So few people vote these days, and I think it's partly because they don't feel like the institution really means anything to them. If you want them to vote, give them opportunities to do something else other than vote, to help.
Jennifer Pahlka
As a society, we haven't spent as much time building the citizen Internet.
We have this idea of bureaucracy in local government, and it's generally things that we're frustrated at. It doesn't work the way we like it to work.
When one neighbor helps another, we strengthen our communities.
Before I started Code for America, I spent my career around startups. First it was game developers, small teams trying to make hits in a tough business. Then, when I started working on the Web 2.0 events, it was web startups during times of enormous opportunity and investment.
Everything that works on the Internet depends on a lot of people collaborating, but there's also these rules that you see across all the really successful platforms. Many, many, many more people consume the information or benefit from the information than actually contribute the information.
Government technology processes are mind-boggling long and complicated. A procurement process alone is typically two years, and that doesn't account for the time required to actually build the product.
I think there is a big disjuncture between what we are served up as consumers and what we are served up as citizens.
If there's one thing government needs desperately, it's the ability to quickly try something, pivot when necessary, and build complex systems by starting with simple systems that work and evolving from there, not the other way around.
If you are really interested in making government work, you should have the experience of working in government.
We have to make bureaucracy sexy.
We can't do without government, but we do need it to be more effective.
Right now, if you're a talented developer or designer, government is what you go into if you can't get a better job.
It's really remarkable when you think about what we don't like about government, we, the people created. So if we created it, we can also fix it.
In high school, I was sort of friends with the geeks and friends with the socials and everything else and not solidly in one camp. I've always lived on the borders.
If you don't tolerate any risk, you can never innovate.
Our ability to do great things with data will make a real difference in every aspect of our lives.
You might not think of something like TurboTax as a civic venture, but that product took a confusing interface to a government process and made it simpler and easier to use for citizens.
Cities perform most functions in a very Industrial Age model.
There is certainly a strong game development community in Texas, centered around Austin, with a significant additional contingency coming over from Dallas.
Government is supposed to be about how we do things together, and we can do that much more together if we use technology smartly right now.
There is a certain generation who have grown up being able to mash up, to tinker with, every system they've ever encountered.
Now, a lot of people have given up on government. And if you're one of those people, I would ask that you reconsider, because things are changing. Politics is not changing; government is changing.
