Q&A
Varying progress levels among agencies and maturity model development
1:04:09
·
3 min
Council Member Alexa Avilés and MOIA representatives discuss the varying levels of progress among agencies in implementing language access and MOIA's efforts to address these differences.
- Some agencies are advancing language access more quickly than others
- MOIA is developing a maturity model to create a roadmap for agencies to improve across their areas of operations
- The office is working on moving language access considerations upstream in agency planning
- MOIA has been growing and becoming more intentional about providing technical assistance and sharing best practices among agencies
Alexa Avilés
1:04:09
Sure.
1:04:09
And, you know, I think it's it's almost like teachers who teach varying levels within a classroom.
1:04:17
Right?
1:04:18
There's a technical term for it that is escape me.
1:04:21
Some are moving faster, and some are just have different needs.
1:04:25
So I guess I'm wondering, like, if as as you were doing this work and assessing and seeing trends across and knowing which students are moving faster in which need a different why would we wait to provide the tools and the guidance to move fast for those who can move faster and meet those obligations for larger kind of policy.
1:04:51
Like, the this feels like administrative choices that are being made around how, you know, this daily operation happens.
Kenneth Lo
1:05:01
I think that's a a fair question.
1:05:05
I think that's one of the elements behind our developing a a maturity model.
1:05:14
You know, we really wanna create a road map forward for all agencies to do, to work across their areas of operations better.
1:05:28
And I think one of the challenges around language access is that, you know, it is an afterthought, tends to be an afterthought.
1:05:41
And at the same time, it's a sort of an olive government kind of an issue.
1:05:50
So part of the technical technical advice and guidance, we give agencies is around how to think about these things and to move language access more upstream in the considerations.
1:06:11
Whether people, whether budgets, whether systems,
Lorena Lucero
1:06:15
And I'll just add a a couple of things that I think are also relevant here.
1:06:20
The law has been in existence for what?
1:06:22
I think it's 7 years.
Alexa Avilés
1:06:23
7 years.
Lorena Lucero
1:06:24
And, Moia, and, you know, the leaders really within this within this work, we ourselves have been growing in the past 2 years.
1:06:33
And I think that there are lessons that we're learning right now, and I know that Ken mentioned this in when he was speaking, but we really consider ourselves right now as a a language lab in best practices and ways.
1:06:46
And I think something that we have been doing proactively, you know, with the bad students in our class or students who need a a bit more help is that we're being more intentional.
1:06:55
And the times in which and how we are bringing them in collectively to share best practices.
1:07:03
I think as the year progresses, we will have more.
1:07:07
And I I in part part of the in the testimony, I know that there's goals for us to provide a more centralized method for language coordinators, for example, to have an online portal for them to sort of have information at the ready.
1:07:21
We're learning our lot from our linguists that are sitting right behind us in regards to the practices within their communities and languages.
1:07:28
And I think right now, we're we're part of the beginning stages.
1:07:31
However, I I still think that the addition in especially in the last 2 years of providing the technical assistance that I think we had previously, but I think now we're being very more intentional about it.
1:07:45
I think we'll see changes in the city to come.
