Q&A
Challenges in language access implementation and potential solutions
1:26:44
·
4 min
Council Member Avilés asks about challenges in language access implementation and potential solutions. Kenneth Lo from MOIA discusses the various resources and strategies being employed to address these challenges.
- New York City has diverse language resources among communities
- MOIA is exploring different avenues for resources, including commercial vendors, CBOs, and city staff
- Solutions include finding the right partners, improving work with bilingual staff, and hiring more agency staff who reflect the communities
- MOIA is working on improving the quality of vendors and partnerships with communities
- The goal is to build a better language service infrastructure through multiple approaches
Alexa Avilés
1:26:44
Great.
1:26:44
No.
1:26:45
Thank you.
1:26:45
I I think it's it's good to hear that you're thinking about prequalification and quality of services and certainly city hasn't had a Greek track record at managing contractors and being able to make sure that, you know, poor performing contractors are not given the gift of city dollars over and over again and providing sub subpar services to our communities, so definitely an area of growth for sure.
1:27:16
Look forward to hearing more about that and the guidance that is being provided.
1:27:21
And if we could shift really quickly and you in your testimony on page 8, you noticed you noted some of the challenges of it's it's a second paragraph.
1:27:39
You noted some of the challenges of the field, particularly you you noted, like, text heavy communications and a variety of things that that you've seen.
1:27:52
Can you tell us a little bit more specifically, like, what are some of the solutions that you are thinking about in response to meeting these challenges and or how how are you proposing to meet the specific challenges that you've encountered?
Kenneth Lo
1:28:12
Thank you for the question.
1:28:13
The language access is a field ripe for challenges, and it's something that, you know, animates our conversations every day, to be honest.
1:28:37
New York City language city has so many language resources amongst the communities.
1:28:47
With our certain avenues for the resources, commercial vendors, their CBOs, through city staff, our conversations are around what what do each of those resources bring?
1:29:08
What are their strengths?
1:29:10
What are their constraints?
1:29:15
Finding the right partners to do the work, whether commercial vendors or the community organizations, the language justice collaborative, things are all solutions or or parts of the solutions, and you're including how to work more effectively with bilingual staff, how to hire more agency staff who reflect our communities.
1:29:49
This work so, like, improving on each of those avenues in tandem to build a better language service infrastructure.
1:30:08
So when you spoke a little bit about contracts, improving the quality of those vendors internally working how staff can partner with them more effectively, working with the communities to both deliver services.
1:30:26
And to improve opportunities for linguists.
1:30:34
I'd like to turn this over to your colleague, Young, to talk about the the workaround local law 6.
1:30:42
And work with CBOs in that particular arena.
1:30:46
And then also happy to talk more about some of those other challenges.
