government for the people, by the people, in the 21st century

Government For the People, By the People...In the 21st Century

Jennifer Pahlka @pahlkadotTim O’Reilly @timoreilly

Accela EngageAugust 5, 2014

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Lesson #1: Get creative with hardware, not just software

Lesson #2: Build software “above the level of a single

device”

Lesson #3: Close the loop

“What I learned from Google is to only invest in things that close the loop.”

- Chris Sacca

• Google home screen

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To what extent can reputation systems replace or augment regulation?

Lesson #4: Measure and Respond

The Lean Startup

Minimum Viable Product “that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.”

Lesson #5: Do Less

Simplification

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Lesson #6: Rethink workflows and experiences

“Uber is a $3.5 billion lesson in building for how the world *should* work instead of

optimizing for how the world *does* work” - Aaron Levie of

Box.net

But there’s one big problem

“We know about all these new technologies. What we don’t know is how to organize ourselves to use them effectively.”

- An IT executive at Fidelity, during Q&A

after a talk I gave there in 2008

The same site that failed so miserably on October 1 had, by April 15, enrolled more than 8 million people!

Rescuing healthcare.gov• A team of engineers. They came in

and worked tech wizardry, right?

• Maybe a bit of that, but most of the work was debugging the communications failures that led the contractors to build software components that didn’t work together.

• 18 hour days• 100 days straight• Standup meetings focused on

why people weren’t able to keep the promises they’d made to each other

Mikey DickersonGoogle Site Reliability Engineer

DevOps“…it’s not about making developers and sysadmins report to the same VP. It’s not about automating all your configuration procedures. It’s not about tipping up a Jenkins server, or running your applications in the cloud, or releasing your code on Github. It’s not even about letting your developers deploy their code to a PaaS. The true essence of DevOps is empathy.”

Jeff Sussna, “Em pathy: The Essence of Dev Ops”

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disruption

values

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Government can work

for the people,

by the people,

in the 21st century,

if we make it so.

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for the people

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for people

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““User needs. An empathetic service would ground itself in the concrete needs of concrete User needs. An empathetic service would ground itself in the concrete needs of concrete

people. Itpeople. It’’s not about innovation, big data, government-as-a-platform, transparency, crowd-s not about innovation, big data, government-as-a-platform, transparency, crowd-

funding, open data, or civic tech. Itfunding, open data, or civic tech. It ’’s about people. Learning to prioritize people and their s about people. Learning to prioritize people and their

needs will be a long slog. Itneeds will be a long slog. It’’s the kind of change that happens slowly, one person at a time. s the kind of change that happens slowly, one person at a time.

But we should start.But we should start.””

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“One privilege the insured and well-off have is to excuse the terrible quality of services the government routinely delivers to the poor. Too often, the press ignores — or simply never knows — the pain and trouble of interfacing with government bureaucracies that the poor struggle with daily.”

Ezra Klein, Washington Post

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for the people

=

for people

=

for users

Government needs?

Todd Park, US CTO

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stakeholders

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Government can work

for the people

by the people

in the 21st century,

if we make it so.

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by the people

@timoreilly

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productive engagement

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Lesson #7: Rewrite for humans

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Lesson #7: Use the services you manage

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Lesson #8: It’s never right the first time

(and it’s never finished)

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Lesson #9: There is no silver bullet

#Accela @timoreilly

““User needs. An empathetic service would ground itself in the User needs. An empathetic service would ground itself in the concrete needs of concrete people. Itconcrete needs of concrete people. It’’s not about innovation, s not about innovation,

big data, government-as-a-platform, transparency, crowd-big data, government-as-a-platform, transparency, crowd-funding, open data, or civic tech. Itfunding, open data, or civic tech. It’’s about people. Learning to s about people. Learning to

prioritize people and their needs will be a long slog. Itprioritize people and their needs will be a long slog. It ’’s the s the kind of change that happens slowly, one person at a time. But kind of change that happens slowly, one person at a time. But

we should start.we should start.””

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Government can work

for the people,

by the people,

in the 21st century,

if we make it so.

103

Government can work

in the 21st century,

if we make it so.

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Lesson #10: Start now

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“The best time to have planted a tree was 20 years ago.

The second best time is now.”-Chinese Proverb