Hi there! I'm Shelby.

I'm a writer and civic technologist currently based in Washington, DC. I have a background in software development and API design and strategy, most recently in healthcare technology. Throughout my career I have focused on open data, open standards, civic/social/public tech, and civic hacktivism.

I spend most of my day working as a software engineer with the US Digital Service at the Department of Health and Human Services, primarily at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). When not working on API and data strategy in government, I spend most of my time on research I find interesting or impactful, contributing to open source or open standards projects, and writing about the intersection of technology, society, and public infrastructure.

You can find me on Twitter as @switzerly or on Github as switzersc. You can find my government commits under the Github username switzersc-usds

Current Projects

• Civic Unrest

  Civic Unrest is a blog focused on the intersection of technology and public infrastructure. It's a pretty broad topic, and I'm okay with that.

• REST Fest

  REST Fest is an international unconference series dedicated to giving people interested in REST, Hypermedia APIs, crafting web service APIs, or any related topics a chance to get together in an informal setting to share ideas, trade stories, and show examples of current work. I help organize and implement these events and expand them to new locations.

  Note: REST Fest is going on a hiatus in 2020, though we may be doing some virtual community events.

Recent Projects

• Data at the Point of Care

  Data at the Point of Care is an API that gets bulk Medicare claims data directly into the hands of providers so that they can make more informed decisions about their their patients' care. I joined this team as part of my work at USDS at CMS. 2019-2020.

• APIs4DGov - European Commission Report

  APIs4DGov is a research project by the European Commission aiming to understand and evaluate best practices for APIs in digital government. Publication pending, 2020.

• Open Referral

  Open Referral develops data standards and open source tools that make it easier to share, find and use information about health, human, and social services. I helped build data tooling and APIs for community implementations of Open Referral's Human Services Data and API Specifications, including working on open source Ruby tooling to support Frictionless Data's Data Package spec. 2019.