Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

by Jennifer Pahlka

what now widens the gap between policy intentions and actual outcomes is the messy task of implementation through digital technology, and the ways government makes working with that technology uniquely complex.

When all your time is spent answering questions and writing reports for other people inside government, it’s mighty hard to be focused on the people outside government you’re supposed to serve.

The temporal, organizational, structural, and cultural gaps between policy and tech teams, and between tech teams and the users of that tech, make it hard to try out strategies, learn what works, resolve ambiguities, and readjust. Instead of active collaboration and co-learning, implementing government policy through digital technology resembles a game of telephone, in which each party in sequence fumbles the translation a bit until, many stakeholders later, the message is mangled beyond recognition.

As Clay Shirky, who writes about technology and society, puts it, “A revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new technologies—it happens when society adopts new behaviors.”