Most harm in civic tech doesn’t happen deliberately. In our most cynical moments, it can feel like government services are designed to exhaust or confuse us, test our patience, or make help harder to reach. But most of the time, the harm isn’t intentional. It happens because we try to fix systems without a deeper understanding of care.

What follows are the prepared remarks I made at the Service Design in Government conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, on September 18th. I was the keynote speaker on day two and gave a 45-minute talk titled “Care for the Public: Trauma-Informed Service Design.”

This piece builds upon the Advancing Research talk I delivered in March 2025, combining reflection, warning, and calls to action. It’s about: (1) administrative burden and design as exclusion; (2) research as a site of power (not just empathy or neutrality); (3) trauma by design, and the systems built around cruelty; and (4) what we can still do, even if this bill passes.

I had the great honor of being able to deliver the commencement speech at the 2025 graduation ceremony for the Boston College School of Social Work on May 19, 2025. This post includes my full speech.

Image description: colorful pink, red, orange, and purple illustration of flames against an orange and purple background.

Image description: a photo by Nathan Cima of Saltworks of Aigues-Mortes in France. The left half of the image is of the dull pink saltworks, with a discernable pathway separating it from a dull brown body of water.