The Product Experience (Mind the Product)
What I Learned From Unbuilding Products and Systems in the Public Sector - Ayushi Roy (Product Leader)
Why It Matters
Understanding how to build—or rather, unbuild—public‑sector products is crucial for anyone aiming to use technology for the public good, as it directly impacts the delivery of essential services like food stamps, tax credits, and emergency assistance. This episode offers a timely roadmap for product professionals transitioning to government roles, showing how to create equitable, effective solutions that reach the most vulnerable citizens.
Key Takeaways
- •Public sector demand exists; focus on unbuilding redundant systems.
- •Build for lowest‑common‑digital denominator, not high‑end devices.
- •Thin‑slice modular rollout enables learning at scale for government.
- •Internal agency adoption secures political support before public launch.
- •Success measured by outcomes for underserved, not ROI.
Pulse Analysis
Ayushi Roy, a lifelong civil servant turned product leader, explains why public‑sector product work flips the traditional private‑sector playbook. Demand for services already exists, so the priority is not creating new markets but unbuilding redundant systems and simplifying legacy infrastructure. This mindset shifts focus from aggressive growth to delivering tangible outcomes for low‑income families, early‑education, paid‑leave, and tax‑credit programs, aligning policy intent with digital delivery.
A recurring theme is building for the lowest‑common‑digital denominator. Roy recounts a text‑based emergency hotline for campus safety and an Oakland eviction‑assistance app that initially failed on high‑end Macs and iPhones. By switching to affordable flip phones and library‑grade monitors, the team ensured accessibility for users with limited technology, reinforcing humility and recruiting talent motivated by problem‑solving rather than fancy tools. This user‑centric approach is essential for any digital government initiative.
When tackling the IRS Direct File project, Roy’s team employed a thin‑slice, modular strategy. They launched internally with IRS employees, then expanded by tax‑scenario complexity rather than income level, gathering data and political buy‑in at each stage. This iterative rollout illustrates how public‑sector product managers can translate private‑sector agile methods into scalable, outcome‑driven solutions, emphasizing internal alignment, stakeholder support, and measurable impact over traditional ROI metrics.
Episode Description
In the private sector, product teams pick their customers, generate demand, and ship into something close to a green field. In the public sector, none of that holds. Ayushi Roy — Chief Program Officer at New America's New Practice Lab and a lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School — joins Randy to unpack what changes when your user base is already sitting in front of you, your scrutiny is congressional, and the right answer is sometimes to delete ten systems rather than build an eleventh.
Drawing on her work on IRS Direct File, the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Illinois childcare voucher system, and a text-based 911 alternative that rolled out to 800,000 students across 13 universities, Ayushi makes the case for a distinct public-sector product playbook: thin-slicing for safe failure, designing for the lowest digital denominator, separating design problems from engineering problems, and treating unbuilding as a first-class option.
Chapter markers
01:48 — From aid monitoring in Jordan to digital delivery
03:37 — Why she built a text-based alternative to 911
06:33 — From a rollout to 800,000 students to Oakland City Hall
08:58 — What the New Practice Lab does, and what a CPO does inside a think tank
11:06 — Why private-sector product playbooks don't transliterate
14:03 — No marketing, no early adopters: latent demand and the curb cut effect
14:40 — Oakland's eviction tool, MacBooks, and the lowest digital denominator
17:30 — Thin-slicing IRS Direct File without losing Congress
22:36 — Building executive sponsorship that allows safe failure
23:41 — Product vs service: the rest of the job that isn't writing code
26:09 — Illinois childcare vouchers: when modernising the form makes things worse
29:22 — Design problems, engineering problems, and the laptop-hinge analogy
33:18 — Can AI prototyping close the policy–implementation gap?
35:40 — The FAFSA simplification crisis and the case for bilingual builders
37:31 — Unbuilding: how a request for a 15th CHIP system became one to remove ten
41:18 — What keeps her going
Our Hosts
Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.
Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.
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