Mike OlsonAnother excellent post by @pahlkadot:
https://www.eatingpolicy.com/p/bringing-elon-to-a-knife-fight
Jennifer Pahlka
@pahlkadot
- 1.9K Followers
- 32 Following
- 26 Posts
Passionate about government working for people. Mom. Keeper of chickens, breaker of dog treats into ever smaller dog treats.
Mark Foden"We have to be able to close the loop between policy and implementation" - @pahlkadot
Yes! In complexity it's utterly, glaringly obvious that progress is otherwise impossible
https://www.statecraft.pub/p/what-can-the-brits-teach-us-about 1/2
What Can the Brits Teach Us About State Capacity?
More than you might think.
As you know, fixing federal hiring has been at the top of my wishlist for a long time. I had the chance to talk about this on OddLots with the amazing Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal, and it's out today. We cover some other stuff too. :)
https://bloom.bg/3Cfti9V
https://bloom.bg/3Cfti9V
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Regardless of your political ideology, it's easy to agree that government should work well; that it should be able to hire talented officials, and build things in a timely, cost-effective manner. Of course, what that means in practice is open for debate, and different people will have different priorities. But at the moment, there are reasons to believe the public sector isn't operating optimally. Things move incredibly slow in many cases. Software systems are often old and extremely costly, and don't do a good job serving the public's needs. It can be extremely difficult to bring on the best workers, even setting aside questions about public sector salaries. Jennifer Pahlka is the author of Recoding America, and was the founder of Code for America. She has also served as the US Deputy Chief CTO and has seen how much of government operates up close. We talk to her about what she's seen, how waste happens, how government operations get bogged down by inertia, and why simply identifying things that are going wrong isn't enough to change them. She talks to us about Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, and why a major jolt may be necessary to get better results.
Ryan AndrosoffVery excited for our latest #LetsThinkDigital podcast episode featuring a conversation w/ @pahlkadot about her book Recoding America! We talked about state capacity and the often overlooked importance of implementation and delivery in government: https://thinkdigital.ca/podcast/state-capacity-to-deliver-modern-solutions/
State Capacity to Deliver Modern Solutions - Think Digital
Can government do the things that it says it is going to do? One of the hardest things that public servants have to do is implement and it gets to the heart of a state's capacity to deliver. In the digital era, that means being able to deliver digitally. And when we think about state
I'm writing on Substack now, and I'd love it if you'd subscribe! My first post talks about "I-95-ness" and how it might play out in the election.
https://eatingpolicy.substack.com/p/the-public-wants-i-95-ness?open=false
https://eatingpolicy.substack.com/p/the-public-wants-i-95-ness?open=false
Jen Pahlka @pahlkadot is a friend and a genuine inspiration. She founded Code for America, which has done great work nationwide to make our country and our government work better.
Now she's written a book to teach the rest of us how to do that, too! Adam Grant says, "No one should be allowed to hold public office without reading this book."
Pre-orders:
No one's coming, gang. It's up to us!
Micah SifryI learned a ton from @pahlkadot's new book, Recoding America: https://theconnector.substack.com/p/born-under-punchcards-when-govt-met?sd=pf
Chris MessinaLoved this conversation between @justinhendrix and @pahlkadot on reforming government services to better server citizens — with design.
Recoding America: A Conversation with Jennifer Pahlka
Listen to this episode from The Sunday Show on Spotify. In the United States, it’s fair to say that federal, state and local governments have struggled in the era of digitalization. Decades in to that era, there is still a gap between the policy outcomes we seek and what citizens often get when they engage with government agencies and services online. At its worst this gap means people aren’t receiving critical services that sustain their lives; and at the very least it reduces faith in government to be able to solve problems right at the moment when it’s clear the collective challenges we face are going to Jennifer Pahlka, who served in President Barack Obama’s administration as deputy chief technology officer and founded the nonprofit Code for America, has written a book that asks us to reexamine how government works, and how it should work, in the digital age. It's called Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better, and it's the subject of the podcast today.
ChatGPT's 6th grade topic sentence, 5 bullet points, concluding sentence gets tired real fast.
Well, @danhon recommended Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow on Twitter, but since I picked it up and read it, Twitter has sadly died. So closing the loop here instead. Amazing, beautiful, heartbreaking book.