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

by Jennifer Pahlka

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.

You can have systems that do every possible thing policymakers can think of to ensure “program integrity” (in other words, making sure no one is getting a dollar more than they should) or you can have systems that scale. You can’t have both.

It’s a classic government problem, what my friends describe as “yesterday’s technology tomorrow.”

Peanut butter killed formal rulemaking.

As with Medicare doctors, the more information you ask for, the more you reward administrative capacity, and the harder it is to help those who need it most.

“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they’ve tried everything else.”