Jennifer Pahlka on Reforming Government
Conversations with Tyler
Conversations with Tyler
4.8 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 9 April 2025
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jennifer Pahlka believes America's bureaucratic dysfunction is deeply rooted in outdated processes and misaligned incentives. As the founder of Code for America and co-founder of the United States Digital Service, she has witnessed firsthand how government struggles to adapt to the digital age, often trapped in rigid procedures and disconnected from the real-world impact of its policies. Disruption is clearly needed, she says—but can it be done in a way that avoids the chaos of DOGE?
Tyler and Jennifer discuss all this and more, including why Congress has become increasingly passive, how she’d go about reforming government programs, whether there should be less accountability in government, how AGI will change things, whether the US should have public-sector unions, what Singapore's effectiveness reveals about the trade-offs of technocratic governance, how AI might fundamentally transform national sovereignty, what her experience in the gaming industry taught her about reimagining systems, which American states are the best-governed, the best fictional depictions of bureaucracy, how she’d improve New York City’s governance, her current work at the Niskanen Center, and more.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.
Recorded March 4th, 2025.
Help keep the show ad free by donating today!
The British remake of Ikiru referenced in today's podcast is: Living
Other ways to connect
- Follow us on X and Instagram
- Follow Tyler on X
- Follow Jennifer on X
- Sign up for our newsletter
- Join our Discord
- Email us: [email protected]
- Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, |
| 0:09.4 | bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems. |
| 0:13.5 | Learn more at Mercadis.org. |
| 0:15.7 | For a full transcript of every conversation enhanced with helpful links, |
| 0:20.4 | visit Conversationswithtyler.com. |
| 0:27.4 | Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler. |
| 0:31.0 | Today I am here live in person chatting with Jennifer Polka. |
| 0:35.3 | Jennifer is founder and former CEO of Code for America. She worked |
| 0:40.1 | in the Obama administration, and she founded the United States Digital Service. She has a |
| 0:45.6 | background in computer gaming, media, and most importantly for our purposes, I'm a big fan of her |
| 0:51.0 | 2023 book called Recoding America, why government is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better. |
| 0:58.5 | Jennifer, welcome. |
| 1:00.2 | So great to be here. Thank you. |
| 1:01.7 | What is your model for why Congress has become so passive? And how important is solving that |
| 1:07.3 | problem for reforming the bureaucracy? Oh, you did start with a hard one. |
| 1:12.2 | They're all hard ones. Yeah. So Congress is, I'm sort of new to Congress. So I spent many years, |
| 1:18.5 | really, in the executive branch agency. So I see Congress through the lens of somebody, |
| 1:23.7 | you know, people who are downstream of their actions. And I've only recently come to any theories |
| 1:29.1 | at all about Congress. But one observation I have, I think, secretly will admit that they know |
| 1:34.9 | that the laws that they pass don't actually work. They don't want to admit this. That is not |
| 1:40.3 | something you'd want to run on. But I think increasingly they're aware that they are, |
| 1:45.9 | you know, turning the steering wheel, but it's not connected to the wheels of the car. They're |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Conversations with Tyler, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Conversations with Tyler and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.