Modernizing Government: a bipartisan conversation and book event about what government needs to succeed in the digital age
On June 6, 2023, POPVOX Foundation hosted a pre-launch book event with Jennifer Pahlka, former Obama White House official and author of “Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better,” in a bipartisan conversation with Matt Lira, former Congressional leadership staffer and Trump White House official, about the adoption of technology and digital practices.
Special thanks to the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation for their support of this event.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Jennifer Pahlka is the author of Recoding America, and a pioneer in making government work for people in the digital age. She founded Code for America in 2010 and led the organization for ten years. In 2013, she took a leave of absence to serve as U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer under President Obama and helped found the United States Digital Service. She served on the Defense Innovation Board, started by the late Ash Carter, under Presidents Obama and Trump.
At the start of the pandemic, she also co-founded United States Digital Response, which helps government meet the needs of the public with volunteer tech support. She has received the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, and was named by Wired as one of the 25 people who has most shaped the past 25 years. Jennifer is a graduate of Yale University and lives in California with her husband, Tim O’Reilly.
Mathew Lira is the former Special Assistant to President Trump for Innovation Policy and Initiatives at the White House Office of American Innovation, where he worked to coordinate priority policy initiatives for the office. Throughout his career, Matt’s work has placed him at the cross-section of politics, government and the emerging digital economy.
Prior to his time at the White House, Lira spent over a decade on Capitol Hill working on the senior congressional Leadership staff, serving as a Senior Advisor to then-House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. During the 2014 election cycle, Lira served as the Deputy Executive Director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. In 2015, Matt served as an Institute of Politics Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, focusing on the political and policy impacts of the digital economy.
Throughout his work in government, Matt has aimed to forge trust and consensus by bringing stakeholders together to make substantive progress. In an era of deep partisanship, his work has frequently earned support from both sides of the aisle.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Just when we most need our government to work—to decarbonize our economy, to help the vulnerable through a pandemic, to defend ourselves against global threats—it is faltering. Government at all levels has limped into the digital age, offering online services that can feel even more cumbersome than the paperwork that preceded them and widening the gap between the policy outcomes we intend and what we get.
But it’s not more money or more tech we need. Government is hamstrung by a rigid, Industrial-era culture, in which elites dictate policy from on high, disconnected from and too often disdainful of the details of implementation. Jennifer Pahlka shows why we must stop trying to move the government we have today onto new technology and instead consider what it would mean to truly recode American government.
WHAT POLICY AND TECH EXPERTS ARE SAYING ABOUT RECODING AMERICA
“No one should be allowed to hold public office without reading this book.”
“Every American who cares about our democracy should read this book... Taking us behind the scenes in the best and the worst of our bureaucracies, Pahlka lays bare not only what’s wrong, but what to do about it. An engaging and compelling read on a problem we can’t afford to ignore.”
“Recoding America should be on the reading list of every person who wants to make a difference in the world, and every public servant who wants to make government work.”
“Recoding America will rattle some cages, but Pahlka’s engaging and vivid accounts of policy rhetoric crashing onto the rocks of implementation will convince you those cages need a little rattling.”