Fathers. Virtually every field. Pioneers of the future are developing new technologies am a new science new solutions, new products, new ideas. Currenteakthroughs are in the private sector, nonprofit sector, and in government. They are going to continue and accelerate. Just as the Founding Fathers had to think through the relationship between organized citizens, so we have to think through the relationship between organized public effort and the technologies which are revolutionizing our lives. My recent book outlines the scale of change has occurred around us and begins to imagine a new 21stcentury model of government that takes advantage of this emerging world. Our current federal bureaucracy is trapped in the late 19th century. Bureaucracy is largely an intellectual pattern developed at the same time as the manual typewriter. They were the clerical requirements of carbon paper which led to a pentagon of enormous scale. 17 miles of hallways, 6. 6 million square feet, and extraordinar
When i ask all of you, take out your smartphone if you have one. To get a sense of the audience. You are holding the entry point for a massive information system. I think it is important to understand that. Every time you think the proposals in this speech are unrealistic, i want you to look at your own smartphone and the apps you already have installed. Which is more presented of our future . The current failing bureaucracy or the smartphone in your hand . We have the opportunity to create a 21stcentury Veterans Service system, empowering veterans to use their smartphones to recenter services on their lives, at their convenience, and with the veteran rather than bureaucrat in charge. This vision of a dramatically more effective, more modern, more responsive veterans centered system is part of a much larger opportunity to think about the transition from late 19th century bureaucracy to 21stcentury citizen centered government. The three Major Regions to have a National Dialogue at the f
It is always great to be back discussing ideas. I want to thank the cnn Investigative Team who stayed on the scandals until they broke through and became a national crisis. Early on the stories were dismissed as isolated small problems. The teams continued effort grew the facts until they had to be dealt with. Our thinking on the future of the Veterans Administration has been deeply influenced by the hard work of chairman jeff miller and there find many staffs. We are further down the road because of their help. They have worked tirelessly and against a lot of opposition to help americans veterans find a better future. I want to thank our chief researcher on the v. A. And who developed the interactive map you will see. I want to thank Ross Worthington for helping think through these proposals. Let me say this is going to be a bold by washington standards radical speech. Im going to use terms that are not common in washington circles. Let me share a few of these new ideas ahead of time.
State to want to leave their union but do not know that they can, or when and how to do so, how many hundreds of thousands, or even millions of Union Members around the country want to do the same thing . Working with the association of tmerican educators we called i National Employee freedom week. That is this week. I am pleased to say that 81 organizations, which we have have to, in 45 states, come together with the sole purpose of letting people know that they have the ability to leave their union. You will hear from rebecca, robert, and jennifer and they stories aboutr trying to leave their unions. I want to tell you about the numbers that their stories represent. We decided to conduct a poll, a National Poll of Union Members asking if you could out out of your union without any penalty, would you do so . 454 Union Members across the country and over 28 said yes, i want to opt out of my union if i could do so without penalty. 14. 5 Union Members, so that is about 4 Million People w
Poetic and ironic that we arec in San Francisco city hall. The original building was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fires. Two decades ago, it was completely rebuilt because of the loma priecto earthquake. Our fingers are crossed that there will not be any earthshaking today. Our deputy administrator will talk about the shape specifically. I wanted to take a moment to thank our host, edwin lee, the mayor of San Francisco. He has championed an equal focus on response and recovery. Today he is our host in this majestic Civil Service building, probably the most majestic Civil Service building in the country. Fema can take credit where credit is due. Over the last several years we have been expanding especially in catastrophic planning with our partners from the greater bay area in catastrophic Earthquake Response plans we developed in 2008 and 2009 excusec me, 2010. I wanted to set the stage about what were here today to keep in the back of our minds. The type of event were talki