After ‘victory lap’ with quick Click-to-Cancel portal launch, NYC’s PIT Crew accelerates towards next projects

After launching in July, New York City’s in-house digital services team, the Public Interest Technology Crew, or PIT Crew, delivered its first product in just 10 weeks to support Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s “Click-to-Cancel” initiative. Now, the team is moving on to its next projects.

The online complaint portal was built in partnership with the NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) and launched Oct. 1, which is the effective date of the “Click-to-Cancel” rule — a novel policy that gives the city the authority to take enforcement actions against businesses that make it difficult for consumers to cancel subscriptions. As complaints are submitted through the portal about businesses with lengthy or difficult subscription cancellation policies, the DCWP can take actions such as imposing restitution and civil penalties. 

City officials said that building a team of in-house technologists was essential to developing the portal in the few months before the rule went into effect. Luke Farrell, who leads the PIT Crew as deputy commissioner and senior advisor of the New York City Office of Technology and Innovation (OTI), said that the model is one Mamdani took a chance on.

“When Mayor Mamdani created the PIT Crew, he was making a bet that an in-house technology team could deliver better services to New Yorkers faster and more cost-efficiently than the old ways of working, right? And so I think Click-to-Cancel being launched in just 10 weeks is proof that that new model can work, right?” Farrell told StateScoop. 

By bringing modern technology and design practices to software development, the PIT Crew not only replaces some outdated practices but reduces the overall time it takes to execute upgrades or new product deliveries, said Maya Israni, OTI’s senior advisor to the chief technology officer and PIT Crew member.

“Because we have hired folks in-house and we have built all the software in-house, we’ve entirely cut out the procurement process, which adds months, if not years, to a lot of traditional IT projects,” Israni said. 

Farrell spotlighted OTI Senior Product Manager Sukhi Gulati-Gilbert as an important PIT Crew hire. With a background working on misinformation at Meta, studying privacy legislation at MIT and then building Consumer Reports’ Permission Slip app, which was later acquired by DeleteMe, Gulati-Gilbert was “part of the group of exceptional, really dedicated people who have the skills that the city needs to build these things,” Farrell said. 

 Along with working closely with DCWP on the project, Gulati-Gilbert  said the team was able to embrace an approach “that the private sector has approached long ago, which is iterative development.” She said this helps to address government’s “tendency to overspecify things upfront and then build to spec.” 

“So we were able to take a much more collaborative, iterative approach, and so we were running usability tests as we were developing, incorporating that feedback in a very fluid manner as we went, and so we just were able to move quickly in that way by shipping iteratively and quickly,” she said. 

Gulati-Gilbert described using several kinds of user research during development: recruiting New Yorkers for online usability tests, speaking with people on the street, and informally testing with colleagues who live in the city. The team adjusted its methods as the product took shape — starting with open-ended research, then moving toward focused tests of the form’s flow worked and whether its wording and buttons were clear. 

Farrell added that the team also approached people in neighborhoods where likely users live or work, and they sought feedback from New Yorkers who speak different languages to reach a broader range of users. Israni noted that the team also worked closely with DCWP staff, including the people who process complaints, to determine what their needs were.. 

“One thing that’s different is our freedom to do real human-centered design, right? Like putting New Yorkers at the center of everything we’re building, where we do user research out in the field, and we do usability testing and iterate on the product continuously, and don’t need to stick with a specific set of requirements set forward in a procurement, right?” Farrell continued. 

The PIT Crew members said they take their cues from the auto racing pit crew model, bringing together a cross-functional team to quickly identify problems, speedily develop solutions and deploy them in short cycles. Instead of working in silos or spending months building a product before launch, team members collaborate to test ideas, make targeted improvements and iterate as they go.

Gulati-Gilbert said PIT Crew does not sacrifice privacy, security, and accessibility for speed, and that those values are “table stakes” — not standards the team sets aside to move faster. The team also relies on OTI’s existing processes and experts, while looking for efficient ways to meet those standards, such as running security scans continuously through the deployment process and manually checking logs for personal information. 

Israni added that placing the PIT Crew within OTI makes it easier to work alongside colleagues on security tests and privacy scans, helping the team maintain those safeguards while moving quickly. 

Looking ahead, Farrell said the team is turning to projects tied to the Mamdani administration’s affordability agenda, including those that benefit consumers and workers and improve housing, among other priority areas. He said they will be able to share more about specific projects in the coming weeks. 

Israni described the team as taking a “quick victory lap” while simultaneously moving toward the next projects. 

“I think what has been so successful about the Click-to-Cancel model is that we were able to identify a really interesting project at the intersection of both a new policy that the administration was putting forward, where there was an important technical aspect,” Israni said. “We can bring in that technical solution that pairs super beautifully with a new policy to deliver an actual impact for New Yorkers.”