Transcripts For CSPAN2 Jennifer 20240703

Now it is my absolute pleasure to introduce our guest speaker. Jennifer pahlka is the founder of code for america, former deputy chief Technology Officer under obama. Her book, recoding america why government is failing in the age and how we can do better was recently called one of the best policy books ive ever read. And the book i wish every policymaker could read by New York Times ezra klein, who, as probably all know, has quite, quite a big reach. Her book, a bold call to reexamine how government operates it goes beyond a call for more money or fancy or technology and into root cause analysis of the improvements that need to be made to end growing bureaucratic dysfunction, governments simply must start better delivering for citizens or populism will be the end result. Youll more about the poor implementation of healthcare. Gov of the federal level and then the appalling 32 billion in fraud losses at californias Employment Development department. Jen importantly is optimistic throughout the book and dedicates the book to Public Servants everywhere. Dont give up. Thats the intro moderating tonights is d. J patel general partner at great point ventures, former u. S. Chief Data Scientist and a member of the Commonwealth Club of governors. So please join me in welcoming both jen and dj. Thank can. That was lovely. Thank you. I know. Im excited to be here. They really like you because they got orchids. Yeah, thats very special. But they wouldnt let me wear my earrings. Oh, well, its. Its being recorded so. I hope you all buckled up. And this is going to a wild ride because theres so much to cover, especially in jens book. Because jen parker, one of the greatest change agents ever met to making sure that government actually works for you. And so absolutely it is well said that and its being said by the greatest change agent so. Well let me get humbling as well as because this is live going to be on the radio. Let me just of give a quick high line as of all the Amazing Things youve done. You founded code for america, a nonprofit that makes sure government is for the people, by the people, the digital age. You not only did that, you cofounded the us digital response in wake of covid to help governments respond more quickly to critical. You were chief deputy chief Technology Officer for the United States, the Us Digital Service and what people dont realize about that you did that at great expense your family to serve your daughter was in high school at that time and you were traveling back and forth to d. C. You were also on the Defense Innovation board for both president obama and President Trump to help to transform the department of defense. And you chaired newsoms strike team on Unemployment Insurance during the pandemic. Much what you were about to get into and youve won so many incredible about this and as was mentioned you know being also named as one of the most important policy books for anybody to actually to understand how Government Works and. So thank you for being here at the Commonwealth Club and congratulations on the book. Let me start with with one of the favor quotes i hear you say and, it just always sticks for me and something i myself repeating, which is government is who shows up. What does that mean . And why is so important . I think really easy to be frustrated with government. Many of us are pretty frequently. Its also easy to forget the great things that government does. That becomes invisible. But its a lot more meaningful to get in there and figure out how to make it work than it is to complain about it. And i think people who go to work in government havent and havent worked before are often shocked at. The ways in which they get to make the decision as that it is a sort of corollary saying, you know, decisions are made by those who show up and you really do have a chance to shape government. If youre if youre willing to to dig in. Well, how do you so how did you become one of the people who showed up or and continues to show up . Where did that come from . Well, when when obama was this . Why not even further back . How did you get. Because i think someone lets look at your background. They wouldnt have said, oh, youre the person thats going to going to show up to government and do these kind of jobs within. Yes. Well, i think many people would at my skills and say she cant be very helpful and that i cant code i cant design and i dont know that much about government still after all of these years you know my first job out of college i worked for a Child Welfare and ended up working in media. We were doing the web 2. 0 conferences back when that was a big thing with my now husband tim oreilly and it was sort of recognizing the power or of that sort of second wave of the internet participate story lightweight the things that moved very quickly and really well for people that we realized the best application those principles and values would in government. I mean thats really the thing thats supposed to work for all of us. And so when obama was obamas success in being elected was sort of credited to the several of us sort of started to say, okay, well if it can help him get elected can help him govern better. And that was really the beginning of my journey to, you know, realizing that we we could bring people in, get them involved, people who not thought about government work. And that was the beginning of code for america and when as you were going along and starting for america and starting to talk about with government, you know, for many people out there, its the first year we see government is maybe we go to the dmv, maybe we we try to we try pay our taxes. We get frustrated with these forums oftentimes or other services, we wait in a line. What was that . Talk to us a little bit about what that moment you realized we can actually do something as youre interacting with these government. I think the first moment i really realized this was was going to work was first year of code for america. We had a team of fellow us program doesnt really rely on fellows anymore, but when we started it was a Service Program essentially, and had a team working with the city of boston and they had a problem where theyd changed, how kids were allowed choose or the parents were choosing the schools for the kids. So they were trying to make it more walkable and the city had a really big problem sort of communicating this the way they normally communicated it was a 28 page printed brochure in sort of 8. 40, you know this all about these different schools but it didnt help you know if the school was in your zone it was really a mapping problem. And so these these wonderful technologists and designers that were working the city that year got together and they made, you know, a Pretty Simple that allowed you to put in your address and the age of your kid and whether there were kid any siblings in another public and it would tell you which schools kids could go to and they know they did it in about eight weeks. And when they were when they were able to show it to their partners in you know, they were just blown away. They said if if you had done this through normal channels would have taken at least two years and cost at least 2 million. But now we it for parents. Now so that much faster and you know almost no cost really and it works they like using it it look like a consumer application instead of a government application. And the head of the boston public schools, you know, youre just changed our relationship with parents its and i think that was when i started to realize this isnt just about cheaper this isnt just about you know make it look like twitter something you know i had a very naive ideas i think back then about what i thought would make a difference. It is about relationship to government whether they believe governments really there for them or not. And imagine having that for two years you know, two years has been rolling kids through. Note without without a map to help them out that thats it really started to become meaningful for. So you know that was almost 15 years ago oh was it just the what the reason i bring this up and i wanted to Start Talking about your entry point is you know over that arc youve seen so things and youve done so many in government and the culmination is is in this fantastic book. Yeah. What led to this moment to write the book and give a very very unvarnished take on it actually takes to make things work in government. Well have been on a journey from thinking just need better tech and government to realizing that it is something much deeper than that and i have seen so many people fighting the fight to get the right outcomes for people not just a better website, but its not the website that matters. Its whether you get your snap benefits. Its whether veterans their benefits. Its whether we the vaccinations out to the people and theyre all fighting for the system to work for people and i want try to explain to the American Public to our elected leaders or to anybody who cares what needs to change for them to be to succeed. Now they are increasingly succeeding. But its still a really battle. And i and i really want the people who have the power to change the environment in which these fighters are fighting and make it easier for them. So trying to, you know, get past preaching to the choir and talk those who can make this make a difference for them. Mm hmm. Well, lets a particular lets take one of those problems and dig in to one of them, because i think its so to see, because so many times they think we think of government. As i mentioned earlier, go to get our drivers license. Maybe we need to pay taxes like we touch only a little bit of. Oftentimes, you know, especially from many of us come from privileged place where we dont have to deal with our knee to require other services. But you really go into the details of this. Could you pick one of the ones that you find that really showcases how you would wish the American Public and our audience out there to really understand that easy. We were all very frustrated in that first year of covid that Unemployment Insurance systems in every state buckled under the load. I mean it was quite an increase. And you many places tenants sometimes for more than that number of applications some just this is because of stay at home orders people having layoffs. Yes and then need to now qualify for benefits federal government gives it says states you have a ton of money to give out and thats you have a ton of money to give and you have a ton of people who are suddenly unemployed and need their Unemployment Insurance benefits. And many them really its not a nice to have it to have to have. And we need to them their checks in a reasonable amount of time and as ken mentioned, Governor Newsom asked me to cochair a strike with the secretary of government operations, yolanda richardson, and brought in some other folks to help and go really be on the ground. And i think one of the things people dont realize is youve just got to see the systems from the bottom up in order to be able to understand whats going wrong. Now, when we came in, the governor and the legislature, everybody had said, obviously, this is a big problem. Throw any resources we can at it. They had brought people back who had retired, but more importantly, they had hired about 5000 people to come help process these claims and i think they were missing something important there, which we learned through my colleague marina nitze. I was there on the ground working with these claims process thursday after day and one of them is she would ask them sorts of questions. One of them said to her, you know, i kept saying im the new guy. Im not quite sure how. Answer that question. Let me go ask the other guys. And he said that enough times finally said, well, how long have you worked here . And he said, well, only worked here 17 years. The folks worked who really know how this system works have been here for 25 years or longer. Now, this wasnt somebody who knew how the technology worked. It wasnt the back end coders. It was a claims processor. That is how complex. The policy and regulations and processes govern Unemployment Insurance in california are. Its. California is not unique if you think about it Unemployment Insurance derives the Social Security act of 1935. So since 35, you have and state you you have the judicial legislative and executive branches all piling changes and changes over and nobody ever goes back and says okay this is what the rules look now this this is this is what we in fact, you know, im fond of saying people think that like a binder of regulations, there is no binder, theres just a steady stream of changes for whats now almost years. In fact, if the new state the union tomorrow and went to the federal department of labor and said great give me the rolls were going to set up a new system. They literally cannot them theres theres literally binder and thats the complex with which our Public Servants youre expecting 5000 new people to learn it just like that to process. So you so the when you realize thats happening this was marinas immediate insight was if it takes 25 years to learn how to do this what are those 5000 people doing . Well, not only were they not able to help process claims, but they were taking up the time of the experience claims processors and they were the bottleneck, obviously. I mean, certain number of claims can only be handled by, you know, actual claims process. Theyre not going to go through the automatic sort of Assembly Line that we were hoping to get more on and because of that, every person that the state of california hired, speed processing, slowed down processing of claims. And you just look at that situation and theres nobody in there trying to make this hard. Theres no one intentionally saying, lets give people their Unemployment Benefits except in the state of florida. Well, that may be true. Florida is a unique situation, but you know, the governor and the legislature have opened up the pocketbooks, spend whatever you want the claims processors are working. Oh, my god. I think they were just all of them working 18 hour days. The management just like never stopped everyone was trying drunk. So so hard. But you have a system that isnt going to scale until you simplify it. And i think, you know, when i went in said we know whats wrong its the cabal there. Is this about the programing cobol a programing language that is famously dates back to 1959. Yeah, that sounds really bad. It sounds like. Oh, this terrible. Of course it wont because theres code in there from 1959. Well the codes not from 1959, the programing language is from 1959 when you buy a plane ticket, youre using cobol. I mean theres many systems that scale beautifully in this country that rely heavily on cobol, in fact, more heavily, i think, than a lot the unemployment systems. The problem is the complexity of the policy which then drives complexity and fragility in the tech systems but, i dont think were ever going to solve that problem until actually fix. So you get in there, you kind of look at this youre able to find some process my reading of is really it was a bunch of process we just said reassign those people yeah get them to the right places and look at the things in the in a in a more clever way to get through this and that got you that you and your team helped get california through that phase. Yes, through that phase. Everyone is ai is like were off of that problem. Is anyone going back and saying, hey this . We still just have layers and layers. Its like its like you imagine like one of these things like you look at sediment in like a cliffside, exactly like Disaster Recovery that appeared to us. Yeah. Whos whose job is it to refactor this . So reevaluate this or rip it down and rebuild it in a good way. That is exactly the right question to ask. And i dont even know who knows how to answer it. I think its generally true that it is often nobodys to design a system that works. It is very frequently. A lot of peoples job to operate the system that theyve been given that system is in a crisis of layers over the years. And this is this is true very very broadly and have to redesign such that it is someones job to actually actively design something that is made to work in this and age for the people its supposed to work. Who is going to do that . In the end of the day, its not going happen, i think until everybody decides that were going to hold our elected leaders to that kind of change, that needs to happen. I think when the problem with government is that when it is no ones job, it becomes our job. You know, one of the things that you you talk about in that i didnt actually it never really jumped out at me in the way that you as you put it in the book, is that theres no ones actual job to make sure that government solves. Problem is. Theres a somebody job to make sure its legal, but theres nobodys job. Solve the problem. Well, i think that our elected would say its their job to the bureaucracy. The executive branch, the administrative agencies responsible for doing what they told to do. Right. Congress has a couple of levers. It writes rules, allocates money, and it does oversight. But the problem that they hold the agencies accountable to outcomes but. The Public Servants are often up for hearings front of congress. In fact, i saw this, you know, firsthand and in a very painful and powerful way when i was working with the people at, the fed, and they were being called up in front of hearings thing, of course, during healthcare. Gov like, theres ten hearings during the first month of the failure of health dot gov and at the same all do the job supposed to be getting the site back up. Well, remember this even during the collapse of Silicon Valley bank, the secretary of treasury is testifying and youre like, wait a second, something should they helping this bank thats about to fail. Right, right. So i appreciate that. Thats what our elected leaders to do. But theyre calling those Public Servants up and them accountable to the outcome that they expected without a recognition that those Public Servants are held accountable their day jobs to process and procedure not to outcome jobs. That is what they get hired on rewarded on. They get promoted for having clean record where they didnt violate you policy or procedure. So theyre in a trap. I call it an accountability trap. I mean, you pointed this out. If i got this right, you quote about a national the National Academy for public administration, finding that they found that only 16 of their members and these are really top notch policy people are like secretaries of state, treasury. And they found that only 16 of their members considered proficient at designing policy is that can actually be implement it. And i think theres a huge frustration amongst what i hope this is an insulting term i call the policy class in the book i think theres an increasingly increasing frustration amongst the policy class that what they do doesnt work know how to write laws. They know how to allocate money. They know how to oversight. And none of those things are working. And when i say policy, i mean not just, yeah, former secretaries of state, i mean also, you know, congress allocated a ton of money during the pandemic. Some of worked great and a lot of it didnt. They just feel like, okay, im putting my paddle, you know, ive got car here, were pressing on the gas the car should go faster and in a lot of cases, it sort of doesnt. And theyre going, wait, whats wrong here . And in part, i wrote the book for so that they can understand what they need to do differently if they want to have that car be responsive again. Well you at one of the stories you talk about is concrete boats. Yeah. And the story you tell about the where people are held to the line. Well, maybe i should just ask you us the story of concrete boats i was working in white house for a year trying to stand up, became the United States did full service. And one of the things we did was to sort of started doing these projects that we would be illustrative of how usgs eventually work. So i had a team of up to technologists whod come in for a short time to work with me on a problem that we understood at the department. Veterans affairs with the veterans benefit management system, one of the things we had heard was that there was very high latency, which means that if youre processing, you know, an application, you hit a button to go to the next screen and you have to wait a very long time and. We met this leader who i call in the book, kevin and, sort of our first day on the job or talking to him about, you know, whats, whats work. Were here to fix. And one of the first things he says to me is, im so glad the white house has sent somebody to verify that nothing is wrong. You know, its all taken care. And we found out later that the way he had taken care of it was defined latency as over 2 minutes. So if you clicked, waited for one minute and 59 seconds, you were not to latency. So he had sort of defined the problem away which was my my first clue about how he was leading. This is like how my kids you find cleaning the room exactly. Its like, no, no, no ive my performance is awesome. Exactly. Set the bar so much like how marina was talking to this claims processors asking a bunch of questions we were asking kevin questions about why had vrms been written this way why did they make this decision decision and he kept saying, i dont know. Youre going to have to ask the Program People or youre going to have to ask the the policy team or, you know, he kept deflecting. And i him why and he said, look, i have spent my entire career teaching my team to have an opinion on the requirements, which is completely contrary to how i thought about building technology. Fact, i had sort of come to washington to get people like kevin a more of a seat at the table so that we could have a better conversation. He doesnt want the seat, he doesnt want it, and he if they tell us to build a concrete boat, well build a concrete boat and said, why . And he said, because that way when it doesnt work, its not our fault. And at the time, the statistic was that 18 veterans a day were committing suicide, in part because did not have access to their benefits. And i remember very well sitting in that cafe outside of the white and feeling like i had been punched in the gut and i still feel that way. But i also know that what he was saying is, in a certain sense, true. The system is set up for. People not to have that responsibility. What was saying was, is held. He is held accountable for checking all the boxes and he was checking all the boxes. Its the system that i felt punched in the gut by in the end, this is one of the things and you bring this up also in your book which is one of the things that i learned is User Research and implementation. That whole theory that we think is Silicon Valley phenomena was actually started by the government. The government is one that actually created that whole idea. Yes. Can you walk us through little bit of that . Yes. I mean just as background, i mean, this is this practice thats very common in technology. Well, i think its necessary in any consumer technology, where you expect people to able to use it without reading a manual that has happened because user have understood, you know, the people who are going to use service or this technology and watch them it and tested and done all these to make sure its easy to use and yes we absolutely identify that now with sort of you know easy to use tech out of Silicon Valley and other but it affects the human centered design and essentially started in after World War Two or during World War Two when we were trying to get planes that would fly better and these to colonels in the air force saw that these some of these planes that had been built for incredible performance like they could fly really well had a terrible what we would now call user interface like different switches that did you know very Different Things were right next to each other and it easy to get them confused so they kept saying you know theres theres wrong with these planes and mechanical technically there wasnt but most of them werent flying because they were they were crashing, they were killing. The you know, theyd go up and then theyd crash and kill people. But they the problem wasnt with the specs. The problem was how the pilots were them. For a long time they called them pilot and theyre like, this cant be pilot. All of like the best pilots are getting these things confused. And so these two colonels worked on know changing the controls and making this one red and this one green and putting them in the right places so that, you know, in a moment of you could do the right thing and. Thats that was called Human Factors and it became human centered design. It started in the government. Where did the government lose it . I think we lost it in part because. We decided to outsource everything not Just Technology although technology definitely got caught up in this huge enthusiasm, outsourcing, but, you know, in the sixties we to define through memos and statutes this idea of what is inherently governmental and what is inherently a commercial, and its called commercial. And there these two concepts and i think, you know, for a long time it was like kind of made sense right . There are these like Big Computers and have to buy a lot of them and processing time, you know, all this stuff. Yes thats a commodity. Were going to buy it from who know how to build it. This is not something that the government should try do itself. So it became something defined as commercial. But computing changed a lot and it became something that was much more. And we missed that. We missed that boat. We said, nope, this is something that we will buy, not something we do. But anybody who has run tech enabled businesses knows that software isnt something. I mean, sure youre going to buy slack or microsoft word. Those are commodities. We get that. But youre trying to actually run your business on technology. It has to be something you do. It has be adaptable you need to be able to change it as your needs change and if you dont have that core competency inhouse to do that you kind of cant meet peoples needs. And we we missed the part where we needed to re re figure out what part needed to be inhouse, what are the Core Competencies that we need to have inside of so that we can kind of outsource government we have outsourced government. We certainly outsource digital government. And i have to be clear, im not calling for like bring all Technology Development back inside of government. Its not going to work and its impractical and its probably not even a good idea. But we have to start asking ourselves. What are the core competency that government needs today and how do we how do we have them . How do we build them . Because we cant just keep saying, oh, sorry, that was the vendors fault when it doesnt work, its, its, its our job to deliver the service and we do it now through a lot technology. Before we switch gears some solutions, you know, you talk about this in the which i thought was a really great we think of as it is and to quote you is its policy vomited on to success and you many times i feel like that is like you get this piece of paper from the government mean it took me filling security clearances takes like close to 100 hours of work to fill out everything you get asked all these random questions some of them dont make sense you actually tell a story about that but you also talk about how much time is spent on these these things and its and to quote you its americans spend 10. 5 billion hours a year about 42 hours per adult on paperwork just for the federal government. And that doesnt even include the state and local sectors. You know, i imagine Government People are also having to fill out paperwork and they recognize this. So wheres the gap gap as as, you know, in terms of that usability and trying to make sure the Government Works us well, you know, its also you mentioned earlier, i just want to call out i mean, that number many of us dont spend those hours right. Many of us have a lawyer that can, you know, file the immigration papers us or we have a tax accountant or not applying for snap. And its theres huge difference between how much were exposed to that paperwork burden based on our privilege. And i think thats something we need to recognize is, yes, Government Employees are also frequently frustrated by not only the paperwork that that that they have to put out the world but the paperwork that theyre required to do, i mean, a good example of that is, you know, a lot of what gets done in our country is federal grants that go to states and local communities and, you know, dont think for a minute that governments arent frustrated by the paperwork burden of other levels government. So the smaller that need those grants the most are the least likely to get them because they dont have people who know how to find the grant, fill out all the paperwork, you know, get it through those grants, go to the communities that already those resources, you know, whats whats the gap . I think the gap is, the empowerment to say i dont just have to and im sorry. Well, repeat that awful word vomit the policy into the its just a when when you see Public Servants get that oh wait theres a process that goes in middle thats called design says what information do we need from them now what information can we collect later. Do we need to collect all information . How do we make this as as possible for them . And you know, and very often do we even need to do this at all . I mean, i start and end the book on a that that code for america ran and is still running to clear criminal records where you know where it started you know really almost a whole of persisting through gathering information from Police Departments other but actually lets step back and frame this problem because i think its such an important its a such an important lens on the problem. So can you step back and sort of frame the big problem so . I think now far more than half of the states have marijuana in some way or form through, you know, Ballot Initiatives or laws passed and when we do that, we also say so the people in, our state who have a former felony record from marijuana need to have that expunged off their record. You know, having that felony means you cant get a job. You cant get public housing. Theres all these things that make it incredibly hard to from incarceration. So lets get that record off. But that process of expungement was sort of assumed to be again, because no one designed it. It just accrued over the years to be this of year long process of going and finding your rap sheets from, various places and filling out and filing them in other places, then waiting to hear back. Theres no like single place you can just say delete it. Well, there there needs to be an ad thats really where the team came from. Like there was i would say years of us watching people to get through this process and thinking how can we streamline it . How can we streamline until we realized you dont need to streamline, it doesnt need to exist at all. What that felony record is, is a field in a database and it is not that to have software tell you who are all the people in this database who have that particular record know that particular like a google doc or something else. Its like control. Yeah, exactly. If its its a little bit more complicated, but not that much more complicated than that, really. But the imagine nation to say, oh, thats what we need to do is find the records, change them in the database. You know, we sometimes just, you know, dont even dare to dream. I mean, you know, and but we when we did and we started doing it sort of became became possible. And i think thats the kind of thinking that needs to spread. Like do we need to streamline this paperwork or do we need to get of it . Well, its almost stunning because when you think about this in this type thing, a law gets passed and you just assume that law gets pushed out to all the people that are impacted it does in this case, it turns out everyones got to apply. And so people dont even know about it. And so i think it was christine de soto that teamed up with and yusor said, hey, look, we should just go tackle this. And im curious, like, as christine de soto was the chief of staff, the district attorney, san francisco, george. Well, and then the reason im bringing her name up here is not only because its amazing work, but what what got her as that person really is like. In a different way is going to help and what does that tell for how we should think about other policy out there. Christine is a great example. One of those Public Servants who does ask that question, you know, why does it have to be that way . And there are lot of them, many more, i think, than people realize. And i think also in this room, the that i think theres this like magic that happens that ive seen happen over and over again. And theres some stories in the book of this of somebody who knows whats possible, given todays and somebody who knows possible, given the law and policy coming together and going, oh, wait, something totally different is possible here. And yet, chris, christine is just a fantastic servant who was able to work with some members of the staff at code for america, including jasmine latimer, who i write about in the book. And they, you know, they brought their perspectives to the table and fundamentally changed how we how we do this. Well, lets switch to some solutions. Okay. And maybe walk us through your framework of what do we need to do to get this right, especially given that the bidenharris has gotten lets signed into law, the largest spending that is ever about to happen in, were going to implement a whole bunch of things. Were going to try. Were going to try. And and you talk about this also in the book of the cost. Yes of what happens when these things fail, just raw dollars costs. How do how do we get this right and not just throw away this singular opportunity to build systems in a way are going to serve American Public . Well, lets talk for a second about what that opportunity looks like right now. So the chips science act has to work, right . We need to have more resilient supply chains. Its a matter of National Security and economic development. It has to work. The inflation reduction act, the parts im most familiar with, are the parts that are designed electrify our country, that we can avoid a climate collapse. Its our shot. It is our shot. Sure, more stuff is going have to happen later. But if we dont get this, we havent bought the time for the rest of that stuff to happen. So you might think about the ira being not a perfect law no laws are ira being the inflation reduction act. It is literally our shot. We to implement this and thats going to mean a whole bunch of things have to go right that often dont go right so. People need to be able to get their rebates, their heat pumps. They need to get their tax credits for electrical upgrades like all that stuff doesnt just happen right. Public servants do it and they make choices about how to do it and they can choose to do in the policy vomit sort of way this is what the law says. So thats what the form will be. Or they can design something. You and i and everyone else in this room will find so easy that well do it right. Thats the whole point of these incentives. Its so i want to try to do in the book was really give examples Public Servants who have made the right choices sometimes you know under duress and with real risk to themselves that because they made those choices programs that they were administering worked for people and got the outcomes that the law had another person whos like christine who i profiled pretty extensively in the book is a woman named Yadira Sanchez and one thing have to know about your idea is shes now been at the centers for medicare and services, which is known as cms, part of our health and Human Services agency for i think, 25 years. Its the only job shes ever had is her first job. So shes not somebody whos like a white knight. The tech industry, shes this is shes not some political appointee out of political get another job. Shes shes in the thick of it. Shes and you know the thing that she just cares so deeply about the agencys mission she understands critical it is that we improve health care in this country and medicare and medicaid are big big drivers of that you get that right. The whole rest of the industry follows in a certain way. So shes in it project manager there for many years already doing a better job than i her peers in the sense that she wanted to outside of the lines things like User Research where we were talking about earlier wasnt required i mean really never talked about but she would do it anyway she would be asked to go train people and she would say, well, im going to use this as opportunity to ask them what parts of this do they like . What parts of them are they going to actually use . What doesnt work for them . So she was always sort of, you know, good trouble, so to speak. Then healthcare. Gov has floundering of trying to give the right word for that. Somebody said, i call it the troubles, but reminder that actually quite succeeded in its first enrollment period. But boy, was it rocky in the beginning. You know, the first day, i think only eight people were able to enroll in health care through healthcare. Gov in 2013. And she was one of the people who are thrown this problem of fix it. You know, we are our former boss, todd parker well, because he didnt work directly. Todd did you . I cant remember. Well, that devoted. Yes, weve worked together of many, many so so people like todd park were brought in from the outside. But a lot of the people who fixed healthcare. Gov were people like yadira, who were just there at cms and knew how to make it work. But and she she did some amazing stuff. But the thing that came out of that was she learned the word Agile Development and user centered design. She never heard these terms. She was doing them, but she didnt have a framework them. And so she comes out of that with this absolute passion for making cms better based on what shes learned and cms never have a disaster like this again. I mean it has it part party it it hasnt it it not only has not but she they got given their next you know implementation of a law called macra the medicare access and chip reauthorization act. And shes like this one. Were going to get right now. This was and this is way harder is way way harder than Affordable Care act implementation. Healthcare. Gov. Well, yes. And its very different. So essentially she this is a program that will doctors better for better quality care value based care. So her users in this case are not the general public. I was trying to sign up for for health care through the exchanges. Its doctors are, by the way like already hugely frustrated with the cms. The interfaces theyre asked to use to submit their quality data and theyre billing already drive them nuts. They never if theyve done it right, you know, they they put in this file and theyre like, its a black hole. And if i got it wrong and, i submitted my data in the wrong format. I like dont get paid. And now i had a year stress about this. So they know that this new law is going to give them a new and the only thing they hate more than. What they have is the thought of having to learn something new and equally bad. And so people are projecting that because of this, millions of doctors is going to walk away from taking medicare patients, which is to degrade the quality of care, not improve it. That thats congress wanted to improve it. But this is going to the quality of care. So she knows that its not about like uptime this new website its about will it work for those doctors . Will they solve the problem . Will they be able to use it and not leave you know, leave leave the program and the things that she does to get that right and other people theres a ucsds team there initially and woman named natalie cates whos pushes back on the first set of things. So the first thing that happens is theyre supposed make a website that just explains this to doctors before they have the way that they have to file their quality data. And shes like okay. Well, well write it up. First thing they have to do is decide whether tell cms whether theyre an individual doctor, you know in private or a medical group and there are nine different definitions, a medical group. And shes like, well, never going to work. But i think in the past, you know, it would be kevin building the concrete. But well, what they said, thats what were going to do and this team says we cannot do it that way they push and push back and push back eventually get to two different definitions of a group. They dont get to one, but that starts them out on a path where they pushing back on the policy team and saying famously, i think this is a line that i will always remember. They say the then i get that its complicated. It has to make sense to a person. And over and over again they make the choice that makes sense to a person. And when they ship that program called the Quality Payment Program that was required by this law, macra, the call centers are braced for angry doctors calling to yell at them and instead theyre calls saying something must be wrong. This is too easy. Doctors love it. There is not a mass exodus from medicare and you know, more in a certain sense. More importantly. The cms team is like we, got this, we know how to do this now. And they keep going on that. And my last story of yadira, you know, this minor thing that comes down for her to implement regulation from from congress saying youre going to give these data extracts out on pharmaceutical so that the ecosystem can use them. You know a little bit about the and shes the law says you will give these quarterly extracts and she knows that theres a nine month process to package up this data and its not the right way to do it and that theres something an application programing interface an api that would allow those same, you know, people in the ecosystem that want to have access to data to just plug in and, use it any time they want. Its not wouldnt be a slice of data every but constant access to it shes like, well whats a were going to do to do an api . And when i tell this story, people theyre like, well, she cant do that. Thats what Congress Said to do. But its what congress wanted her do. All right, its better, faster and cheaper and gets the outcome that congress and thats kind of thing that we need to be lifting up. When we talk about congressional oversight, we always about calling up Public Servants and yelling at them because they did something wrong. We never call up your diaries, sanchez, and say thank you. Interpreting what we said in the right way and being i dont know, slightly disobedient because you got us the outcome that we need that kind of oversight that reward grids Public Servants for making the choices that makes these systems make sense to people. Youre here, you dedicate the book, actually, to public. This is Public Servants. How many the Public Servants here. Stand up, please. Or people whove been a Public Servant . Thank you for all done. And i see several people in the who i know have made those choices and i know they have felt the stress of choices. And i just wish we all knew how to thank them, reward them more often and those Public Servants who are listening out there also, thank you for all that you have done and many of the question i have to tell you in all my time doing this, ive never gotten this many. And so this is great. And many of the questions actually are from people who have worked in Public Service or i want to work in Public Service and theyre wondering how do you deal with how do you actually become one of these people that youre talking about . How how do you become one of these change agents when youre in that culture of risk averse . You have generation or change thats happening with people dont arent familiar with some of these tech techniques or technologies. This is the question i get most often and its the hardest one because i recognize that when someones asking that question they are trying their hardest and feeling frustrated by a system that feels like its just so hostile to what want to get done. And i have just a couple of, you know, of sort of quick things that are not easy, but the first one is find community. There. There are allies around you. And when youre having a bad day, youre going to need those those friends. I think every Public Servant i know whos been able to be anything you or sanchez has done, because they have found like minded people and been able to go to them and and solve problems and get support. And a lot of times its just emotional support. I mean, the the dedication, the book to Public Servants everywhere dont give up and thats the thing its really hard not to give up but its we only dont give up when we have people around us that help us to help that do that and the other thing that i that, i advise folks to do that when youre in government and youre being blocked, it does not work very well to just go at that barrier. You have to step around and see the issue through the of the person whos blocking you and understand they dont want you to that. Empathy. Empathy. I have very rarely met a Public Servant who disagreed with me on you know what i wanted to do, who didnt have a really good reason for believing what he or she and was blocking me because they were protect. They felt like they were protecting government and protecting taxpayer dollars and protecting their fellow Public Servants. I is theyre mostly have unbelief positive intent. So if you see where theyre coming from, then you can, i think, sometimes help them see the ways in which what you doing is also trying to honor intent, get the right outcomes for the American Public. But youve got to meet on that common ground, instead of just going at each other, we were talking about you and ive talked about this a lot over the years. Is that the importance of listening and just asking people where they come from . I remember even a quote for america. We used to teach the early fellows say, just ask them how they got to their job and why theyre doing this job and how do they keep their resources. And its amazing. You hear these and you talk about some of them in the this is why i think its so important. Everyone should this book is is those those that that deep convo to serve and one of the things i want in this is another question of somebody asked i think is fantastic is how do create the incentives for governments or elected officials to both lift up these kind of these practices rather than shaming the just the bad ones . And how do we get them to to clean up the the stagnant layers of policies sediment that have built up . I think that we havent really even tried yet and so im hoping well start trying i mean when an official asks you for your vote or your donation do you ever say what are you doing about implementation . Do you ever say, what are you doing about policy clutter . No. You say, what law are you to pass that i will like. What policies do you stand for that match my values . So thats very important. I want a Public Servant. I want the elected officials that i vote for to have something in common with my values. But i also want those values to be in action. And that is implementation. And thats a lot of cleanup work. And they dont think its their job because we havent told them. Its their job. What do you advise somebody who wants to get into Public Interest Technology Characteristics . What do they need to be prepared for as they go into into the field . Well, we already covered the most important one, empathy. We also also talked about persist since, i think, the ability and willingness to go to see it, to see the problem through eyes of the people who are most affected by it. If youre not willing to do that, it will you will be challenged, be effective as a Public Servant. And i think just, you know, i dont think it has to be a particular but every time i have seen people try their hand, government, you know, dipped their toes in the water. What they get addicted to is the impact they see how much they can really do to help something. And so whatever that is for you, like dip your toes in and see what really what really strikes you the way you can make a big difference. Because i have never seen anybody not find something. And one of the questions i get asked the most is, how does where do how do people actually put their skills to . If somebody has skills out there and theyre either here in audience or listening on the radio or watching this, whats the advice of . How they should get involved . So there are a lot of ways to involved. Obviously. I think should do some working in government. Im not just talking about tech people. I think any of us will benefit. I know i personally benefited from having a inside government where you to see how the sausage is made and you get to see the frustrations that the people who work for you, you have and you get to realize the impact that you have. You dont have to go straight that though for instance, theres lots of ways that you can work around government. With government, you can do various kinds of volunteering. I will give a shout out to the United States digital response, which is a fantastic way for people with tech and design and data skills to help if you sign up with u. S. Digital response, they will find a partner for you in government who needs your exact skills and gets you to be able to help. It started during when there were a lot of governments that needed people to, you know, fix a pipeline or stand up a forum for emergency rental assistance. And they just didnt have the capacity and people came from all over to be that capacity. And that is still needed by the governments and there are people who still want to do it. And a lot of those people i mean, to warn you, if this if you do it have ended up taking time jobs in government because of that impact they saw. So its a little bit of of feeder but lightweight ways and full time ways but just try it out. Theres a line from secretary that he used to say is once you try government, you really cant ever let because there is no higher calling mission. And the ability to scale your individual, i think that you feel that when you go in and its so much there, what do you when you know in the little remaining time left that we have i want to talk about the political environment is matches up with the implementation of policy and you know weve seen certain states work aggressively use technology to block people out of things theres questions for people are working on issues to implement decisions they may fundamentally disagree with like the decision or the docket database being weaponized to go. People who are legal under the law and what what advice do you have for people who are caught on policy issues that are in the middle of, this this conflict of politics . Yeah, i think youre talking about people who are working a government that is by policy and intent not actually serving its people in some cases. Thats right. Theyre not serving the people or the elected officials change by the will of the people. Yeah and that changes. So i think its easy to focus on that. And and while it is always happened, its not just now. Right. Weve always seen this. Theres a wonderful book called Administrative Burden by dan moynihan and hurd that talks about all the ways which in which you can defeat policy after its passed by essentially making the implementation. And thats happened. But that is the minority actually and i think there was another quite a few people that that i and that you knew who were working instance for the Obama Administration happened be democrats match their values and then trump came into and there was a real question whether they should stay because might be asked to do things that were very inconsistent with their values and i think it happened very little, to be honest and mostly what people found was that there were still problems that needed to be fixed. You still had snap recipients, some stuff crazy with snaps and the public charge role, but most help is equivalent of food stamps. Who decides exactly . You. We still needed to make our tax system easy to use. We you know state still needed to provision their services there was so much work that still needed to be done that really wasnt contested and in fact in some ways the Trump Administration because theyre very sort of you know blow it all up ish were actually support of of new approaches and ways. Im not saying that there wasnt there werent places of conflict. But i do remember a tweet by a woman named Caitlin Devine when this all happened that said, you know, to say that you dont need a government that works for people just you dont like the person in office is the height of cynicism. We still need all those functions work and by and large still not working as well as they should. You still have an opportunity to make them better. So i think just find those places where you can have a positive impact. Theyre going to be the cases where youre going to have to make difficult choices. But i there i would back to something we talked about at the top of the decisions are made by those who show up its so glad you say it that way because you know, i many people dont realize i started my government time actually under president bush in a department run. Rumsfeld, somebody who i disagree with many the policies. Yeah, but you dont choose your commander in chief. You dont choose the secretary of defense, but you show up to work on problems and make an and difference. And i chose to stay on the Defense Innovation board under trump thats where i was going to bring up is you actually not only stayed on the Defense Innovation trump you joined the Defense Innovation board at a time where was a fair amount of of pushback and concerns of technology being used in the department of defense. And so what. When you are thinking about the policy things, you try to focus on in those things, how what do you look for . How do you internally for that get that to challenge things . People dont agree with it, but you know this is what the public. I think it just goes back to the people were trying to serve. So i became passionate. The work of the Defense Innovation and other change agents inside department of defense. Actually, when i when i heard Stanley Mcchrystal and i realized that all the that i saw in working on snap and criminal justice issues you know were the same inside the department. But the people that we were trying to protect here are, you know, men and women in uniform and that they deserve better. And so for me to go back to that, what is this really about who or what are we trying to do and are we going to act in an ethical way . I mean, and then reminding myself that is why other publics are there to thats just really i think my touchstone i do ultimately believe that and i think i think a lot of people on both all across the ideological spectrum believe this too that we can disagree about what a government policy should be gun control abortion all of these things. But ultimately, if we have a government that cannot do what it says its going to do, if we have so little state capacity that we cant get it done, thats a very dangerous and thats something that people of all political stripes should come together to fix. And i think there are i the people who care about this bipartisan state capacity there, people on the left who are concerned about state capacity for totally understandable reasons and dont like this idea of making government better at what its supposed to do. And there are people on the right who i think a lot of folks on the left would say, oh, they dont that like theyre you know, theyll actually care deeply about this so that the people who care most about state capacity look like a particular ideological flavor at all. But to go to the defense department, i mean, however, feel about what the military does and i had deeply conflicted feelings about americas military. I had before i won the Defense Innovation board. I still have those feelings, but the idea that we are just terrible at what we do when what do sometimes involves killing people is even idea were going to miss and hit the wrong targets. Were going to hit more innocent civilians. Were going to put our own people in greater danger. You know, better for i used is my mom teaching in the kitchen never cut with a dont knife you slip and thats when you hurt yourself when youre cutting a sharp knife you can actually cut what you intended to cut. I completely understand. Do not always agree with what we decide to cut. You know, in terms of our military. But i dont want that knife slipping everywhere and just hitting random hitting. I think thats great for almost everything. You talked about. And secretary carter, the late secretary carter who appointed you to defense, a very sound board used to say security. Security is like oxygen. Yeah. You only know when you need it. We lost a great man when we lost ash carter. And in particular, i think about all the serve, the Public Servants, everyone is out there whos building these systems. This is their oxygen. So i just want to thank you, jen, for all the work that youve in Public Service, all the the unbelievable amount of things that youve created to benefit the entire country. And i just want to congratulate you on your book recorded america why government is failing the digital age and how we can do better. It is so phenomenal. And i want to thank ken and, jacqueline broad family fund and the you u. S. As seed Dornsife Center for political future for supporting todays event and i also to thank all the Public Servants out there and i think itd be appropriate to end this with but dont give up im d. J patel thank you and take care. Thank you again