Seminars About Long-term Thinking: Jennifer Pahlka: Fixing Government: Bottom Up and Outside In

February 19, 2017 8:53 AM

Code for America was founded in 02009 by Jennifer Pahlka "to make government work better for the people and by the people in the 21st century." The organization started a movement to modernize government for a digital age which has now spread from cities to counties to states, and now, most visibly, to the federal government, where Jennifer served at the White House as US Deputy Chief Technology Officer. There she helped start the United States Digital Service, known as "Obama's stealth startup." Now that thousands of people from "metaphysical Silicon Valley" are working for and with government, what have we learned? Can government actually be fixed to serve citizens better—especially the neediest? Why does change in government happen so slowly? Before founding Code for America, Jennifer Pahlka co-created the Web 2.0 and Gov. 2.0 conferences, building on her prior experience organizing computer game developer conferences. She continues to serve as executive director of Code for America, which is based in San Francisco.
posted by eotvos (1 comment total)

I don't know if elected office would make Jennifer Pahlka more or less effective at improving the world, but I know I'd buy plane tickets to spend every weekend campaigning for her if she ran.

Compared to the other "open-government" speakers in this series - who've been shocking bores and also lying assholes who've spent years wasting their privileged positions to do nothing of consequence for anyone aside from grooming their own public images - Pahlka sounds fantastic. It's like learning my smartest colleagues are willing to spend their lives struggling to play a significant role in government. Neat!
posted by eotvos at 8:59 AM on February 19, 2017