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COVID-19 brought the problems with government technology into sharp focus. The systems responsible for delivering unemployment benefits and healthcare were not prepared to mange the influx of requests they received, and the government employees who run those systems were often hobbled by a culture that focuses on regulation and oversight, not innovation and acting quickly.
Beyond the day-to-day impacts of these systems not working, the long-term consequences include the erosion of trust in the institutions that comprise our democracy. So, what can we do? Jennifer Pahlka has a few ideas and she joins us this week to talk about them.
Pahlka is the author of Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better. She is the former deputy chief technology officer of the United States and the founder of Code for America, a nonprofit that believes government can work for people in the digital age.
Recoding America website
More information on Schedule F/Project 2025
Answering your questions about democracy
Congressional oversight and making America pragmatic again
Will AI destroy democracy?
The 2019 version of Democracy in America
What neoliberalism left behind
Demagogues are more common than you think
What does the Mueller report mean for democracy?
School segregation then and now
What Serial taught Sarah Koenig about criminal justice — recorded live at Penn State
Is it time to revive civility?
E.J. Dionne on empathy and democracy
No Jargon: Who controls the states?
The ongoing struggle for civil rights
Immigration, refugees, and the politics of displacement
A playbook for organizing in turbulent times
Jonathan Haidt on the psychology of democracy
Future Hindsight: Ian Bremmer on the failure of globalism
Brexit and the UK’s identity crisis
Brazil’s tenuous relationship with democracy
Yellow vests and the “grand debate” in France
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