Fellowship Journey: Ezekiel Kigbo

Ezekiel is renowned amongst the community as one of the best things that ever happened to Code for Australia. Coming onboard as one of our first Fellows with little structure, guidance or support, he trail-blazed a path that many now follow.

Working alongside the Neighbourhood Justice Centre for his fellowship, Ezekiel built the Online Pleas platform: a tool that enables the 60% of people that go to court for a minor offence who are planning to and plead guilty, to do so online.

Ezekiel still continues his work with NJC, while also embarking on new adventures as a developer at Common Code, and as the newest member of the Code for Australia board!

We spoke to him about his experience in the fellowship, and what lessons he’d pass onto future Fellows.

Tell us a little about what drew you to Code for Australia.

I first came across Code for Australia after hearing Alvaro interviewed on RRR’s Byte Into It. I didn’t completely understand what CfA was about, but was interested in the cross-section of technology, government and citizenship, and it was enough for me to make a mental note and sign up to the newsletter.

Fast-forward a few months and I had decided it was time to move on from my then-job. I had been working in tertiary education for over seven years in various roles from IT service desk to web applications developer and was keen to try something new. The timing was right and CfA happened to be looking for fellows at that time.

I was lucky enough to have a few options, so the decision to take on a fellowship did not come lightly.

I knew I would be out of my comfort zone, in a domain I had no previous experience with (Justice) and working across a variety of roles, but I felt it was a good opportunity to explore new areas and work on real world issues.

Did it meet or surpass your expectations?

To be honest, I really didn’t know what to expect — I definitely feel like I’ve gotten more out of it than I probably expected though.

I went into it thinking it would be a year of just programming and sharpening my dev skills, but it was a balance between that and also learning about how government work, seeing the real-world challenges public servants face trying to innovate and learning about different ways to approach innovation within rigid structures.

Particularly I had the opportunity to see first hand how the Justice system operates and see the work currently being done to improve the experience for all.

Any highlights, or low points you want to share?

The fellowship provided some of the most rewarding and also challenging situations I’ve had in my working career.

Some of the main challenges included working in ways that were unfamiliar for government projects, particularly taking a user-centred approach and focusing on cheap, early prototyping.

Taking an agile software development approach to projects and some of the technological constraints we had to deal with all provided constant challenges to the fellowship.

This all felt worthwhile when we started to prototype ideas, getting the opportunity to see clients and government partners start to see early and incremental progress on ideas and get excited around the possibilities as well as get more involved in the process helped provide momentum and excitement for the fellowship.

What would you say is the right mindset for future fellows to go into this experience with?

For anyone interested in the doing a fellowship in the future, I think you need to really approach it with a completely open mind. You (as did I) will have your own ideas and preconceptions of what you think will be the pain points or opportunities for your government partner. But I found being able to listen closely to clients and and government partners provided me with a much more relevant ideas than I might have devised on my own.

Any tips for getting the most out of your time for CfA, or things you wish you’d done differently?

In hindsight, I would have liked to spend less time perfecting the prototypes I worked on. It’s important to get a baseline solution that is in the ballpark of the pain point you are trying to address, but I think it became all too easy to fall into the trap of getting too attached to a set of solutions.

Due to the time constraints this made it hard to explore the full range of pain points that came out of the research. The real progress came once I started iterating on the basic MVPs with clients and my government partner.

What got you through any rough patches in the experience?

Being a developer, getting the chance to talk about programming and technical problems is always inspiring. I also really enjoy coffee, so I tried to ensure I had time during the fellowship to do this.

This often meant getting along to tech MeetUps and grabbing lots of coffees with others working in the field.

I also had some great mentors along the way who really helped to provide another set of eyes on the challenges as they arose, scheduling regular catchups gave me the opportunity to reflect on what was happening and also get an outside perspective to think about alternate approaches to both technical and non-technical challenges.

Tell us a little about what you’ve been doing since the fellowship ended.

Since I finished my fellowship, I’ve had lots of the opportunities to share my experiences with different groups in various ways. It’s been enjoyable reflecting back on the process and seeing new Fellows come through CfA.

I have also been lucky enough to continue the relationship with the government partner I worked with and am enjoying having the opportunity to continue to work on some of the projects that arose during my fellowship and also explore new opportunities.

You can find and chat with Ezekiel by joining the Code for Australia Slack community, or reaching out to him by email here.

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