@codeforamerica
Technology and Trust:
The Challenge of 21st Century Government
Tim O’Reilly
@timoreilly
TEDx Market Street
May 10, 2014
codeforamerica.org
Saturday, May 10, 14
When you see the title of this talk, Technology and Trust, you perhaps think of Edward Snowden and the ongoing scandal of NSA spying on the American people and our allies. But I’m actually here
to talk about something that is perhaps even more fundamental. And it starts here...

Saturday, May 10, 14
How many of you are old enough to remember a time when you had to physically walk into a bank and talk to another human being in order to get cash?
I remember….
And that memory seems quaint to all of us because we know how much personal finance has been revolutionized over the last 25 years because of digital, networked technology.

Saturday, May 10, 14
Even a few years ago, people would have been amazed to take a picture of a check with a phone and the money will show up in their account a few hours later.
The same digital, networked technologies, it seems obvious to say, have revolutionized almost every aspect of our lives. Not just banking but everything from education
to how we interact with our friends.

Saturday, May 10, 14
But there’s one place where that revolution has largely not yet taken place: in government. This is the Department of Motor Vehicles,
which in the US is a symbol of bureaucracy. Just about everyone has to go at some point in their lives and almost no one has a good experience.

91% of Americans own a cellphone
67% use Facebook, 33% have a tablet...
Why is this how we engage with government?
Saturday, May 10, 14
And this is a microcosm of the problem we try to address at Code for America--when the tools are available for people to connect with anyone in the world and
access every piece of information one could ever want, why do we make it so hard to access government?

6
Saturday, May 10, 14
Even
when
government
tries
to
do
digital,
we
get
messes
like
healthcare.gov.
It
doesn’t
have
to
be
that
way.
But
when
the
government
does
end
up
building
technology
that
doesn’t
work
and
costs
way
too
much,
not
only
do
ci@zens
get
gypped,
but
it
breaks
our
trust
in
government.

7
Saturday, May 10, 14
Democracies get their strength from the people’s trust. When the interactions that people have with government are so divorced from how they live their lives, or are hard and unpleasant, what is that doing to the trust that underlies our
democracies? Obviously, the decline of trust in government has to do
with a lot of other factors besides technology, but the way government is so out of step with ordinary life certainly is symptomatic
of the deeper problem.

8
Saturday, May 10, 14
Tom
Steinberg,
founder
and
execu4ve
director
of
MySociety,
one
of
the
pioneers
of
the
open
government
movement,
wrote
“Good
governance...”
This
is
one
of
the
key
principles
that
we
work
from
at
Code
for
America.
It
isn’t
just
a
maGer
of
geHng
smart
tech
people
into
government
-­‐
that’s
magical
thinking.
We
need
to
completely
reorient
the
way
government
creates
policies,
so
that
it
works
much
more
like
a
“lean
startup,”
where
you
constantly
are
trying
to
learn
what
works,
rather
than
deciding
what
you
want
to
do,
and
only
then
trying
to
implement
it.

9
Saturday, May 10, 14
The
problems
with
healthcare.gov
were
made
worse
by
greedy
contractors
who
charged
hundreds
of
millions
of
dollars
(perhaps
up
to
a
billion
dollars
when
you
count
the
state
exchanges)
for
a
site
that
many
of
us
in
Silicon
Valley
think
could
have
been
done
for
a
few
million
at
most,
and
by
feckless
bureaucrats
who
didn’t
know
how
to
manage
the
project.
But
the
problem
started
here,
with
a
900+
page
“specifica@on”
(the
Affordable
Care
Act)
plus
tens
of
thousands
of
pages
of
addi@onal
regula@ons
that
had
to
be
followed
to
the
leTer.
(By
contrast,
the
Interstate
Highway
Act
of
1956
was
only
29
pages
long.)
Imagine
that
Google,
or
Facebook,or
the
iPhone,
had
started
with
a
huge
specifica@on
wriTen
by
a
commiTee
of
hundreds
of
lawyers
(and
lobbyists)
and
you
realize
where
the
real
problem
lies.
Policy
people
at
the
top,
implementors
at
the
boTom.
Completely
the
inverse
of
the
way
it
works
in
Silicon
Valley.
(Lots
of
people
say
Obamacare
was
2400
pages
long.
This
is
incorrect.
For
details
on
the
page
count
of
Obamacare,
see
hTp://www.leadertelegram.com/blogs/tom_giffey/ar@cle_c9f1fa54-­‐d041-­‐11e1-­‐9d01-­‐0019bb2963f4.html
and
hTp://
www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-­‐checker/post/how-­‐many-­‐pages-­‐of-­‐regula@ons-­‐for-­‐obamacare/2013/05/14/61eec914-­‐bcf9-­‐11e2-­‐9b09-­‐1638acc3942e_blog.html
)

10
Saturday, May 10, 14
The
UK’s
Government
Digital
Service
is
the
best
example
of
a
government
agency
that
is
doing
things
right.
One
secret
to
its
success
is
that
Mike
Bracken,
the
head
of
the
GDS,
reports
in
at
the
highest
level
of
government,
and
has
a
seat
at
the
table
in
shaping
policies
that
affect
digital
services.
In
the
past
couple
of
years,
the
GDS
has
replaced
something
like
1700
bad
government
web
sites
with
one
that
has
more
usage
than
all
1700
combined
had
before.
The
service
has
had
ci@zen
sa@sfac@on
go
through
the
roof,
and
has
won
plaudits
from
everyone.

11
Saturday, May 10, 14
The
GDS
has
aGracted
a
talented
team
of
technologists
and
has
been
described
as
“the
hoGest
startup
in
London.”
But
one
of
the
most
important
things
they’ve
done
is
to
rethink
how
to
design
government
digital
services.
The
GDS
Design
Principles
are,
in
my
opinion,
the
most
important
user
interface
document
since
the
original
Macintosh
User
Interface
Guidelines,
which
set
the
tone
for
the
mouse
and
window
era
of
compu4ng.
A
lot
of
our
work
at
Code
for
America
is
informed
by
the
UK’s
Government
Digital
Service
Design
Principles.

12
Saturday, May 10, 14
The
first
of
these
is
to
start
with
needs
-­‐
user
needs,
not
government
needs.
This
is
so
cri@cal.
The
GDS
works
a
lot
like
any
Silicon
Valley
startup.
They
iden@fy
a
problem
area,
and
learn
how
to
solve
it
incrementally,
with
a
build-­‐measure-­‐learn
cycle.

13
Saturday, May 10, 14
Code
for
America
follows
the
same
approach.
Our
flagship
program
is
our
Fellowship,
which
brings
talented
startup
teams
into
ci4es
for
a
year
to
develop
innova4ve
solu4ons,
but
perhaps
more
importantly,
to
teach
city
partners
how
to
think
about
a
more
modern,
user-­‐centric
approach
to
government
technology.

@timoreilly
Saturday, May 10, 14
A great example of how our Fellowship teams apply the GDS Design Principles is a project that we did in 2012 in Honolulu,
where we worked on a project to improve the city’s website.

Saturday, May 10, 14
With
only
three
fellows,
they
couldn’t
take
on
the
task
of
rebuilding
the
content
for
the
en@re
website.
So
what
they
did
instead
was
to
build
a
site
that
beTer
conformed
to
the
way
people
look
for
informa@on.
They’re
usually
looking
for
quick
answers
or
steps
for
ac@on
they
need
to
take
and
a
site
that
looks
like
this
is
really
frustra@ng
to
navigate.
How
ojen
have
you
come
to
a
government
website
like
this,
full
of
press
releases
(mee@ng
government
needs,
not
ci@zen
needs).

Saturday, May 10, 14
So
they
built
Honolulu
Answers,
a
super-­‐simple
and
elegant
search
interface
that
allows
ci@zens
to
enter
keywords
or
ques@ons
and
get
quick
answers.

17
Saturday, May 10, 14
They applied another one of the GDS design principles, to design with data.
They mined the visitor logs of the existing site and the city’s call center to find out what people are really looking for,
instead of what government departments want to say about themselves. And one of the things that they found was that
driver’s license information was one of the top searches. (In Hawaii, the city manages this for the state.)

18
Saturday, May 10, 14
Take
a
look
at
the
city’s
exis@ng
start
page
of
driver’s
license
informa@on,
complete
with
such
“need
to
know”
informa@on
as
the
fact
that
the
driver’s
licensing
sta@ons
have
a
new
statewide
computer/camera
licensing
system!
We
even
have
a
link
to
a
picture
of
a
driver’s
license.
But
the
informa@on
about
how
to
get
one
is
hard
to
find.
That’s
what
ci@zens
really
want.
This
is
the
kind
of
thing
that
breaks
trust
with
government.

Saturday, May 10, 14
And
get
back
plain
language
answers
that
direct
a
user
toward
ac@on.
The
site
itself
was
easy
enough
to
build.
But
the
team
was
faced
with
the
challenge
of
how
to
populate
all
the
content.
It
would
have
taken
the
three
of
them
a
very
long
@me,
especially
considering
none
of
them
were
from
Honolulu.
So
they
did
something
that’s
actually
preTy
radical
when
you
think
about
how
government
is
used
to
working.

Saturday, May 10, 14
So
they
asked
ci@zens
to
write
the
content.
You’ve
probably
all
heard
of
a
hackathon.
Well,
they
held
a
writeathon.
Members
of
the
community
suggested
topics,
picked
from
among
the
most
popular
ques@ons,
and
wrote
the
answers
to
them.
This
led
to
some
ques@ons
government
doesn’t
usually
try
to
answer,
like
this
one
about
wild
pigs.
Over
the
course
of
a
Saturday
ajernoon
they
had
created
almost
all
of
the
content
for
the
site.
But
more
importantly
than
that,
they
created
a
new
way
for
ci@zens
to
par@cipate
in—to
build—their
government.

21
Saturday, May 10, 14
Our
second
major
program,
the
Code
for
America
Brigade,
works
with
local
volunteer
groups
to
redeploy
Code
for
America
apps
(as
well
as
other
civic
apps),
and
to
do
other
work
to
improve
technology
in
ci@es.

@timoreilly
Saturday, May 10, 14
In
June
2013,
on
the
Na4onal
Day
of
Civic
Hacking,
in
Oakland
(where
I
live)
the
Oakland
Brigade
held
their
own
writeathon
for
Oakland
Answers.
The
Code
for
America
Oakland
team
took
the
code
base
from
Honolulu
Answers
and
redeployed
it
(everything
is
on
GitHub
hGps://github.com/codeforamerica
)

@timoreilly
Saturday, May 10, 14
When I participated in the Oakland write-a-thon, I wrote this answer to the question about hazardous waste disposal. I knew
what needed to be said, because I’d discovered a few months before that there was a limit on how much you could bring in. I found
this out when I was turned away because I had too much in my truck. The information about limits was in the footnote on a form
that you normally fill out on site, but that they say you can print out and bring with you if you like.

@timoreilly
Saturday, May 10, 14
When I participated in the Oakland write-a-thon, I wrote this answer to the question about hazardous waste disposal. I knew
what needed to be said, because I’d discovered a few months before that there was a limit on how much you could bring in. I found
this out when I was turned away because I had too much in my truck. The information about limits was in the footnote on a form
that you normally fill out on site, but that they say you can print out and bring with you if you like.

24
Saturday, May 10, 14
But
is
simply
building
beGer
websites
that
important?
I
wrote
a
blog
post
about
this
recently
on
the
Code
for
America
site:
What’s
really
at
stake
in
beGer
interfaces
to
government.

25
“One
privilege
the
insured
and
well-­‐off
have
is
to
excuse
the
terrible
quality
of
services
the
government
rou4nely
delivers
to
the
poor.
Too
oben,
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
Saturday, May 10, 14
It
was
fundamentally
a
reflec@on
on
this
quote
from
Ezra
Klein,
wri@ng
in
the
Washington
Post,
to
the
effect
that
all
the
furor
over
the
failure
of
healthcare.gov
hides
a
far
deeper
problem.
He
wrote:

@timoreilly
Saturday, May 10, 14
That’s why one of the things I’m proudest about at Code for America is the work we have done to improve interfaces to social services.
Last year, our team in San Mateo worked on building a social services search engine, and an API that allows social services in
other cities to register their offerings so that they can easily be found. http://ohanapi.org/

@timoreilly
Saturday, May 10, 14
In San Francisco, the Fellows debugged the system to figure out why people were being unnecessarily cut from Food Stamp benefits.

28
Saturday, May 10, 14
People
were
geong
dropped
from
the
system
because
they
didn’t
know
what
to
do
when
they
received
leTers
like
this,
full
of
gobbledygook
and
legalese.

29
Saturday, May 10, 14
The
Fellows
built
a
simple
Text
messaging
system
telling
people
to
call
the
office
when
they
were
out
of
compliance.
We
built
a
similar
system
in
Louisville
KY
to
remind
people
of
court
dates.
We
also
built
a
system
in
New
York
to
help
the
criminal
jus4ce
system
help
evaluate
candidates
for
alterna4ves
to
incarcera4on.

30
Saturday, May 10, 14
Jake
Solomon,
one
of
the
Fellows
who
worked
on
the
San
Francisco
project,
wrote
a
fabulous
post
on
Medium
called
“People,
Not
Data:
On
Disdain
and
Empathy
in
Civic
Tech,”
that
is
required
reading
for
anyone
who
cares
about
making
government
work
beGer
for
its
ci4zens.

31
Saturday, May 10, 14
And that’s what we’re all about at Code for America. The organization was founded to change the culture inside government that supports bureaucracy, breeds disengagement
with citizens, and makes it hard for government to come up with innovative solutions to longstanding problems--all using
modern networked, digital technology and user-centered design principles.
We take four approaches: 1) we work directly with government officials (at the local level) to create the capacity inside government to build innovative solutions to hard problems; 2) we build communities of technologists and citizens who
want to lend their skills to help build their governments; 3) we build tools that make citizen interactions with government easier, simpler, and more elegant, so that the experience of government is positive and breeds trust. 4) We incubate
and accelerate civic startups to create new
economic models for those tools. In this, we’re influenced by the idea that government should act like a platform. Before the iPhone, phones had twenty or thirty applications; now they have millions. When governments open data, for
example, private companies can deliver innovative services. (Eg GPS, weather, healthcare innovation)

32
“The
legi4mate
object
of
government
is
to
do
for
the
people
what
needs
to
be
done,
but
which
they
cannot,
by
individual
effort,
do
at
all,
or
do
so
well,
for
themselves.”
Abraham
Lincoln,
July
1,
1854
Saturday, May 10, 14
I
want
to
end
with
this
reminder
from
Abraham
Lincoln.
Government
is
one
of
the
key
plaporms
for
improving
the
quality
of
our
society.
Bringing
modern
technology
and
user
centered
design
to
government,
so
that
it
truly
serves
its
ci@zens,
is
one
of
the
great
opportuni@es
of
the
21st
century.
It
is
key
to
restoring
faith
in
government,
repairing
the
breach
between
government
and
its
ci@zens,
and
delivering
the
services
that
will
make
our
society
more
just,
fair,
and
prosperous.

33
•Don’t
stop
believing
that
government
can
work,
and
can
be
a
force
for
good
•2015
Fellows
Applica4on
Deadline
July
31,
2014
•2014
Accelerator
Applica4on
Deadline
May
15,
2014
•Get
your
city
involved
-­‐
codeforamerica.org/ci4es
•Join
a
Brigade
near
you
-­‐
codeforamerica.org/brigade
•Follow
@codeforamerica
for
news
and
progress
•Donate
-­‐
codeforamerica.org/donate
How
You
Can
Help
Saturday, May 10, 14
How
can
you
help?