Transcripts For CSPAN2 Jennifer 20240703 : vimarsana.com

CSPAN2 Jennifer July 3, 2024

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

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