The New York City Public Interest Technology (PIT) Crew has built and launched its first public-facing service, helping residents file complaints more easily against businesses that make it hard to cancel subscriptions.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani established the PIT Crew initiative in July. The intent was to help agencies solve challenges more efficiently by creating teams of product managers, designers, engineers, user researchers and data scientists all together. The initiative resembles a federal civic tech model seen in 18F and the United States Digital Service.
The first of five PIT Crew teams was charged with supporting the Mamdani administration’s implementation of Click to Cancel protections. The new rule, which took effect Oct. 1, aims to protect consumers from businesses that do not provide a straightforward subscription cancellation process. The result was a new platform enabling New Yorkers to file complaints about violations, created within 10 weeks in partnership with the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection.
Mamdani “made a bet” that an in-house team of technologists could build products more quickly and more cost effectively, yielding an improved user experience for New Yorkers and increased trust in government, according to Luke Farrell, deputy commissioner and senior adviser to the CTO and PIT Crew co-lead.
“And with Click to Cancel, I think we’ve proved — that’s the first of many, hopefully, proof points — that that model actually is working,” Farrell said.
Mehgan Iulo is a PIT Crew principal product designer. Prior to working for the city, she had private- and public-sector product design roles, and federal government experience at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The Click to Cancel issue is personal to New Yorkers, Iulo said. She herself has had issues canceling subscriptions, and in a city with a high cost of living, these costs matter. This project, she said, will help “put more money in folks’ pockets.”
The design process started with user research, acquiring feedback from New Yorkers about the existing consumer complaint form pain points. During the research process, she observed a common challenge for users: the difficulty of canceling gym memberships in the city. One user compared canceling their gym membership to getting a divorce, she said. The PIT Crew team was able to rapidly iterate and prototype while incorporating that feedback.
“So, really, we just want to make sure that we were always centering the feedback of New Yorkers first,” Iulo said, emphasizing the importance of making the final product accessible and mobile-friendly and offering a streamlined reporting process for users.
The Mamdani administration has invested in the team because it values technology as a method of delivering on city priorities, including plans to increase affordability and public excellence, Maya Israni, senior adviser to the CTO and PIT Crew co-lead, said. Israni, too, has public- and private-sector experience and time with the U.S. Digital Service.
“So, our north star is quite simple: how do we make the lives of New Yorkers better and more affordable?” she said. Every PIT Crew project, she said, will help move the needle in that direction for the city.
Moving quickly and building technology-powered solutions in-house differentiates the PIT Crew from prior models, Israni said. The team is working to create a portfolio of projects delivered within 12 weeks.
Most government technology implementations are built through vendors, Israni said, often beginning with a procurement cycle that can add months or even years to the front of any project. The PIT Crew model allows the city to cut out that time and move straight into research and design phases, potentially saving money.
This approach also gives the city a better incentive structure, Farrell said, because the singular goal is not to bill hours to the city, but to “deliver an exceptional product for users.”
Iulo likened the PIT Crew culture to that of a startup team within the city government.
“I think this is the optimal time to get involved if you’ve ever been curious,” she said, underlining the value of applying product design skills to work that directly impacts New Yorkers, noting that the PIT Crew has some “very complex” projects in the pipeline to tackle next.
The city will share more information about forthcoming projects soon, but for now the team is “laser focused” on the affordability agenda, Farrell said, specifically in housing, public benefits and consumer and worker protection.
“We want to make New York a more affordable city for everyone who lives here,” Farrell said. “And there is no shortage of work to do on the technology front for the city.”