but the idea behind it, it's presidential initiative in partnership with the department of education, and the premise was college education is the surest path to the middle class, right, unemployment rates for people with high school diplomas only is 12%, if you have a college degree, a bachelor's it is 3%. there are studies that show that over the course of your lifetime if you have about 4-year institutions it's worth a million more dollars over the course of your lifetime. so getting a college degree is superimportant and yet the people that are most in need of it, low-income folks, people who are learning english, like they don't have access to great support system advisers and the question is how do you get this

kind of information, what makes for a good school, what's going to give you the best value, how do you actually get that into their hands, that was the tool that we were charged with building. i showed up, there was a meeting with the president the week before i joined and they were like, lisa, will fix that and so that's what i ended up on the ground with. it was a fascinating experience, having come straight to private sector and landing on the ground and understanding the magnitude and how important this was and how this could affect the future of our country. as you talk about, if every person in the country had a bachelor's degree, just imagine what it will actually will do, impact on our jobs. so the magnitude of the problem is really awesome. so i understand one how government works but more importantly what this looks like

and what we actually really needed to build because nobody had a clear definition of what it was going to look like. we went around and talked with all the stakeholders and folks creating policy and people creating the deat and the white house and all that stuff, about four days into the project, how do students search for colleges. i must talk to students, i have to talk to some students. and somebody on my team -- and i had been in dc in four days. how do i find somebody? somebody on my team is go to the mall, i was like that's genius, the mall where the kids hang out and there's stores. or the mall outside the building, the washington mall. that's what happens when you don't know dc. >> it was also school field trips. >> it was spring break.

>> we got people from wisconsin, nebraska, minnesota, it was a brilliant idea, and from that we also went to talk to high school and anacostia, we talked to people that wrote letters to the write, we talked to charter school folks. so we gathered all of this information and trying to figure out what we need today build and how we could actually get the information in the hands of students, what you're going to pay to go to college is not the sticker price. that, in fact, it might be better to go to a private school from a finance perspective. looking at how much debt you actually might leave school with and looking at the earnings that you're going to have after you've attended the schools so that you can actually know that

you would be able to pay any loans. these were kind of the data metrics that we were trying to get out there in the hands and really change the conversation -- we wanted consumers to be able to get with the information and go with their feet. so the first thing that we actually built was something which was a college score card. it was mobile first. and it is -- i mean, it does exactly kind of what we set out to do. it is an mvp. i'm really proud of it. more importantly from my perspective what we did we opened up the data, our password was set the data free and so we actually build -- >> probably steal our password. [laughter] >> now it's completely in the open. we built an api that would

enable other tools, other -- other organizations that might be creating stuff for audiences. not everybody is going to come to an ed.gov website. so right now schools are prized for being exclusive. so not letting more people in, and is that the right metrics that we want to value in our schools? getting the data that we think is important to look at in a school out to the students wherever they might be, right? you want to get your content out to your audience wherever they are on whatever device in whatever time they're looking for. that's exactly the idea behind creating an api and getting the data out. we actually built the consumer-facing tool on top of api. in technology is dog fooding, referencing implementation on it and we are were one of the first organizations in government to

actually use our own service. >> how is that going? >> it launched supersuccessfully. we've got a million users, i think, within the first week and -- and it is -- so when we actually started up, it wasn't just the consumer tool, we had also -- there were 7 people that stood up at launch that incorporate it had data into their own tool. >> a million and change unique users in the first week and that was against the year before. there was a previous version of college score card. the old version did 168,000 unique users. i will never forget because i got asked in that meeting with the president by the president and i didn't know. [laughter] so i went and looked it up. if i get -- >> how does the president react when you say i'm not sure? >> he moves on. [laughter]

>> it's better than lying. if i could add behind-the-scenes commentary, she talks about how we did, did design and policy decisions about what data we were going to release which was incredibly touchy, fbi way. this -- by the way. this was when administration announced intention to do something like college score card and the very idea was incredibly controversial, the higher education community has feelings about this. it was a messy policy issue by the time we got involved. and in that meeting that lisa is talking about, april 1st, that's when i remember, we heard from the president, we heard from the vice president, we heard from secretary duncan was the ed secretary at the time, all of them had impassion views on it

and the president made clear what he wanted to get done. i was there. i put in my two sense except for the part where i didn't know my answer. after that was over, we had really frank conversations with policy decision makers and said we can help you do this, we can make a website thing, whatever it is that you want, we can do that in the timetable you're talking about but you're going to have to be -- we are going to have a lot of say over the product decisions because it's not going to be possible to do your typical government christmas tree waterfall plan with everybody hanging their pet project as an or ornament. after that, we were out on a

limb and had to deliver it. we made that promise as lisa said before she started and this is here what you've got. we've had a bunch of -- we sweated it to the end and it was a stressful launch thing. once it gout out -- once that thing was actually released, it got very positive reviews. >> that's gate. >> the agency is not accustomed to that happening. >> that's true. [laughter] >> it was successful and got great review. >> spanish-language tools now. there are tools specifically related to low-income students, side-by-side comparison and it's tremendous and much more work to be done.

one of the incredible things and how partnership can be effective, the development actually started on the project in the middle of june. api, front end, all of that stuff went from the middle of june to the middle of september, not for nothing, even private sector that would be pretty fantastic. this is what i want to talk about a little bit. we actually partnered on this project together to bring it all to fruition and make it happen and we wouldn't have been able to do it if it weren't for the services that 18f had been building out. i don't know where you were going. that's how we were all able to get it done. >> this is a great project to talk about just for a couple of reasons, one is that partnership, you know, the department of education need today get this done. 18f was able to essentially do an agreement with them to put a

development team together and lever the services, the infrastructure that we had already built, so the infrastructure for the rest of the other two layers comes into play. the other one is just to talk about how we work and to really talk a little bit about what's different and why it's different now. >> good. >> and 18f has done a couple of times, it happens to a certain extent. this has been something kind of on the docket for about three years and the original vision was that the president wanted a ranking 1-100 or whatever. that changed and was due to the team saying, that's great, mr. president, and we should talk to high school kids and their parents and their guidance counselors and figure out what they need. do they want a ranking and they want to be able to search and contrast and what data are they searching for.

>> was he cool with that, open to that? >> i was not in those meetings. [laughter] >> we were going to have unprecedented, the thing that was important to focus on was doing the right thing for the audience. we took into account what was important to audience. >> there are two other not universally needed not necessarily projects you have been working on but big areas with big policies implications behind them. one is the veteran's administration and the second is immigration and the whole green card system. and you guys have taken both of those on somebody described as really hairballs when we were in a washington meeting with you guys. can you talk about those because those are significant.