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Jennifer Pahlka              

Former Deputy Chief Technology Officer At The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; Founder of Code for America

Jennifer Pahlka is the author of "Recoding America: Why Government is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better" and a Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center and the Federation of American Scientists. In 2010, she founded Code for America, a national nonprofit that brings the principles and practices of the digital era to government.

In 2013, Pahlka took a leave of absence from Code for America to serve as U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer in the Obama administration. There, she helped found the United States Digital Service (USDS), which brings world-class technologists and designers to government to improve digital service delivery. She served on the Defense Innovation Board, started by the late Ash Carter, under Presidents Obama and Trump.

At the start of the pandemic, she also co-founded United States Digital Response, which helps government meet the needs of the public with volunteer tech support. Presently, she serves as the organization’s board chair.

Pahlka is the winner of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, the David Packard Award, the Oxford Internet Institute’s Technology and Society Award, the National Democratic Institute’s Democracy Award, and was selected by ​Wired​ magazine as one of the people who have most shaped technology and society in the past 25 years. Her 2012 TED Talk, “Coding a Better Government,” has been viewed over one million times. A Yale University graduate, Pahlka holds fellowships with Ashoka, the National Academy of Public Administration, and the Volcker Alliance.

Speech Topics

Policy Divides; Delivery Unites

Politics is often described as “how the policy gets done.” But how the policy gets implemented – its delivery – is a whole different kettle of fish. Elites think in terms of policy, but the rest of the country knows about delivery. We know about it because it’s the fabric of our daily lives. When what government delivers disappoints or, worse, frightens or insults us, it shapes who we are as citizens, whether left or right. Improving our ability to deliver not only serves both parties, but it also strengthens our democracy.

Everyone Has a Plan Until They Get Punched in the Face

When healthcare.gov first launched, with millions enrolling, it served a total of eight users on its first day. But by the end of the first enrollment period, the site had helped even more people than had been planned before its disastrous launch. And when the agency responsible for the site took on its next big project, it was on time, dramatically under budget, and so easy to use that their clients, used to constant frustration, wondered if they landed on the wrong website. That punch to the face turned into a dramatic transformation. How can you turn adversity into resilience?

Are We Starving Government By Design? Or Starving It of Design?

Longstanding fights over big government vs. small government are getting our country nowhere. We can have a government that’s less burdensome on businesses and the public and gets better social outcomes, and the key isn’t necessarily more money. It’s recognizing that what operates our government today is a mess of policy, process, and technology that has accrued over time without ever being designed to do what we need it to. Redesigning the machinery of public services is a choice we can and should make. What does that look like, and how do we make it happen?

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