Ben Kaplan 00:00
Unpolitics is the podcast about the world's most innovative political ideas and the changemakers behind them. I decided to raise our voice, none of us can't achieve success. Yes. This is the show that proves the conventional wisdom isn't always right. by those who may we've been facing, whether it's just maybe bring hope, not what your country can do for you and what you can do for your country. So we're political opponents become partners and rhetoric becomes movements. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Come with me under the banner of freedom, free at last. On Unpolitics, you might just learn to believe in politics again.
Ben Kaplan 01:02
Hey, it's Ben Kaplan and today on politics are chatting with government process innovator, Jennifer Pahlka, she's former Deputy Chief Technology Officer of the US government in the Obama administration, and author of the book recoding America, why government is failing in the digital age, and how we can do better. Jennifer is best known as the founder of Code for America, the nonprofit that has helped bridge the gap between the government and private sectors and their use of technology and design. So why does Jennifer say that government at all levels has limped into the digital age? And what can we do today? To close the gap between the policy outcomes we intend and what we actually get? Let's innovate.
Ben Kaplan 01:47
Jennifer, one aspect of your book that I found really intriguing. Is this idea that yes, we need to digitize government. And yes, technology can play a role. But actually, we have broken processes that we need to tackle first, why is government process broken? And why isn't it something that generates headlines on the evening news?
Jenniffer Pahlka 02:07
First of all, great to be here. Thank you so much. I think we tend to think the government needs to move on to new technology, their technology is old. And while it is often old, and some updates could be helpful. It is very difficult to take the incredibly complex legacy processes that exist and just put them on to new platforms. If the technology world has brought us great conveniences, sometimes delights, sometimes headaches, it's because that technology is designed well. And what we miss in government is the need to actually actively thoughtfully designed for users. When you look at a program like unemployment insurance, which I worked on during the pandemic, you know, we had this moment where we were trying to clear this enormous backlog of unemployment insurance claims that hadn't been paid, and people were waiting for their checks. And I think in the state of California, 1.2 million, right was the number of backlog claims, the Employment Development Department didn't actually know how many they had had backlog until we came in sort of helps them sorted out. And yes, we sorted through some sort of antiquated technology for sure. But there was a really revealing moment when my colleague was speaking to one of the claims processors who kept saying, I'm the new guy here, I'm not sure how to answer that question about this very obscure piece of process or policy or the way we do things or that new regulations that have just come down from the Department of Labor. And she finally said, How long have you been here, new guy? And he said, I've only been here 17 years, the people who really know how surance works have been here for 25 years. So is the problem really, that there's COBOL code, in unemployment insurance systems all over the country? Every state has one yes, they mostly do all have COBOL code in there. But none of the states that modernize that got rid of their COBOL code did any better than those who saw the COBOL code, because the policy that governs unemployment insurance has just accreted and accrued since the 1935 Social Security Act. And it's so complex that, you know, if you're a technologist looking at this, you can try to implement what you've been given or you can say this needs to be fundamentally redesigned. recoating America is is about fundamentally recoating not just moving a sort of mess of law and policy that has accumulated over decades onto some new platform. It still doesn't work for people. How do you go about thinking about you know, if it's too complex, we need to simplify. If it's too convoluted, we need to streamline how do you begin to change some of those things where it's not probably the sexiest part of government yet has a huge impact on constituents. Absolutely. What the experience they get. Yeah, I think it starts with changing thinking. And if we change our thinking, then we can change our behavior.
Jenniffer Pahlka 05:00
So we think and I don't mean just people in government, I mean, us, the general public, we tend to think that the way change happens is that our elected leaders or through maybe through a ballot process, we pass a new law or policy. And I grew up on Schoolhouse Rock. I don't know if you remember the little bill. Okay, of course, of course. Yeah. How bill becomes a law? And yeah, okay. Sure, yeah, it's a law. And then we all celebrate, because it passed. And there's just big party. But that's actually in some ways, the beginning of the process of change. And there are a bunch of people who we don't look at that we don't revere, who are not our, you know, fancy elected officials who are responsible for that implementation. And so I think we, as the American public and our elected leaders need to think, certainly policy is important. But if we don't give at least equal attention to the implementation of that, and of course, now, so much implementation is digital, then we don't get the outcomes we want. We're celebrating prematurely. So I think all of us have to think differently about that. And then exactly what you said, Ben, I mean, it's on high to down low. That's not how the best technology is built. The best technology is built from the bottom up from frontline researchers who understand frontline users, they not only craft the technology, they push those insights back up the organization to influence the strategy of the organization. In government, we are very waterfall based technologists will know waterfall is a development, techno term of the development methodology as opposed to like agile, which would be more of a something more incremental, more of a sprint, a waterfall kind of flows from one thing to the next. Like, if you looked at a waterfall, it flows kind of in order in sequence. Yeah, and you can't go back up the waterfall. If something happens at a lower stage that informs what we should be doing. You're stuck with the plan that was handed to you from the tear above. But it's it's very dysfunctional. And it's not just a software development methodology, it is a way of thinking and government, things start at the top and then people below every tear below has less and less power to actually craft what we need to do. There's great quote in the book from my friend Clay Shirky, who says the waterfall methodology is a pledge by all parties, not to learn anything during the actual work. So we actually have to think in government about how to break that way of being and say, for instance, when we're crafting legislation, that thing that we are going to celebrate when the bill passes, why don't we have the people who are going to implement it, including technologists and designers at the table, when we're writing the law, that way they can write law that's implementable, like it actually has a roadmap to be implemented. And those people have more insight into what the user is actually need and want and will get that outcome. But in our current way of structured or current culture in government, those people are very far downstream. We don't talk to them until we have something we're gonna tell them to do. It's always a directive, it's not a dialogue, and we need to chair change from directive to dialogue. And how do you think about this idea of, you know, I don't think anyone goes to a government office, and it's like, well, I'm gonna get like, amazing service here today. Like, I just know, I'm going to be blown away. Yes. And that's my point is, what if we did what if part of government's role and maybe I'm thinking more local governments, I just, it's a little bit more immediate to me, like you need, like you walk into an office or something like that, but it could be on their website. But what if the how we did as an office was like, you know, how responsive are we to people? How fast can we respond? Did we answer their question? Did they get their help? Can we reduce times and reduce frustration? And can we do as like, what if we were this like, great service organization, like, whenever you've been to, like, I don't know, like, let's say, a really good restaurant, or like, Wow, I feel taken care of this is great. And we use that to impart sort of the culture and bring us together as a unifying force. Has anyone ever done that? Is there an example of like, wow, amazing constituent service that you feel taken care of? And as a result, you feel more unified with your community? I mean, could it even be a force for unification for community? Has anyone ever done that? And can is it possible? It's absolutely possible? And I think we see the signs of it. I mean, let me just say, you know, there's so many critical government services that are provided and they can actually have that impact government can have a huge effect on your life, especially in times of need. When we make the provision of those services burdensome it's we don't get that impact.
Jenniffer Pahlka 09:38
But you know, when when, I mean, we just talked about unemployment insurance, you know, when it works, you're out of a job, but suddenly you've got a check coming at you. That is life changing. It can it can keep people from falling into much worse poverty, but we need to make the they need to have an experience that feels like not only that they get the check, but that they were respected during the process. And then there is that feeling of community, with government and community with the others that are getting it. Absolutely, there are signs that we are getting there. One that I would point to, though it's not so much of a feeling of community as it is a feeling of being respected, would be COVID test.gov, which came out, I guess, a year and a half ago, President Biden said, let's give four COVID tests to every family. And within I think four weeks, they had a website up, I timed myself using that website, it took me 11 seconds to order my tests. That is an experience that respected my time. And it they appeared in my mailbox three days later, it was really designed to meet a need was not a profound thing was not getting health insurance, it was not getting food stamps, it was not being you know, your immigration process. That's, you know, really profound,
Ben Kaplan 10:53
it was a simpler process, but it was an efficient process. In you even describe that it respected your time. Uh, wow. Like, amazing, like, how can we do more of that? Who doesn't want that? And he didn't confuse me.
Jenniffer Pahlka 11:06
I mean, so many government forums, they ask questions you go, I don't know, if they're asking here, I'm gonna answer it wrong. It's very stressful, there's a lot at stake is very clear and simple, as well as fast. But there are examples of this happening and far more complex contexts. One that I tell in the book is of one of the more recent legislations that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had to implement. After the ACA after the trauma of healthcare.gov. They got another legislative mandate to implement around value based care. And they found that the doctors who get reimbursed by Medicare were furious. They the systems that they were supposed to us were burdensome, they were confusing. They, you know, required huge investments in different it, they had to train their staff. And when they were supposed to now move to a new system that was required by this new law, they were on the verge of revolt, people were predicting a mass exodus of doctors out of Medicare, because they didn't want to have to learn yet another burdensome, confusing system. But the public servants in charge of this implementation, took charge of it and simplified it. One small example is they were told in the beginning, yes, doctors will have to choose whether they are in a group practice, or an individual practice, like the single sole practitioner, there were nine different definitions in the policy of a group practice. But that's it's just it's, as they say, the team said, it has to make sense to a person, it can't be like you need a very high priced lawyer to answer the first question. And they sit they did the hard work. And, frankly, the hard work to convince others in the agency to simplify that down to two should have been one, but they got to two. And because of decisions like that, they created a new interface that the government that the doctors were to use to implement this new program that was so simple and easy to use that when they rolled it out, the doctors called the call center to say something must be wrong, this is too easy. Like Medicare never makes it this easy for me to work with you. The policy was just as complex as, say, the ACA. But they did the work to design something simple that worked for people. Now, we have a long way to go, I think to get to the vision that you articulated. But if a public a team of public servants can do that with something as complex as Medicare, then we can do it everywhere. We just have to actually believe that we can and support those public servants to do that work, which means we have to listen to them. When they say things like it will not work. If there are nine definitions of a group. The people above them in that hierarchy have to say yes, you are empowered to say that we are listening, we will change Well, I
Ben Kaplan 14:00
think it's actually interesting. There's this notion from actually the military of all places of commander's intent. And what commander's intent is, is this notion of, if you want to like take the high ground and a hill, you can give detailed instructions have like the 27 steps you need to do take the guide how you're out of the hill, but if you're in a battle, and the road gets blown up, and all you have are the 27 steps, then you're stuck, what do I do? I can't do step 14, I can't go forward. But if you have commander's intent that you understand that like the goal is to get to the high point of the hill, you're going to improvise, you're going to find another way because you're going to just and so the issue is that for government for good reason. We operate under a rule of law, we create laws, we create procedures and processes and rules and regulations. But then how do we get the flexibility or the commander's intent to say like, oh, we all want to have people who've been harmed by unemployment get support they need so they can eat and support their family. And we've just lost it in the midst of everything else. And we have this backlog of 1.2 million How do we get that clear intent with enough agility and flexibility? But we don't want a free for all, where it's unfair, where certain people are taken advantage of how do we balance all know
Jenniffer Pahlka 15:09
exactly, I mean, in the case of this Medicare program, Congress wrote the law to improve the quality of care. But in the implementation of it, it's so complex and it drives doctors away, you're degrading the quality of care. And so that's exactly your Commander's Intent metaphor. In fact, I quote, General McChrystal in the book, he had a line somewhere that said, Don't, he tells his people don't do what I asked you to do? Do what I would have asked you to do. If I knew what you know, right? It's that on the ground, on the ground knowledge about, you know, the actual battlefield that he wants you to take the hill not to do step seven, and then step eight, and then step nine. And we need public servants who adhere to that. We also need to support public servants to hear to that the reason public servants will stick with Step seven, and then step eight, and Step nine, even though they are clearly not working. And they have countless examples of that in the book, including in the unemployment insurance debacle, the leadership, they're saying, We're going to stick with our current fraud protection processes, even though they are creating a backlog and not stopping fraud. But again, Step seven, Step eight, Step nine, that's we were told to do. That's what we're going to do. The reason public servants stick with that instead of do what you do, Sanchez, who, you know, made this great program for doctors and Medicaid did is that they're not they're held accountable to process, public servants are stuck. Because we held them accountable to two distinct systems. One, we think we want them to get the outcomes that their careers depend on showing that they have done what they were told and following the processes that were put in place. So if that's what they're accountable to, that's what a lot of them will do. Obviously, there there are people like you DERA who care less about their career advancement and more about serving the public. But we're not going to have widescale change until those incentives get aligned. And I think those incentives are really come from our legislatures, our culture of accountability, and how the public thinks about government, we have a role in changing how we think and how we act to allow public servants to have that freedom to follow Commander's Intent, instead of do step seven, Step eight, and Step nine, blindly.
Ben Kaplan 17:30
It's interesting, this idea of like, where are you set metrics, behavior will follow. So the fastest way to change behavior is actually set metrics, what you're judged on, which is what you were talking about, what is the metrics that we evaluate it which comes I'll give you an example from the business world, but a very kind of forward thinking progressive company, and something that they told me, which is actually Ben and Jerry's, which is kind of famous for having social good and progressive causes is part of their business mandate. So one of the things that they did it Ben and Jerry's was they said, you know, if we really believe in social good, then when you have your performance review, one of them is like, what did you contribute to the social good, because if we put a KPI on social good that you've done, then we don't have to figure out all the details, people will figure out how to do social good, but they know they're measured on that, and behavior will follow. So how do we do that, though, it's difficult to sort of have a change in culture, and maybe change some of the metrics so that we can align on behavior, because every time I talk to civil servants or other people, it's like, they're smart people, well intentioned, no one's trying to slow down the process intentionally. And they would love to be empowered. I would love to be empowered to take these 100 days and make them 10 days. How do we go about doing that when there's just a long legacy and culture of this, and it's no one's fault? And they're smart people, but we're just sort of stuck in it. Yeah,
Jenniffer Pahlka 18:46
I mean, I think metrics are really important part of it, they can also sometimes backfire. But I do think that we want to shift to a UN outcomes oriented accountability structure, which again, I think starts with us. I also think we have to look at the capacities and competencies that government has today. So we've still been hiring, like for decades, for the capacities and competencies the government needed in the 70s and 80s. world changed, we need different kinds of people different kinds of skills, I would love to hold every agency accountable to the right outcomes. And I also want to recognize that for instance, they can't hire like it takes nine months to hire. You can't do what you need to do in government if you don't have the people. And so I really want people to think about not just what has government done for me, is it meeting its outcomes, but how are we contributing to government having those competencies and capacities that it needs to get to that commander's intent? And we've really, really neglected that in the same vein that we've you know, focused on policy instead of implementation. implementation requires capacity. requires competencies. It's both who you have, what skills they have what they're charged with doing. We've just said, well, as long as we have the right policy brains, everything will be fine. And that is obviously not working out for us very well.
Ben Kaplan 20:11
And how do we get more people involved in tackling this process problem? I think I'd love to hear your perspective from being the founder of Code for America. Part of that was getting more people to tackle developers who maybe would do normally private sector, or startups or entrepreneurs to tackle government problems, that it's fun, it's exciting, it's meaningful, it's purposeful. Part of that was that how does that experience and getting more people involved influence you now and and what we need to do to sort of improve these government processes
Jenniffer Pahlka 20:37
we've been on I mean, I personally have been on this 13 year journey to get people with great tech and design skills to think about government as as a career, whether part of their career called Total career change. And I mean, we've come so far, even before the tech layoffs, there was vastly more interest by people in tech wanting to go into government because the impact is so rewarding. It's frustrating. But the impact is really rewarding. What we need to do now is, and this is this is really why I wrote the book is we've not solved that problem, but hugely changed the playing field about where talent wants to go. And especially now with the tech layoffs, there are more and more people who are saying, Yeah, I kind of always wanted to do that. But maybe now's the time, we have to fix the underlying problems, like the fact that they can't wait nine months for a job offer. And that once they get in, they need to be able to do what they were hired to do. There's a concept in tech of product management, people in government are very confused, because they think that means project management. Well, project management is the art of getting things done, hugely important. We need those folks that product management is choosing what to do in the first place, creating the actual structure, what is this product going to achieve? What's it going to have? What's it not going to have, when we get great product managers from tech to come into government. And they're not allowed to do that they're just supposed to fulfill this long laundry list of requirements that a large team build over 20 years, they're already outdated and far too burdensome to actually implement, then they tend to bounce out. And so we need to create an awareness of what it means this gets back to what you were saying before about, like the environmental regulations being overburdened some, let's make choices. Let's say if this is the goal, then we can't do everything, we can't fulfill every requirement, we can't burden every project, every process with every single thing that every human being wanted out of it every stakeholder, we have to use that product management mindset to make those choices and then execute on that, my hope with the book is that it helps create the environment in which product managers can make choices are actually allowed to make those choices. And we can execute on products that actually work for people
Ben Kaplan 22:57
to things about, because I come from the business world, where you usually know that like if you're developing a product, you know, whatever that is, doesn't have to be a physical thing that last 20% is the most costly part, the complex part, the hard part. And if you could simplify, you could deliver it much faster, much better. If you kind of were able to live with not every last thing you'd love to have in there, you can do that. That's one concept. And then the second one is that even if your idea is brilliant, if it's complex, it's almost like it doesn't matter because you have like a great idea if it's too complex, because you can't do it. And then I think in government, it's even amplified 10x Because you have a big bureaucracy, a lot of people, a lot of different orders and processes and departments and they all have to work together. So do we need to most governments need like a director of simplification or a chief simplification officer or someone whose duty is to say, we need to keep it simple, because even if it's brilliant or great or complex, we're bound to kind of muck it up.
Jenniffer Pahlka 24:01
I think our leaders need to take responsibility for that and create the environment in which people can do it. The woman I mentioned to ran the CMS project that doctors were so excited about is a great example of that. And she takes responsibility for simplifying the policy to create great products, even though that's not really her job. Like, you know, a lot of people would say she's out of her lane, but she takes responsibility anyway. And she creates an environment in which people want to come work. I can't tell you the number of people that I know from tech who want to they hear about her and they want to go work for her because she has such a great reputation for allowing you to have impact. We should be telling the stories of people like her and then getting our elected leaders to spend less time focusing on the failures and more time elevating people like your dear or Sanchez and saying this is what we're looking for. This is what we mean. Public servants if you do this So you will be rewarded not just with the satisfaction of a job well done, which someone like it era has inherently and drives many public servants. But also with more opportunity to do more good and more career advancement. Right now we give the career advancement to the folks who play it safe. If you could go back
Ben Kaplan 25:19
to your time and President Obama's administration, knowing what you know, now, after all the things and you were, you know, Deputy Chief Technology Officer, but you've founded Code for America, you've written books, you've consulted on a lot of projects, what would you do differently now, in hindsight, in that role, to maybe have more of an impact?
Jenniffer Pahlka 25:38
That's a great question. In writing the book, I went back and read history, and it was eye opening for me, I found myself really frustrated that the Office of Management and Budget and the White House particularly was so resistant to what I was proposing, which is to have an office, you know, in the center of government, OMB sort of the most powerful part of the White House, which is one of the most powerful parts of government have an office of tech people. And what I didn't realize until I read some history was that there's a long history of that, in the 1990s, two members of Congress tried to get OMB to take responsibility for digital strategy, the answer that they got was that's operational in nature and inconsistent with the policy role of this institution. And if I'd understood that there was a mindset, a framework, a cultural set of assumptions, that was operating, to try not to have the United States Digital Service be stood up, I would have been more effective. And so I think I think the history of our relationship to government and technology and government is really, really helpful. I think the other thing that I would have done differently, is focused less on the people who come in from the outside to make change, though I value them very highly. And there are many stories of them in the book, and more on the people like you Dara Sanchez, who is an absolute hero, and a huge change maker. But she didn't come in from Google or a Facebook or a startup, CMS was her very first job, she has been there for 23 years. And having more attunement, to and support for career public servants who got there before I was there are gonna be there after I left and focused on empowering and supporting them to be changemakers is a lesson that I have absolutely learned. And I hope the book reflects that because I truly I say this in the book, I truly believe that people like you, Dara Sanchez, are the future of government, they are the future of our country, because our country depends on government being able to work. And she is exactly the type of person that can make that change. If we recognize and support her and people like her,
Ben Kaplan 27:56
what it seems like to make the kind of change. I mean, it's a popular concept with tech folks is like disruption, right? We need to like disrupt this and do things. And there's somebody said for like outside energy and fresh thinking, and you don't have the legacy of 25 years of working in this. So you can see things a little bit differently, you can see things from a higher perspective. But the same time that you have that there's also this sense of Yes, come in from the outside, but bring a sense of humbleness. Also. Because there's certain reasons that things work a certain way. There's certain reasons and just disrupting everything and throwing it out and not respecting that isn't a good approach. And also there's a wealth of experience and how to do this and knowledge and you find that lots of people, they know what needs to be fixed and would love to be empowered to do so. So it's kind of unique, because to create change, you need this bold confidence. And we can do it and fresh thinking but you need a sense of humbleness to and realize that people have worked on this a certain way, I have a great wealth of experience to draw upon as well. Absolutely.
Jenniffer Pahlka 28:51
And I think that the story of you, dear is success, of course starts, you know, with her own, just enormously high character and intellect. But she had been at CMS for many years when healthcare.gov failed, which is sort of, you know, the poster child for technology failures. And it was not until then, when my boss Todd Park came, brought a teen in to sort of help bring healthcare.gov back from the brink, that she was exposed to Agile development and user centered development and that the practices that she now advocates for and practices and creates room for, it's not that she didn't, she was absolutely critical of the sort of waterfall model that she had been in. But she didn't have the language for it. I mean, she told me I never heard the term agile until these people came along from outside of government. So they were the catalysts, but they were catalysts for empowering her. Like they gave her the tools she needed to do this and they're in a profound and long term changing way. As opposed to these outsiders came in, disrupted and then left Sure the disruption is fantastic. If it is actually positive, you're bringing new tools, not just throwing out the old. And if you partnering with those folks who know, this institution and know how it runs, and know the culture and have the trust of other public servants, that is really a powerful combination,
Ben Kaplan 30:18
which is important because this is political, there's relationships involved, as doing the disruption can become disruptive, if you don't respect all of that as well. Yes, to wrap up, I'll take from my experience, cuz I live in San Francisco, and San Francisco kind of famous for bureaucratic processes and inefficiency, I think I saw recently to get a permit for development, the median time is 627 days, right to get something so we're talking a couple years on medium. If you had, you were empowered, you had a magic wand to come in. And you were gonna say like, Okay, I don't have a lot of time, but you have, like, I don't know, a limited amount of time to like change the ways of San Francisco, and recode it make it more efficient and effective. What would you do? What would you do if you had that mandate? Well,
Jenniffer Pahlka 31:03
it's not a theoretical question. I mean, take permitting, you know, we are sitting how many months after the passage of the inflation Reduction Act, which provides a lot of money for people to solarize their homes, those require permits, and we should be doing, you know, 10, or 20x, the number of permits that we are right now. And as people start to draw down those funds, there's going to be enormous demands on processes at the local level in San Francisco in other places like permitting, where if we don't streamline them, we are not going to get the benefits of the IRA, and we are headed for a full on climate collapse. To answer your question, what would I do, there's a set of tools, there's somewhat described in the book that are not about politics, they're about implementation, that, you know, certainly there are tools in the tech person's tool belt, but they often have to do with things like sticky notes on walls, and you know, interviews or research interviews, but you have to start by seeing the whole process. So one of the reasons something like, you know, getting a permit for building takes so long is that every different department has sort of tacked on their little need. And it adds up to something far bigger than what anybody intended. Because every was Stone soup, everyone got to throw their stuff in, the public servants responsible for the process, often have not seen it from start to finish, they see their little slice. So for example, one of the things that great service designers do is called a journey map. It's just says, Here are all the things that a user has to go through from I want a permit to I have a permit, you map all those out and you see, you know, where we are causing undue delays, like what how much time does this piece take? How much time does this be stay? And you say, how can we reinvent this to be faster? By looking at all the pieces and saying, working this parallelize? Is this necessary? We got this information here? Why can't we use it here? Service redesign is simply, you know, a skill set that lots of people have that again, we don't value in government. And so we absolutely have to, I
Ben Kaplan 33:08
think anyone who believes that government can do incredible good, but government has limited resources, if we could focus these resources and make them more effective and get we want faster than that frees up resources for other things, right? Maybe we don't need. And we're always in sort of government making choices and making priorities. And we have to make hard choices. And to your point earlier, we have to focus. But if we can focus and then get more efficient, maybe we can free up more to do some of the other things we want to do. So this has a real impact, like being efficient isn't just like something that, you know, yeah, we've reduced the number of days and people get a permit faster, but it actually can free up bandwidth and resources for other things, as well.
Jenniffer Pahlka 33:48
Absolutely. And to this issue of resources. You know, I have a friend who always says we starve government by design. In other words, you know, we have a political system that's designed to not give government the resources it needs. I have a response to that, which is we starve government of design, we have a lot of resources, but because we don't actively design a, you know, reasonable permitting process, for instance, we use far more resources, then we need, what we need is more design to get better use of those resources. And absolutely, when we free up those resources, they can be put to enormous good.
Ben Kaplan 34:23
What about this notion of a lot of news recently about artificial intelligence chat GPT broke through the conscious with people, we're having these like, wow, that can chatbot can answer all kinds of questions. So a lot of talk about what that means for the private sector. Does it mean something for the government sector to is there ways that we can use it in service of this? Or is it a black box that people don't know how it works and governments confusing, and it's just going to cause more confusion or can it be a tool for us to do some of the things you talked about?
Jenniffer Pahlka 34:52
I was recently at the New Jersey Department of Labor hanging out as one does with once fun free you know free time
Ben Kaplan 34:58
okay for unfun bunch there. I have not met them. They sound fun. Okay, actually
Jenniffer Pahlka 35:02
was super fun. There were an amazing group there. I think there was there probably was Department of Labor in the country, State Department of Labor in the country. Okay. Wonderful commissioner and fantastic frontline staff. One of the things that this designer was doing there was looking at all the notices that you get. So if you apply for unemployment insurance, you're gonna get emails, you're gonna get letters, typically, you will find them extremely confusing and overwhelming, and you can read them and not really know what they're asking you to do. So she was redesigning them to be clearer and simpler. And she had been doing that for a while when chat GPT came out. And she said, Hey, she took, started taking the text of these long confusing legal sounding letters, put them into chat GBT with the prompt, rewrite this so I can understand it better. She would get back the text, she would take it over to her policy partners and say, um, you know, she'd fix it up a little bit, take them over and say, Is this still accurate? Am I still correct? In writing this, they would work with her, then she would fix up the language more. And then she would do her actual graphic design where you know, the part that says like, Call now or please respond by is like in big letters and clear tight. And she started being able to redesign those notifications at a far higher rate because of chat, GBT. It's a human and technology. It's not like, we're just letting technology take it and make mistakes. There's a human, many, many humans in the loop on it, but it hugely sped up their process. So there's a lot of basic applications of AI like that. And I think that can have huge impact if we try to look at what it can do for us without being too afraid of it. Though, I will say that my one fear about AI in government is that if you take something like the guy in the unemployment insurance office who had worked there for 17 years, but we're still figuring out how it worked, because the unemployment insurance policies and procedures are so wildly complex and say, Oh, great. Now an AI can do that. That may be helpful. But it's saying that it's okay to keep those policies and procedures really needlessly complex in a way that we can't understand them. One of the people in the story at Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services said to me, during the process, when they were fighting about the simplification of policy, she said, it has to make sense to a person, not a lawyer. Not the lawyers aren't people, but like a person. And I fear that AI being able to sort of paper over this complexity will let us off the hook for the simplification that needs to happen. Because I think being able to you and I being able to understand the law and policy that governs the programs that we we use and the laws that govern us, is a critical part of our relationship with government. So I don't want it to get it let us off the hook for important work that needs to happen. But I do want to use it where it can be very helpful. Final
Ben Kaplan 38:06
two questions. We've talked a lot about what people in government can do maybe what leaders elected officials could do about focus on maybe simplification. What can a constituent do a voter do if they're saying like, Oh, this sounds great. I would love to do this. I would love to get involved on politics. We want to empower people to get involved. What can you do now, if you've like I totally get Jennifer's vision of government could become what can an individual person do at this point?
Jenniffer Pahlka 38:32
Well, I think it starts with retraining ourselves from the Schoolhouse Rock training that we got that says, you know, we get to celebrate when the bill is passed, right, we advocate for a new policy. And once that policy gets, you know, becomes law, we're dying. So
Ben Kaplan 38:48
as constituents, as a community, we can say we demand that we talk about follow this through to execution and implementation, the laws the beginning, not the end. That's one one thing we could
Jenniffer Pahlka 38:58
do. Absolutely. And I think the second piece of that is it's not just that specific law or policy. There's a academic concept called state capacity, which we used to talk about in relation to developing countries that they had low state capacity, in other words, low ability to do what they are set out to do. It now very much applies to our country, federal, state and local levels. You know, we don't get involved in the creation of state capacity. So for example, I mean, I said this to a group the other day, and they challenged me on it. I said, Can you imagine electing an official, at least in part on the basis of them saying, I'm going to fix the civil service so that my team can hire the people that they need? The infrastructure, the plumbing of our government is as burdened as that permitting process, and we can fix the permitting process until we get the people in. So let's go down a level and say I'm also holding my government accountable to just being a healthy organization that can help There are people that can contract quickly. And that requires the attention of our elected leaders to things that we never call their attention to, like civil service rules. So I had a group saying, No, we're now go, we're now gonna go ask all our elected leaders to please focus on civil service rules. And I'm like, well, good luck.
Ben Kaplan 40:16
Okay. Okay. Well, another way maybe to say that, too, is just like focus on making government better for individual real people at the front line. And if you keep that sort of constituent focused approach, like like a really good US Senate office, I once interned in one where they're really focused on answering every constituent question, and they just really believe in that, if you sort of keep that focus in mind, then then maybe some of the other processes follow. Final question for you on politics is a show about political innovation, and innovative ideas and innovators like yourself who are doing it? What is next, in the next five years for government? What should we be talking about that we're not talking about yet? Where can innovation come from? And even not just what you're talking about in the book that's very innovative and clear. But where else should we look for innovation out of the box ideas, things that we're not discussing, not just the status quo, something different that we might be excited or hopeful about?
Jenniffer Pahlka 41:14
Yeah, I mean, I'll give you two answers. One is at a national level. And I think this trickles down to other levels of government. We've just passed the infrastructure Act, the chips and science Act and the inflation Reduction Act huge pieces of legislation that tried to do a whole lot of things. So as a country, I think our focus needs to shift from what policies and laws we might get through Congress or state legislatures or ballot initiatives to the implementation of those. And I think all our creative thinking, whether it's innovative, or just sort of basic, should be moving in that direction with the recognition that that is like a huge, huge, huge lift. I think the biggest quote unquote, innovation we could we could have is just a huge flight to government. In terms of people's careers, I think we should have far more people, whether they're technologists and designers, or something else entirely, saying the biggest impact I can have right now is to stop complaining and start doing something about it in politics or implementation.
Ben Kaplan 42:18
According to Jennifer Pahlka to make government function better, we can't just take complex legacy processes and put them on new platforms. Instead, we've got to put ourselves in the shoes of our users, the constituents, and experience what they experience to make things work better. Elections are important. Yes, we can celebrate when we elect a new leader or pass a ballot measure. But we need to recognize that this is the beginning, not the end of the process of change. So let's give equal attention to the implementation of new laws and policies, not just enacting them. Let's give those who will be the implementers like non elected members of key government departments, a seat at the table as we write these laws to change behavior. We also need to change up the metrics and align incentives make career advancement for a government official, based less on just following processes, and more on achieving the outcomes that were actually intended. As Jennifer says, what we miss in government is the need to truly design it for its users. And guess what? That's all of us. So how do we make a government bureaucracy? That's uncommonly good. Don't underestimate the power of challenging bureaucratic best practices that aren't actually best. Unconventional, maybe. But I'm Ben Kaplan, and that's on politics. This was brought to you by TOP Thought Leader. Find out more at topthoughtleader.com.
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