{"id":1199,"date":"2025-03-10T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-10T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fctuckerbatesville.com\/?p=1199"},"modified":"2025-03-10T09:03:22","modified_gmt":"2025-03-10T09:03:22","slug":"she-co-founded-the-office-that-became-doge-now-she-sees-irresponsible-transformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fctuckerbatesville.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/10\/she-co-founded-the-office-that-became-doge-now-she-sees-irresponsible-transformation\/","title":{"rendered":"She Co-Founded the Office That Became DOGE. Now, She Sees \u2018Irresponsible Transformation.\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jennifer Pahlka is perhaps best known as the founder of Code for America, a widely respected nonprofit that helped formalize the principles of civic tech, a movement leveraging design and technology expertise to improve public access to government services and data. Notably, the organization reimagined the online application for California\u2019s food assistance program, which once had<\/a> one of the country\u2019s lowest participation rates, transforming it from a 45-minute endeavor requiring a computer to a mobile-friendly process that can be completed in under 10 minutes.<\/p>\n

Pahlka\u2019s 2023 book, \u201cRecoding America<\/a>,\u201d outlines her views on why the government so often fails to achieve its policy goals in the digital age. In it, she argues that \u201carchaeological\u201d layers of policies, regulations, and processes center the bureaucracy, not the public.<\/p>\n

As a deputy chief technology officer under President Barack Obama, Pahlka helped launch the United States Digital Service<\/a>, a unit within the White House that paired top technology talent with federal agencies to make government services more efficient and user-friendly. It was the predecessor to Elon Musk\u2019s \u201cDepartment of Government Efficiency,\u201d or DOGE. On Feb. 25, 21 employees resigned<\/a> from the renamed service, saying they would not \u201ccarry out or legitimize DOGE\u2019s actions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pahlka believes bolstering the government\u2019s tech chops and relying less on contractors could save taxpayer dollars. However, as the administration looks to slash spending, she worries that DOGE\u2019s \u201cvery indiscriminate\u201d approach to date could wind up harming people who rely on public benefits such as Medicaid<\/a>.<\/p>\n

KFF Health News spoke to Pahlka, now a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Niskanen Center, about what she sees as \u201cirresponsible transformation\u201d and how best to fast-track government reform. This interview, conducted in mid-February, has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n

Q: You\u2019ve made a career of bringing Silicon Valley talent into the public sector to improve the delivery of government services. What have you learned from mixing tech with government?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A:<\/strong> It\u2019s really easy to look from the outside of government and say, \u201cThat\u2019s crazy it works that way. I\u2019m going to go in and fix it.\u201d And when you get in, it\u2019s that way for a reason, and you gain so much more empathy and sympathy for people in public service. You realize that people who you thought were obstructionists actually are just trying to do their jobs.<\/p>\n

Civil servants deserve respect. We\u2019re just not transforming government fast enough.<\/p>\n

Q: What are the key changes you think would speed things up?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A:<\/strong> One, you have to be able to hire the right people and fire the wrong ones.<\/p>\n

You also have to be able to reduce procedural bloat. When the unemployment insurance crisis hit, every state\u2019s labor commissioner got called in front of the legislature and yelled at for the backlog. Rob Asaro-Angelo in New Jersey brought boxes and boxes of paper \u2014 7,119 pages of active regs. And when they kept yelling, he kept pointing them to them and saying, \u201cYou can\u2019t be scalable with 7,119 pages of regulations.\u201d<\/p>\n

The third pillar is investment in digital and data infrastructure.<\/p>\n

And the fourth is closing the loop between policy and implementation. In California, you get thousands of bills introduced every year in the legislature. We don\u2019t need that many. We need legislators to follow up on bills that have already been passed, see if they\u2019re working, tweak them if they\u2019re not. They need to go into agencies and say, \u201cIf this is hard for you to do, what mandates and constraints can we remove so you can make this a priority?\u201d<\/p>\n

Q: Civic technologists pushed through layers of bureaucracy in California to boost participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. How did that process unfold?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A:<\/strong> When we started working on California\u2019s SNAP application, it was 212 questions. It started from, \u201cWhat are all the policies that we need to comply with?\u201d Instead of, \u201cHow would this be easy for someone to use?\u201d<\/p>\n

I think it can always be helpful to have fresh eyes on something. If those eyes have experience in consumer technology, they\u2019re going to see through that lens of, \u201cHow do we deliver something that is easy for people to use?\u201d<\/p>\n

Q: House Republicans are <\/strong>considering deep financial cuts<\/strong><\/a> to safety net programs such as SNAP and Medicaid, and restricting eligibility. In recent years, organizations including Code for America <\/strong>have received<\/strong><\/a> hundreds of millions in private funding to modernize social safety net programs and make them more accessible. How optimistic do you feel that these efforts will progress over the next four years?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A:<\/strong> Let me say what I hope for: I hope that the states now get that when we don\u2019t transform fast enough in a responsible way, you are inviting irresponsible transformation. I hope this gives governors and mayors all over the country a kick in the butt to say, \u201cWhatever we have done so far, it has been insufficient. We really need to work on the capacity of our state to deliver in a modern era.\u201d<\/p>\n

Q: What do you mean by irresponsible transformation?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A:<\/strong> Maybe there is good stuff that DOGE is doing now that I don\u2019t know about or good stuff that they will do in the future. I don\u2019t have a crystal ball. But I do see that there is a huge difference between illegally stopping payments<\/a> without Congress\u2019 permission and making an IT system work better.<\/p>\n

Q: To that point, <\/strong>DOGE\u2019s purview<\/strong><\/a> seems to have shifted from modernizing government systems to, ostensibly, rooting out fraud, waste, and abuse. What do you make of that change?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A:<\/strong> I think the thesis that better technology could reduce waste, fraud, and abuse is sound, but you want to see both better use of technology to ensure that taxpayer dollars aren\u2019t wasted, and that people who need their benefits are going to get them. You need a North Star that includes both of those things.<\/p>\n

Q: And you\u2019re not seeing that in DOGE?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A:<\/strong> They have not expressed great care for what damage can happen to people who rely on benefits. I\u2019m just seeing large, very indiscriminate cuts.<\/p>\n

They have signaled that government needs its own internal tech capacity and that it\u2019s shocking how reliant on contractors our government is. I would agree with that.<\/p>\n

We have a very dysfunctional government technology contracting ecosystem. There\u2019s this set of big firms that we\u2019ve outsourced our technology to that get to charge taxpayers a shocking amount of money to implement changes.<\/p>\n

Q: Thousands of federal workers are now being pushed out. In light of your view that we outsource too much, what are your feelings on that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A:<\/strong> We\u2019ve overrelied on the idea that we should bring people in from the outside and underinvested in helping career civil servants to do transformation work themselves.<\/p>\n

When I wrote my book, the biggest hero was Yadira S\u00e1nchez, who I think now has been at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services for 25 years. She\u2019s a leader who really pushes for the kinds of decisions that are going to make a service for doctors that\u2019s going to be usable. She gets pushback and comes back and says, \u201cIf you make that decision, we are going to alienate doctors. They\u2019re going to stop taking Medicare patients. And we\u2019ve got to do it this different way.\u201d<\/p>\n

We need more of her, and we need to empower lots of people like that.<\/p>\n

This article was produced by <\/em>KFF Health News<\/em><\/a>, which publishes <\/em>California Healthline<\/em><\/a>, an editorially independent service of the <\/em>California Health Care Foundation<\/em><\/a>.<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

KFF Health News<\/a> is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF\u2014an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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