Situation
The State of Iowa set out to rebuild data.iowa.gov, the state’s public open data platform. The original vendor quoted the project at six months. A year and a half in, the platform still hadn’t shipped — and the estimate to finish had grown to roughly another year.
That’s when the State of Iowa and Google reached out and asked me to take the project over: give them an honest assessment of where it actually stood, own the system design and architecture, and get it finished.
Approach
Assess before promising. The first job in any rescue is the truth. I audited what existed — the architecture, the data pipelines, what was genuinely salvageable and what was in the way — and produced a clear map of what “done” actually required. No optimistic re-quote; a plan the state could hold me to.
Own the architecture. I redesigned the system around the platform’s real workloads — ingesting agency data, cataloging it, and publishing it to the public reliably — cutting the complexity that had been absorbing months without moving the product forward.
Deliver in increments. Instead of one long-promised milestone, the platform came together in working slices, visible to the state as it progressed. Progress was measured in shipped software, not status meetings — which is how a rescue stays rescued.
Outcome
- Delivered in five months — against the year the incumbent still projected after eighteen months of work.
- Came in about $600,000 under the incumbent’s quoted cost.
- data.iowa.gov shipped as the state’s public window into its own data — the platform Iowans and agencies actually use.
- The engagement started with a hard conversation about where the project really stood — and ended with the state owning a finished platform. That’s the pattern I bring to rescues: honest assessment, simpler architecture, relentless delivery.
Stack & tools