Episode 578: Jennifer Pahlka
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Rethinking Government Digital Transformation
How can lawmakers and public servants design policies which benefit from continuous learning?? How will government offices that learn and adopt agile practices be able to achieve better outcomes for the public
Jennifer Pahlka is a senior fellow at the Niskanen Center, founder of Code For America, and the founder of the US Digital Services under the Obama administration. She is also the author of Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better.
Greg and Jennifer discuss why the government struggles with adopting modern digital practices such as agile and waterfall methods. She explains the disconnect between policy-making and implementation, emphasizing the need for a more integrated and feedback-driven approach. They explore other topics such as the over-reliance on contractors, burdensome procurement rules, and the essential role of user research in creating effective digital services.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:
How feedback loops can make government more agile
06:07: Turns out that when you implement this policy in the way that you are telling me, we get a really perverse outcome. If there is no feedback loop to send that information back up to the decision makers, you get a lot of wasted money, you get a lot of perverse outcomes, you get a lot of angry people. But, you know, when the architects can say, or the builders can say, actually no, you can go into a discussion about that, then you have not just an agile development process, but you have a more agile government process.
The system, not the peopl,e is broken
30:37: It is not that public servants are lazy or stupid. It is that the system that they are working in is just ill-fit, it is just ill-suited to the job we need it to do.
Why government keeps building concrete boats
30:58: So you are referring to the story I have in the book of this guy at the Veterans Administration (VA), which, by the way, has gotten so much better. He is kind of a leader now. But I am questioning him about this project that we are working on at the USDS, sort of what was pro-USDS before. It was one of the first engagements that were sort of testing out the thesis of the USDS. And I kept asking. This guy was a senior leader in technology in the VA. Like, why is it built this way? Why did you make this decision? And over and over, he says, that is not my call. You have to ask the procurement people, or the program people, or the compliance people. He just did not have answers. And I asked him why he was so deferring on all these. And he said, if they ask us to build a concrete boat, we will build a concrete boat. And I said, why? And he said, well, because that way when it does not work, it is not our fault. And that speaks to the incentives. Your incentive is to make sure that when it does not work, it is someone else’s fault.