The Resilience and Challenges of Federal Bureaucracy

It’s not just the MAGA crowd who are concerned with government waste and inefficiency. In a convincing Wall Street Journal op-ed, best-selling tech author Larry Downes questions the need for a thousand Social Security offices around the country. Downes argues that the federal government's resistance to digital transformation has resulted in staggeringly low user satisfaction rates - just 12% for federal government services. Despite more than 85% of federal workers being based outside Washington, there have been few serious attempts to modernize these services through e-government initiatives. While the incoming Trump administration's "Doge" team has talked about reforming government, Downes remains skeptical about implementation, citing political obstacles rather than technical challenges. He notes that while Estonia and Denmark offer successful e-government models, American reform efforts face unique hurdles, including congressional resistance to closing local offices and bureaucratic procurement processes that often outlast technology cycles. Downes suggests that modernization could significantly improve service delivery while reducing costs, though it would impact federal employment. He emphasizes that this isn't about privatization but rather bringing government services into the digital age - something that could potentially serve as a safeguard against authoritarian overreach by systematizing government processes in transparent, digital systems.

Larry Downes is the author of five books on the impact of technology on business, society, and the law. His first book, “Unleashing the Killer App” (Harvard Business School Press), was an international bestseller, with over 200,000 copies in print. The Wall Street Journal named it one of the five most important books ever published on business and technology. His most recent book is “Pivot to the Future” (Public Affairs), co-authored with Omar Abbosh and Paul Nunes of Accenture. It has been nominated for the 2019 Thinkers50 Strategy Award. Downes writes the “Innovations” column for The Washington Post and is a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review. He was previously a columnist for Forbes, CNET and The Industry Standard. He has written for a variety of other publications, including The New York Times, USA Today, Inc., The Economist, Wired, MIT Sloan Management Review, Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Recode, The Hill, Congressional Quarterly, Slate, The European Business Review, The Boao Review, and The San Francisco Chronicle. Downes has held faculty appointments at The University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the University of California—Berkeley, where he was Associate Dean of the School of Information. From 2006-2010, he was a Fellow with the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society. From 2015-2019, he was Project Director at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy at the McDonough School of Business. Downes testifies frequently before Congress on issues related to the regulation of technology, including those dealing with antitrust, privacy, communications policy, media law, and the role of the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission in the 21st century. He holds a B.A. from Northwestern University and a J.D. from the University of Chicago. From 1993-1994, he served as law clerk to the Hon. Richard A. Posner, Chief Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He lives in Berkeley, CA.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

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