Jennifer Pahlka is a passionate believer in using technology to affect change. In 2009, she founded nonprofit Code for America, which embeds technology fellows in city halls around the U.S. with the aim of making government services easier and more effective. It’s "like the Peace Corps for geeks," she said in a 2012 TED Talk. In 2013, Pahlka, 45, took a page from her own playbook and did a fellowship herself: She spent a year as the deputy CTO for government innovation at the White House.
What do you actually do all day in your job?
I go to meetings, talk with clients and funders -- all the usual stuff. But when I need a fix, I lurk in our Slack channels where people are doing fascinating work on things like access to food stamps or reducing incarceration. We run a range of experiments to figure out how to make government services work better, and our teams are constantly getting data and hearing directly from the people who need these services. The concreteness of the work energizes me. Sometimes I ask questions in these channels uninvited and the teams are like, “Oh, that’s Jen. She’s just hanging out here.”
How many hours do you sleep?
I go to bed early and get up early (like 5:30), and try to get 8 hours. But I still pull all-nighters on occasion.
What do you eat for breakfast?
Right now, papaya with chia seeds, cinnamon, and nutmeg. It’s my thing right now.
If you could pitch to one person, who would it be?
Pope Francis, because he is raising the bar for a massive institution with entrenched practices and habits and changing the idea of what’s possible. We want to do the same for government.
What’s on your home screen?
My daughter doing the “McKayla is not impressed” face, surrounded by icons for Slack, Lyft, BART Runner, DCMetro, Hipmunk, United, TripIt, Instagram, Twitter, Etsy, Inbox, This American Life, and Instagram.
How often do you exercise?
Right now, about 6 days a week. Some days I run, some days I do the Bar Method, which I’ve learned to love, despite the pain. My husband does both with me.
What app can’t you live without?
Instagram, because it’s how my daughter tells me she got home from school OK. And I get to see my step-grandkids every day, even though I only get to see them in person every couple of weeks.
What's your favorite city?
I used to miss New York a lot, but now my hometown of Oakland, CA, really is my favorite city.
What’s the most important company we’ve never heard of?
I’m really interested in companies like Mark43 and Remix, which are leapfrogging decades of stagnation in software for police departments and transit planners, respectively. The expectations for all kinds of government software are changing faster than almost anyone realizes, and there are going to be huge implications to all of this.
Are there any social platforms you refuse to participate in?
Well, I didn’t do Secret. Or Reddit. But it’s not a refusal. There’s just not enough time.
What are you reading right now?
Work Rules, by Laszlo Bock and the current issue of The New Yorker.
Do you think there’s a tech bubble?
Consumer tech is frothy. Government tech is underrated.
Best piece of advice you've been given?
"Code for America will be what you say no to." -- Vivek Kundra
We can’t follow all the paths that are offered us. Code for America has made good guesses about what will have a sustainable impact on a very large and difficult to change system. We’ve focused our energy on following those experiments to learn what really works.
What keeps you up at night?
On the micro-scale: Unanswered email. There’s no time during the day to write back to people, and I’m always behind. Sometimes I just have to get up at 2 a.m. to respond to at least a few people. I always feel terrible.
On the macro-scale: I worry that people are giving up on government, starting to think it would be easier if we just organized ourselves through Facebook or whatever. It doesn’t help when the basic websites run by government don’t work -- we all heard about what happened with healthcare.gov (which now works pretty well thanks to some very dedicated developers), but that was just the tip of the iceberg. Many states’ websites for social services are down much of the time, and even when they are up, they are often so poorly designed that they are nearly impossible to use. These problems aren’t that hard to fix if you can change the approach and bring in good technical people.
We have to figure out a way to do that at scale if we want to stop wasting taxpayer dollars and get the American public believing in government again.
If you could tell your 18-year-old self one thing, what would it be?
I was a sad 18-year-old. I would just give myself a hug and not say anything.
