hey everyone um this is really
embarrassing but I just need to ask a
question could I borrow some money from
anyone anyway I just need 10 20 maybe 30
percent of your income is that okay any
takers no okay I get it you’re not sure
if you can trust me you don’t know what
I would do without money and by the way
if the answer is yes see me backstage
after the talk you can talk about it but
you know you’re laughing but the thing
is we give that much money every year to
the government yet 80% of us don’t trust
government to do the right thing that’s
been on the rise for the past couple
decades it’s the highest in modern
history and it’s rising all over the
world in fact and you know a couple
reasons were cited in this study that
was done by PU one we feel a little bit
disengaged and disconnected with
government really and we feel like
government doesn’t pay attention to what
we say or do so 80 percent of us don’t
trust government 80 percent of us feel
like the government officials don’t care
about what we think and when we do
connect with government it’s usually not
a very good experience just think about
that line at the DMV or the red tape if
you own a small business have been
trying to get a permit and so we we
think about all this and many people
conclude okay well you know it’s time to
get rid of a lot of these government
programs and defund them or something
else there’s got to be some other
solution but at the same time the
government programs themselves people
actually trust those and even rely on
those things like defense things like
food safety even fixing potholes and
infrastructure and so what we really
need is a better government one that
works for us and one that we can trust
so I want to talk about what you can do
to make our government better and
whether it’s possible and why it’s so
important but I wanna take a step back
first when we think about government
well what do we generally think about I
think about politics and this is like
the horse races these are the election
polls and the talking heads on CNN and
it’s in our face all the time
but it’s important it’s important to our
democracy important to our government
then we also think about policy these
are the rules these are the laws and
ordinances and obviously without good
laws and good rules you know we’re not
gonna have a very good government right
burnt not a very good functioning
society but there’s one more thing that
we think about maybe a little bit less
than these two and that’s process and it
sounds like a dry thing but it’s really
important process is both the
implementation we’ll call that I of
these policies so you know if you’ve got
a policy that you want to enact you know
what’s the end users experience from
that or the deliberation of these
policies so that’s the process by which
we got to that policy was that our
lobbyists involved was a bipartisan now
I’ve worked in all three branches of
government and in the private sector
I’ve worked with governments all over
the world and from all that experience
the one thing I’ve learned is this
politics policy process you need all
three in order to have a successful
outcome in government you cannot do one
without the other two and expect a
successful outcome so if you could have
a great policy really well-written and
it could have a lot of political support
everyone loves it but if there’s no
process to implement it that’s gonna
work or if the stakeholders that need to
be involved aren’t involved from the
beginning it’s not gonna work out very
well in the long run or in the short run
and process is actually a big part of
the explanation more than you think as
to why the trust in government has been
on the decline for the past couple
decades think about those long lines at
the DMV that’s poor implementation a
private sector entity did that no one
would go to them think about
deliberation how we don’t feel like
we’re included or voice matters as much
we’re not included from the very
beginning on a lot of these policy
processes bad deliberation bad process
now I have some good news finally the
good news is that while better
government starts with better process
but our process actually starts with you
and I’m not just saying this to make you
feel better it’s true so my first job in
politics was in Capitol Hill my job was
actually to
receive calls emails and messages from
constituents and one of the things that
we saw was we got a lot of calls and
emails about politics a lot of move out
policy but all the calls and emails
about process I put in a separate pile
and those were priority calls and emails
you see when veterans started calling
about how the Veterans Health
Administration had a big backlog of
claims that the needed a process and
some Veterans weren’t getting their
benefits we made that our number one
priority in the office we made sure
every single veteran was able to get
through that process and we called it an
email the VA and we said you need to fix
that process and when farmers started
calling an email mailing us and telling
us that because of freezing temperatures
they had record low crop yields we made
sure that the US Department of
Agriculture fixed their process of
getting them emergency relief that they
needed your voice is incredibly powerful
when it comes to process and your voice
actually creates a mandate so when you
call when you show up when you speak up
and when you say that you want processes
to change it makes a huge difference and
the reason why is because just think
about every campaign you’re part of
every campaign promise presidential
elections are a great example of this
everyone says they’re gonna change
Washington drain the swamp hope and
change we’ve heard it for years now
right exactly but you know when they do
go into office and then they hear from
constituents or from people that work
with their agency that the process is
messed up that turns on alarm bells in
their head and says oh wait a minute
this I promise this when I first came
here so here’s the thing though if you
do reach out to your leaders and they
don’t respond to you about process then
you also know that’s time for new
leaders it’s time to take them out so
process is incredibly important and we
need to keep our leaders accountable on
process because it’s what’s annoying us
and what’s making us upset about the way
government works and so your voice does
two things one it makes process a
priority for our leaders and two it
enables the change makers and government
to innovate and to change things so I’ll
give you an example of that so at the
White House I ran a task for
on technology policy and one of the
things that we were looking at was you
know how we can use technology expertise
to save on costs and make processes
better and we found that agencies would
procure software customized to whatever
they need which was great and they would
a lot of times build it in-house so I’ll
take a hypothetical example here so the
Department of Treasury let’s say needs a
new payroll software and so they make it
in-house spend a million or two million
dollars great they’ve got their payroll
system then the Department of State
needs a similar payroll system but
they’re not talking to the Department of
Treasury and so they make their own
payroll system and then ten other
agencies start making payroll systems
and so now you’re spending millions and
millions of dollars on something the
government already owns and so we said
okay well we’re gonna have a central
repository where everyone submits all
the custom software that they’ve built
and we’re gonna go one step further
sure State Department will go to the
repository and say oh there’s already a
payroll system we don’t have to build
our own but then we’re gonna share that
with the general public and so if you
have a business I need the payroll
system you could use the Department of
Treasury’s payroll system for all you
want so isn’t that great right because
now you’re giving the taxpayers a
product that their tax dollars paid for
but here’s the thing about government
it’s very risk-averse in those working
environments and so innovators feel like
they can only make incremental change
when there’s no mandate from the outside
and so you know we ended up tempering
down the policy and we said okay you
know only 20 percent of the the source
code in that repository will be released
to the general public and we put it out
for public comment not thinking we would
get much of a response but somehow some
people did catch down in this and
started publicizing it and then we got
tons of response and it was fantastic
why not why wouldn’t it be bad and so
those public comments really enabled the
innovators in government to change
things and push forward with a process
that is gonna save us money and time a
better process better government starts
a better process the better process
really does start with you and get asked
all the time you know is it possible in
these huge bureaucracies to make
government better they’re just too big
and the answer is absolutely yes
governments all around the world are
doing it and they’re doing an amazing
job and every government everywhere has
new innovations every day and we all
share what we’re doing and what’s
working well we just need to test and
then we need to expand and we need to
expand and and help scale a lot of these
great solutions so you know are you a
little bit upset that you know you feel
disconnected from government in which
you could work with government agencies
on solutions challenge.gov is a website
where government agencies are
crowdsourcing of solutions to some of
the biggest problems going on right now
like the opioid epidemic you could
actually make some money if your idea is
good enough so you know I’m giving you
ideas to make money rather than asking
for money and who likes doing their
taxes anybody anyone like no taxes now
yeah there was a yes okay well well
Estonia the average amount of time it
takes for someone to do their taxes
three minutes not three weeks not to be
months why can’t we do that eventually
that’s something to shoot for right so
there are great solutions going on all
around the world and even in our
American government and all we need to
do is find the ones that can be scaled
and scale them with your help better
government starts a better process
better process starts with you I want to
end by talking about why this is so
important so there once was a man named
kalyanam he lived in India he served in
World War two in the Indian military and
afterwards he stayed active duty and get
a wife and two young sons and it was on
active duty that one day he suddenly
died now the Indian government was new
at the time and so it didn’t do much
well it just went its independence but
what it did do was take care of his
fallen soldiers and so with the really
modest military pension his wife and
kids were able to get by and in fact his
oldest son was able to go to medical
school graduate from school and go to
medical school and then come to the
United States and become a doctor a
dream that he’d always wanted now if the
Indian government had screwed up that
pension system in any way if there was
fraud and abuse if one or two payments
got lost then I don’t know if that
boy my father would have been able to
fulfill his dream you see we all have
stories like this and you know we’re
pretty resilient people we’re pretty
self-sufficient we don’t need the
government all the time
but it’d be nice to know that if we had
a government that we could trust but
when the time came
we’d be able to rely on it so better
government starts with better process
let’s start a movement for better
government and let’s start a movement
for better process thank you
[Applause]
embarrassing but I just need to ask a
question could I borrow some money from
anyone anyway I just need 10 20 maybe 30
percent of your income is that okay any
takers no okay I get it you’re not sure
if you can trust me you don’t know what
I would do without money and by the way
if the answer is yes see me backstage
after the talk you can talk about it but
you know you’re laughing but the thing
is we give that much money every year to
the government yet 80% of us don’t trust
government to do the right thing that’s
been on the rise for the past couple
decades it’s the highest in modern
history and it’s rising all over the
world in fact and you know a couple
reasons were cited in this study that
was done by PU one we feel a little bit
disengaged and disconnected with
government really and we feel like
government doesn’t pay attention to what
we say or do so 80 percent of us don’t
trust government 80 percent of us feel
like the government officials don’t care
about what we think and when we do
connect with government it’s usually not
a very good experience just think about
that line at the DMV or the red tape if
you own a small business have been
trying to get a permit and so we we
think about all this and many people
conclude okay well you know it’s time to
get rid of a lot of these government
programs and defund them or something
else there’s got to be some other
solution but at the same time the
government programs themselves people
actually trust those and even rely on
those things like defense things like
food safety even fixing potholes and
infrastructure and so what we really
need is a better government one that
works for us and one that we can trust
so I want to talk about what you can do
to make our government better and
whether it’s possible and why it’s so
important but I wanna take a step back
first when we think about government
well what do we generally think about I
think about politics and this is like
the horse races these are the election
polls and the talking heads on CNN and
it’s in our face all the time
but it’s important it’s important to our
democracy important to our government
then we also think about policy these
are the rules these are the laws and
ordinances and obviously without good
laws and good rules you know we’re not
gonna have a very good government right
burnt not a very good functioning
society but there’s one more thing that
we think about maybe a little bit less
than these two and that’s process and it
sounds like a dry thing but it’s really
important process is both the
implementation we’ll call that I of
these policies so you know if you’ve got
a policy that you want to enact you know
what’s the end users experience from
that or the deliberation of these
policies so that’s the process by which
we got to that policy was that our
lobbyists involved was a bipartisan now
I’ve worked in all three branches of
government and in the private sector
I’ve worked with governments all over
the world and from all that experience
the one thing I’ve learned is this
politics policy process you need all
three in order to have a successful
outcome in government you cannot do one
without the other two and expect a
successful outcome so if you could have
a great policy really well-written and
it could have a lot of political support
everyone loves it but if there’s no
process to implement it that’s gonna
work or if the stakeholders that need to
be involved aren’t involved from the
beginning it’s not gonna work out very
well in the long run or in the short run
and process is actually a big part of
the explanation more than you think as
to why the trust in government has been
on the decline for the past couple
decades think about those long lines at
the DMV that’s poor implementation a
private sector entity did that no one
would go to them think about
deliberation how we don’t feel like
we’re included or voice matters as much
we’re not included from the very
beginning on a lot of these policy
processes bad deliberation bad process
now I have some good news finally the
good news is that while better
government starts with better process
but our process actually starts with you
and I’m not just saying this to make you
feel better it’s true so my first job in
politics was in Capitol Hill my job was
actually to
receive calls emails and messages from
constituents and one of the things that
we saw was we got a lot of calls and
emails about politics a lot of move out
policy but all the calls and emails
about process I put in a separate pile
and those were priority calls and emails
you see when veterans started calling
about how the Veterans Health
Administration had a big backlog of
claims that the needed a process and
some Veterans weren’t getting their
benefits we made that our number one
priority in the office we made sure
every single veteran was able to get
through that process and we called it an
email the VA and we said you need to fix
that process and when farmers started
calling an email mailing us and telling
us that because of freezing temperatures
they had record low crop yields we made
sure that the US Department of
Agriculture fixed their process of
getting them emergency relief that they
needed your voice is incredibly powerful
when it comes to process and your voice
actually creates a mandate so when you
call when you show up when you speak up
and when you say that you want processes
to change it makes a huge difference and
the reason why is because just think
about every campaign you’re part of
every campaign promise presidential
elections are a great example of this
everyone says they’re gonna change
Washington drain the swamp hope and
change we’ve heard it for years now
right exactly but you know when they do
go into office and then they hear from
constituents or from people that work
with their agency that the process is
messed up that turns on alarm bells in
their head and says oh wait a minute
this I promise this when I first came
here so here’s the thing though if you
do reach out to your leaders and they
don’t respond to you about process then
you also know that’s time for new
leaders it’s time to take them out so
process is incredibly important and we
need to keep our leaders accountable on
process because it’s what’s annoying us
and what’s making us upset about the way
government works and so your voice does
two things one it makes process a
priority for our leaders and two it
enables the change makers and government
to innovate and to change things so I’ll
give you an example of that so at the
White House I ran a task for
on technology policy and one of the
things that we were looking at was you
know how we can use technology expertise
to save on costs and make processes
better and we found that agencies would
procure software customized to whatever
they need which was great and they would
a lot of times build it in-house so I’ll
take a hypothetical example here so the
Department of Treasury let’s say needs a
new payroll software and so they make it
in-house spend a million or two million
dollars great they’ve got their payroll
system then the Department of State
needs a similar payroll system but
they’re not talking to the Department of
Treasury and so they make their own
payroll system and then ten other
agencies start making payroll systems
and so now you’re spending millions and
millions of dollars on something the
government already owns and so we said
okay well we’re gonna have a central
repository where everyone submits all
the custom software that they’ve built
and we’re gonna go one step further
sure State Department will go to the
repository and say oh there’s already a
payroll system we don’t have to build
our own but then we’re gonna share that
with the general public and so if you
have a business I need the payroll
system you could use the Department of
Treasury’s payroll system for all you
want so isn’t that great right because
now you’re giving the taxpayers a
product that their tax dollars paid for
but here’s the thing about government
it’s very risk-averse in those working
environments and so innovators feel like
they can only make incremental change
when there’s no mandate from the outside
and so you know we ended up tempering
down the policy and we said okay you
know only 20 percent of the the source
code in that repository will be released
to the general public and we put it out
for public comment not thinking we would
get much of a response but somehow some
people did catch down in this and
started publicizing it and then we got
tons of response and it was fantastic
why not why wouldn’t it be bad and so
those public comments really enabled the
innovators in government to change
things and push forward with a process
that is gonna save us money and time a
better process better government starts
a better process the better process
really does start with you and get asked
all the time you know is it possible in
these huge bureaucracies to make
government better they’re just too big
and the answer is absolutely yes
governments all around the world are
doing it and they’re doing an amazing
job and every government everywhere has
new innovations every day and we all
share what we’re doing and what’s
working well we just need to test and
then we need to expand and we need to
expand and and help scale a lot of these
great solutions so you know are you a
little bit upset that you know you feel
disconnected from government in which
you could work with government agencies
on solutions challenge.gov is a website
where government agencies are
crowdsourcing of solutions to some of
the biggest problems going on right now
like the opioid epidemic you could
actually make some money if your idea is
good enough so you know I’m giving you
ideas to make money rather than asking
for money and who likes doing their
taxes anybody anyone like no taxes now
yeah there was a yes okay well well
Estonia the average amount of time it
takes for someone to do their taxes
three minutes not three weeks not to be
months why can’t we do that eventually
that’s something to shoot for right so
there are great solutions going on all
around the world and even in our
American government and all we need to
do is find the ones that can be scaled
and scale them with your help better
government starts a better process
better process starts with you I want to
end by talking about why this is so
important so there once was a man named
kalyanam he lived in India he served in
World War two in the Indian military and
afterwards he stayed active duty and get
a wife and two young sons and it was on
active duty that one day he suddenly
died now the Indian government was new
at the time and so it didn’t do much
well it just went its independence but
what it did do was take care of his
fallen soldiers and so with the really
modest military pension his wife and
kids were able to get by and in fact his
oldest son was able to go to medical
school graduate from school and go to
medical school and then come to the
United States and become a doctor a
dream that he’d always wanted now if the
Indian government had screwed up that
pension system in any way if there was
fraud and abuse if one or two payments
got lost then I don’t know if that
boy my father would have been able to
fulfill his dream you see we all have
stories like this and you know we’re
pretty resilient people we’re pretty
self-sufficient we don’t need the
government all the time
but it’d be nice to know that if we had
a government that we could trust but
when the time came
we’d be able to rely on it so better
government starts with better process
let’s start a movement for better
government and let’s start a movement
for better process thank you
[Applause]
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