Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better (Book Review)

By jgn on Monday, February 17, 2025 in Reading, Reviews, and Technology

This is a book that should be read by everyone who cares about government policy and solutions.

The book says that to get the right systems in government we have to have the right people who are able to deliver the right outcomes (not just satisfying the letter of the policy) and figure out the intentions of policies. There are a lot of building blocks for this big claim, such as: too much software has been developed in "waterfall" fashion; too much has been outsourced; the people who write policy have little understanding of what it takes to implement; teams should work incrementally in agile fashion; software should be designed and developed so that a human can understand it. Overarching is a strong defense of product not project management, and a significant investment in service design.

Great stuff. Now having said all that, the success stories here are a bit thin, involving, for instance, streamlineed unemployment forms, MACRA qualification for doctors (all great, to be sure): As to whether the points here will work at scale: Hard to say. But it's leaps and bounds more sophisticated than other accounts I've read about how governments can get stuff done.

Originally reviewed on Goodreads on 17 February 2025.