Jennifer Pahlka > Quotes

“Decisions are made by those who show up.”
― Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

“Both sides need to understand that investing in digital competencies will save far more money than it costs. The USDS tallied up $3.5 billion in savings and cost avoidance (that is, helping agencies find better, less expensive ways to address their needs) in 2019 alone. Given the unit's relatively small budget, that came out to a seventeenfold return on investment (USDS Impact Report 2020, pg. 17).”
― Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

“A revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new technologies—it happens when society adopts new behaviors.”14 The same is true of government.”
― Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

“If you collect hundreds of formal requirements and just start building software for all of them, you’ve generated a whole lot of work for skilled and dedicated project managers, but you haven’t made any real choices.”
― Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

“Requirements are the foundation of software development processes in government, and the source of many of its failures.”
― Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

“The best solution of all would be to hold public servants accountable to outcomes over process.”
― Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

“Employing tech for its own sake is often as unhelpful, and sometimes as harmful, as staying stuck in a fully manual mode.”
― Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

“Rigid, overly specific interpretations of law and policy are hard to avoid when those doing the interpretation can’t evaluate the work for themselves.”
― Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

“turns out that if the tech people you bring in spend time understanding the problem instead of trying to apply predetermined solutions, government actually buys less tech, not more, and at a lower cost, while delivering better outcomes.”
― Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

“You should not be satisfied with your elected representatives’ legislative record. You must ask us to ensure the legislation we enact actually works.”
― Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

“It’s a classic government problem, what my friends describe as “yesterday’s technology tomorrow.”
― Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

“Everything accumulates.”
― Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

“the question of whether government should have digital capacity is moot, because no one with the skills to build digital products should waste their time working in government.”
― Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

“Both sides need to understand that investing in digital competencies will save far more money than it costs. The USDS tallied up $3.5 billion in savings and cost avoidance (that is, helping agencies find better, less expensive ways to address their needs) in 2019 alone. Given the unit's relatively small budget, that came out to a seventeenfold return on investment. (USDS Impact Report 2020, pg. 17).”
― Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

“need for government to modernize processes as a precondition to modernizing tech.”
― Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

“The question of our government’s capacity is an afterthought in our public dialogue,”
― Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

“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.”
― Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

“We should acknowledge that government carries a higher burden than the private sector, without letting that burden add to the risk aversion that makes delivery even harder.”
― Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

“Hierarchical, one-directional, top-down communication is built into the structure of the entire country.”
― Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

“Treating software as just another commodity overlooks the fact that mission-critical software cannot simply be bought the way you buy a truck or even a building. It’s an integral part of the service you provide, and that service and the environment in which it operates are dynamic.”
― Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

“software and our government have something very important in common: they are made by and for people. In the end, we get to decide how they work.”
― Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

“The point of the law is fairness”
― Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

“Modernizing technology without rationalizing and simplifying the policy and processes it must support seldom works.”
― Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

“Both sides need to understand that investing in digital competencies will save far more money than it costs. The USDS tallied up $3.5 billion in savings and cost avoidance (that is, helping agencies find better, less expensive ways to address their needs) in 2019 alone. Given the unit's relatively small budget, that came out to a seventeenfold return on investment (USDS Impact Report 2020, pg. 17).”
― Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America

“«Se nos vendió internet como un bien público. De hecho, así empezó: surgió de un proyecto financiado por el Departamento de Defensa. Sus primeros creadores y usuarios veían su arquitectura fundamental —sin gestión ni control centralizados— como algo que, por naturaleza, habilitaba valores como el acceso abierto a la información, la libertad de expresión y un marco de colaboración horizontal entre iguales. El bien que haría en el mundo parecía inevitable. Y, en efecto, ha hecho un bien enorme, pero los motivos estructurales por los que muchos creyeron que siempre sería así no se sostuvieron. Una internet dominada por empresas cuya principal obligación es generar valor para sus accionistas también ha causado un daño enorme.»”
― Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

“We can’t afford this downward spiral of poor service leading to alienation and decreased political participation, which in turn lead to poorer service. The implementation crisis threatens our democracy.”
― Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

“It’s easy to complain about government but more satisfying to help fix it.”
― Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

“Project management is the art of getting things done. Product management is deciding what to do in the first place—and also, as in the case of the benefit screeners, deciding what not to do. If you collect hundreds of formal requirements and just start building software for all of them, you’ve generated a whole lot of work for skilled and dedicated project managers, but you haven’t made any real choices.”
― Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

“The magic of law is now inextricably tied to the bits and bytes of computer code.”
― Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better

“If we want services that scale to meet people's needs, it's not just a matter of building new technology. It's a matter of clearing out the clutter it rests upon. The systems that run our government need to built on a foundation of bedrock, not landfill.”
― Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better