The Online Frontline

Aspen Tech Policy Hub fellows create US Digital Response to tackle the pandemic.

Give NowIn March 2020, just as they were wrapping up their Aspen Tech Policy Hub fellowship, Raylene Yung and Jessica Cole co-founded U.S. Digital Response—an organization that connects pro-bono technologists with government agencies, small businesses, and nonprofits to assist their Covid-19 responses. The New York Times gave U.S. Digital Response its “Good Tech” honor, and Financial Times named Yung one of its six digital changemakers.

U.S. Digital Response now works with government partners in 36 states and territories—partnerships, Yung says, that before the fellowship would have been “unthinkable.” During the fellowship, Yung says she learned how technology policy “plays a role in everything from how quickly people receive benefits to how well voting systems function.”

That insight—what Yung describes as a deep respect for the power of working across disciplines—led her and Cole to co-found U.S. Digital Response as the pandemic hit in full force, which coincided with the fellowship’s end. What started as a pop-up volunteer organization has since turned into a full-scale, rapid-response network with thousands of technologists standing by to help and with over 100 projects completed.

So far, teams for U.S. Digital Response, which is funded by philanthropy, have developed a template for an election-information website now in use across a dozen counties, have helped the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania track and model hospital capacity, and have created a system to let small businesses in California find out if they’re eligible for stimulus funds. “And,” Yung says, “we’re just getting started.”