Technical Advisory Network
Lend your expertise to civic experimentation.
City governments want to run rigorous pilots. What they often lack is quantitative expertise — someone to check the design, run the analysis, and make sure the findings hold up. We connect domain experts with local institutions that need that help.
Advisory roles
What the work looks like.
Advisory relationships vary by what a city needs. Some are brief and transactional — a power calculation, a review pass on an analysis plan. Others are ongoing — advising a department through a full experiment cycle. You define your availability; we match accordingly.
Study design advisor
Help a city department formulate a testable question, choose an assignment method, and pre-specify outcomes before a pilot launches. Typically 2–5 hours per engagement.
Statistical analyst
Run the analysis after a pilot concludes: power calculations, balance checks, primary outcome estimation, robustness checks. Work from clean data exports; no fieldwork required.
Peer reviewer
Review draft registry submissions before publication — check methodology, flag threats to validity, suggest how to communicate limitations honestly.
Workshop facilitator
Lead a half-day session for city staff on experiment design, reading evidence, or statistical interpretation. We handle logistics; you bring the curriculum.
Ongoing advisor
Serve as a named advisor to a specific experiment from design through publication — typically a 6–12 month relationship with one city team.
Criteria
Who we're looking for.
Advisors are volunteers — there is no compensation — but the work is credited on registry publications and advisor profiles. We look for people with genuine quantitative depth and the ability to explain methods to non-specialists. Career stage doesn't matter; rigor does.
- ✓Master's or doctoral degree in a quantitative field (statistics, economics, ML, epidemiology, public policy, psychology, or related)
- ✓Demonstrated experience with causal inference, experimental design, or program evaluation
- ✓Willingness to work with practitioners who may not have research backgrounds
- ✓At minimum 1–3 hours per month of availability
- ✓Commitment to publishing findings regardless of direction (null and negative results included)
What you get: Named credit on registry publications you advise, a network of like-minded practitioners and researchers, and direct visibility into how local governments actually make decisions. Advisory relationships are listed publicly on the experiment record.
Apply
Join the network.
We review applications on a rolling basis and reach out when there's a match for your background and availability. Most advisors hear back within 4–6 weeks.