Move fast...and fix democracy?

It's easy to despair with another government shutdown. But this hour, three speakers argue that simple upgrades are key to restoring faith in the American experiment. Guests include venture capitalist and political consultant Bradley Tusk, political advisor Jennifer Pahlka and e-governance expert Anna Piperal. TED Radio Hour+ subscribers now get access to bonus episodes, with more ideas from TED speakers and a behind the scenes look with our producers. A Plus subscription also lets you listen to regular episodes (like this one!) without sponsors. Sign-up at: plus.npr.org/ted http://plus.npr.org/ted See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Manoush Zomorodi?

  This episode's sponsor is HubSpot, which offers the following message: What if instead of updating your CRM, your CRM updated you? HubSpot's self-updating CRM keeps your customer context current so you can win more deals. Learn more at hubspot.com. This is the TED Radio Hour. Each week, groundbreaking TED Talks.

• 0:24Speaker 01

  Our job now is to dream big.

• 0:25Manoush Zomorodi?

  Delivered at TED conferences.

• 0:27Speaker 02

  To bring about the future we want to see.

• 0:29Manoush Zomorodi?

  Around the world.

• 0:30Speaker 03

  To understand who we are.

• 0:32Manoush Zomorodi?

  From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you.

• 0:37Speaker 04

  You just don't know what you're gonna find.

• 0:39Manoush Zomorodi?

  Challenge you.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  We truly have to ask ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy?

• 0:42Manoush Zomorodi?

  And even change you.

• 0:43Speaker 05

  I literally feel like I'm a different person.

• 0:45Manoush Zomorodi?

  Yes.

• 0:47Speaker 05

  Do you feel that way?

• 0:48Manoush Zomorodi?

  Ideas worth spreading. From TED and NPR, I'm Manoush Zomorodi. We think of November as election season. But really, in most of the US, it's a year-round affair.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  You can pretty much put your finger on a Tuesday, and somewhere in South Carolina, there's an election going on.

• 1:11Manoush Zomorodi?

  This is Isaac Kramer. He's the director of elections for Charleston County, South Carolina. And he says his team is laser-focused on one job.

• 1:23Speaker 01

  We make sure every piece of how an election is put together is done so in a way that not only is excellent, but is a way that's free and fair for all voters.

• 1:35Manoush Zomorodi?

  So it really used to bother Isaac when he felt like he wasn't quite serving a certain group of Charleston voters, those who live or are deployed with the military outside of the US. For the longest time, Charleston mailed out a ballot to anyone overseas who requested it. And the process was slow and expensive. But then, in 2009, those voters got a slight upgrade: the ability to scan and email back their ballot. It sounds like it would make tabulating those votes much easier. But Isaac says it actually made the process less private and more messy.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  So we would have on Election Day, just imagine this, over 2,000 sheets of paper PDF printed out. You're taking images from across the world that's been cropped in whatever format. And sometimes we'd be like, we can't read this printed out. So we have to pull up the email. And then we have to look at the email and say, OK, yes, now we can see a little bit clearer. But that would take a lot of man hours to duplicate. And I was like, man, there's gotta be something out there that could address this problem. There has to be a better way. And it turns out there was.

• 2:52Manoush Zomorodi?

  In 2020, South Carolina was invited to join a pilot program that would let these overseas voters cast their ballot privately on their phones. No scanning, no insecure email. Easy peasy.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  Just basically, the voter would log in and they would be able to make their selections digitally. And it would look like a paper ballot. And once that voter submitted it, there was no need for them to email anything to us. The beautiful part about it is when it would come back to us, it would still keep the voter's ballot secret in the sense that we would not be able to tie that vote to you.

• 3:32Manoush Zomorodi?

  Secure voting with the tap of a screen. Voters loved it.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  It was amazing. I mean, they wanted this for all elections. They told us straight up, they said, this is how we want to return our ballots. We don't like the old way. This should be streamlined for all the future elections that we do.

• 3:49Manoush Zomorodi?

  All that convenience also meant that many more people voted. For example, in one local primary election, with the old method, about 10% of the overseas ballots were sent in by email. But a couple of months later, in August, with this new voting method.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  By comparison, in August, we had a 55% return rate. And honestly, this has made elections 1 million percent simpler. And I think voter participation is key to the success of our democracy. And the more engaged people we have in the process, people that are voting would really be a benefit to our nation. So meeting voters where there are, I think that's a goal, right?

• 4:36Manoush Zomorodi?

  Today, voting by phone is available in counties in 10 states for US citizens who live abroad. 13 offer it for disabled residents. And after hearing Isaac's enthusiasm for it, you might be wondering, wait, why can't we all vote by phone, especially if it's cheaper, easier, and secure? Isn't it time for an upgrade? With another government shutdown in the headlines, it's easy to think that dysfunction is everywhere. But what if rebuilding trust in government starts closer to home by making state and local systems just work better? From voting to renewing your driver's license. Well, today

• 5:19Manoush Zomorodi?

  on the show, ideas from two speakers who say restoring faith in government is less about politics and more about competence. Both have spent time in Silicon Valley and public service, and they believe that if we can update our everyday systems, we could actually strengthen democracy.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  So in the same way that you do your banking on your phone, and your healthcare on your phone, and they do their love lives on their phone, mobile voting is the same thing, which is just secure technology that allows you to log in, cast your ballot, and have it transmitted securely to the election department. And rather than you having to go to the polling place, the polling place comes to you.

• 6:01Manoush Zomorodi?

  This is Bradley Tusk. He's devoted the last decade of his life to mobile voting. A political operative turned Silicon Valley strategist, he's put millions of his own dollars into building voting technology and piloting it in various states where he says democracy needs it most.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I mean, in the presidential election, most people vote. So for someone listening to this, this interview, 2/3 of people voted in the presidential. My guess is that probably includes you. But even the people who are listening to NPR and TED and all that kind of stuff, they probably don't have a perfect voting record when it comes to state senate, city council, you know, municipal elections, state elections. Because the truth is, we're busy, right? We have jobs, we have kids, we have lives, and- You know, a lot of places go out of their way to make it difficult to vote because they actually don't want more turnout. And so we do have phones, though. So ninety-seven percent of Americans under the age of fifty have a smartphone, eighty percent of Americans

• 7:03Speaker 01

  over the age of sixty-five have a smartphone. And so to offer this as just an additional way to vote, doesn't replace any other form of voting, but to give people another option, I think, would allow a lot more people to easily participate in the process. And if you believe, as I do, and I've spent thirty-five years now working in and around politics, that politicians make their decisions pretty much based on whatever will help them in the next election. If the only people voting in their next election and their next primary are the extremes on either side, then that's what they cater to and that's what they will do. But if turnout goes from fifteen up to thirty-five or forty, by definition, it forces them to the middle, it forces them to work with the other side, it forces them to get things done.

• 7:45Manoush Zomorodi?

  So where are we now with mobile voting? Because I'm a longtime tech journalist. I know Estonia was one of the first, maybe still only, places where they mobile vote. I don't know. But that's a very small country, very homogeneous country. They're very, very progressive in terms of their technology. What is the status here in the US?

• 8:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, uh, once we came up with the idea for mobile voting, and when I founded the Mobile Voting Project in 2017, the first thing we did was test the hypothesis of if you put voting on people's phones, will they do it? And so we funded out of my foundation, this is solely philanthropic, um, elections in seven different states where either deployed military or people with disabilities were able to vote in real elections on their phones. And what we learned is, I think, was pretty obvious to all of us, which is, when you put things on people's phones and you make them easier, a lot more people do it. So that proved to us that, yeah. Yes, it would work. Then the next question became, is the technology good enough to do this at scale? So in those pilot programs, we use the existing tech on the market.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  And for 5,000 soldiers in West Virginia or 6,000 people with disabilities in Oregon, that was fine. But if the goal is to get turnout from 8 to 32, you need technology that can be used at scale. And we felt like that didn't really exist. The problem is, no private company is going to spend eight figures of their own money to build new voting code and then just give it away to all of their competitors by putting it up on GitHub. And so it really had to either be the government, which isn't doing it, or someone doing it philanthropically to make it happen. And I didn't see anyone else doing it, so I felt like it had to be me. So four years ago, we started building our own mobile voting technology.

• 9:33Manoush Zomorodi?

  Bradley Tusk picks up from the TED stage.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  It's going to be free and open source to any government in the world that wants to use it. And to be clear, this is just an additional way to vote. If you like voting by mail, vote by mail. If you like voting in person, great, do that. Some people really like the ceremony that comes with going somewhere and waiting in line and all of that. And if that happens to be you, knock yourself out. But based on turnout, that's not most of you. So let's give people another option. So you can probably tell from my accent, I'm from New York, so I'm going to use that as the example for how it works. I go on the App Store and I download the New York City Board of Elections app. And the first thing they do is say, okay, is Bradley really a registered voter here in New York City?

• 10:21Speaker 01

  I put in my address, fine. Next thing is multi-factor authentication. So you know how like, when you forget your Google password, they send your code and you put it back into the app? Same thing here. Then we take a scan of your face. Mash that up against your government ID. And at this point, we've fully established, okay, Bradley is really Bradley. Ballot pops up on my screen and the ballot itself is simple and easy to use. And I go through it, I take my time, no rush. Whenever I'm ready, I hit submit. And when I hit submit, three things happen. First, my ballot is encrypted. Second, it's anonymized. Third, I get a tracking code like if it were a FedEx

• 11:05Speaker 01

  package, so I can track the progress of my ballot all the way through the process. Then it goes back to the New York City Board of Elections and they air gap it, which means they take it offline. And once my ballot is no longer connected to the Internet, then they decrypt it, a paper copy is printed out. That gets mixed in with all of the other ballots. I know where my ballot stands because I can see from the tracking code that it was received, tabulated, printed and so on. And the underlying code itself is open source, which means that anyone can audit it. Anyone can verify it. It's totally transparent.

• 11:44Manoush Zomorodi?

  So you did pilots, you're iterating on the technology, you're addressing security concerns. But you're still facing pushback from people who say, secure mobile voting at scale will never be possible and it should not even be an option. Why are some people so against it?

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the, there's what they will tell you the problem is and then what the problem really is. So what our opponents will tell you the problem is security and they will say, anything can be hacked. You can't trust the Internet. You never know. Why risk it? So while there will be security arguments, it's really a red herring. And what most of the people who will say that really mean is, the system works well for us the way it is and we don't want things to change. And that can come from both sides of the aisle. It could come from business groups, lobbyists, unions. There's going to be a lot of people who like their grip on power and don't want to risk it. So we are starting to work with different cities and

• 12:45Speaker 01

  counties around the country to allow mobile voting for local elections. And, you know, it's going to be a tough fight, but we've got to pass these laws everywhere.

• 12:55Manoush Zomorodi?

  In a minute, more about those laws that Bradley is preparing to fight for, how his time at Uber shaped his approach to politics, and why he's decided to put his own fortune into mobile voting. Today on the show, updating America's operating system. I'm Manoush Zamirodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour. We'll be right back.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 13:35Speaker 05

  This message comes from NPR sponsor, Viori. From the Halo collection, the Halo Essential Wide-Like Pant is made with Viori's ultra-soft Dream Knit fabric for an easy, comfortable feel that stretches as you move. Light, stretchy, easy to wear, and perfect for any activity. Receive 20% off your first purchase at viori.com/NPR on any US orders over $75 and free returns. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions.

• 14:03Manoush Zomorodi?

  This episode's sponsor is HubSpot, which offers the following message. What if, instead of updating your CRM, your CRM updated you? No catching up on manual edits, no more guesswork. HubSpot's self-updating CRM keeps your customer context current and helps you understand what to do next. So, marketing builds more demand, sales wins more deals, and customers keep coming back. Learn more at hubspot.com.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  This message comes from Quo. You run a job, in a meeting, slammed, and a customer calls. If nobody picks up, they go to your competitor. That's why over 90,000 companies choose Quo. The business phone system built for busy teams. Smart call routing sends calls to the right person. Shared numbers let your team cover for each other. And an AI agent picks up when nobody can, capturing every lead.

• 14:57Manoush Zomorodi?

  So nothing falls through the cracks. Always say hello with Quo. Try it free at quo.com/NPR.

• 15:07Manoush Zomorodi?

  It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. Today on the show, updating America's operating system. Putting aside politics and making it easier for people to do just everyday things like vote. We were just talking to Bradley Tusk, the man behind the Mobile Voting Project. This is a nonprofit developing a way for people to vote by phone with a tap of their screen. Bradley worked for years in politics in New York City, on Capitol Hill. He was even Illinois's deputy governor for a stint. He has also, more recently, sunk tens of millions of his own dollars into this project.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  I don't think that I could be doing this if I hadn't had the dual experience as a first, you know, working in government for all of those years and learning how government really works. And then working, you know, with companies like Uber and learning kind of how the private sector works. It kind of fell to me to do mobile voting because I just didn't know who else would do it. And then my hope from there is that it catches on. You know, one thing I've learned in my day job as a venture capitalist is you can't put the genie back in the bottle. So once new tech is out there that makes people's lives better and easier, they never want to go back to the old system. I got started with all of this, and the reason that I was able to afford all of this is I started working in tech for Uber and I ran most of the campaigns around the US to

• 16:32Speaker 01

  legalize Uber. And the reason we won, because even though we were a tiny tech startup at the time, we were able to let our customers know that if you wanted this Uber thing to stick around, you had to let your elected officials know that. And we built the functionality into the app. Millions of people ultimately told their city council members, mayors, state legislators, whoever was needed, hey, I like this Uber thing. Please leave it alone. And we won in every single market in the country. And so, you know, my hope is that the same thing will prove true here as well, which is when you give people a better way to do something, they will demand it. And my hope is that over the next couple of years, we can pass bills to legalize this

• 17:17Speaker 01

  in a couple of dozen cities, states, counties around the country, start showing that it works, and then hopefully from there gain some momentum and keeps growing.

• 17:25Manoush Zomorodi?

  The way that you described it was that the people had their voice heard and decided that they wanted Uber to come into their city. But there are other people who tell a very different story, which was that Uber used tactics to, A, not follow laws and sort of asked for forgiveness later, that a lot of rides were made so incredibly cheap that for some people, they ended up creating a habit of using Uber as opposed to putting their money into public infrastructure and transportation. And that you guys were sort of bullies and you strong-armed the city into going, getting into Uber. And then, before we knew it, here we are.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  You know, if you call the activating the voters and the constituents to express their opinion bullying, then sure, I think we were guilty of that. But what did we do? We, one, you're right, we didn't ask for permission because the taxi industry was so politically powerful and so they had so many politicians all over the country in their pocket that there was no way to just ask politely and be told, "Yeah, we love competition. We want to see a better product on the market. Come right in." So, we launched. You know, Uber will not have grown from a tiny tech startup back then to what it is today if there wasn't massive market demand for a better product. The taxi industry for decades and decades was lazy and corrupt.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  And so, you know, if something comes along and can perform better and give people a better service, like, government shouldn't exist for the benefit of the entrenched interest and the status quo, whether it's the transit systems or the taxi industry or anything else. It should exist for the best interest of its constituents. And if those best interests are served by trying something totally different and new, then that's what we should do.

• 19:16Manoush Zomorodi?

  So we talked to Susan Sweeney. She's president of the nonprofit US Vote Foundation. And they work to support voting efforts to make voting easier. And she, she is a huge skeptic, Bradley. She says that even if online voting can be done safely, she says she doesn't think there's any appetite for this, that already the Trump administration is attacking mail-in voting and absentee voting. The idea that mobile voting would somehow work without causing real questions or disagreements about whether a vote was valid or not, and potentially plunge the whole situation into chaos, I think makes her very nervous.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  Sure, I can appreciate that. I mean, luckily, Trump can say he wants to get rid of mail-in voting. He can say whatever he wants. He doesn't have any authority over it either way. So I'd say that's number one. Number two, we have a country that is broken. We have a government that is totally dysfunctional. We have a society that we are the richest country in the history of the world, yet we're the 24th in the World Happiness Report because people feel so awful about the way everything is going. Like, I don't think we will be one country in 20 years, or maybe even less, if we don't find a way to fundamentally change the way we vote to bring more people into the system and take power away from the extremes. And so I'm sure, I don't know, Susan, but I'm sure she means really well.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  But to me, she's just throwing in the towel.

• 20:46Manoush Zomorodi?

  So, so tell me, in an ideal world, and you know, you're a very optimistic guy, that this can be fixed. But tell me, in an ideal world, how you see this rolling out over the next, say, five to 10 years?

• 21:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's starting at the municipal level. And so we have to start by passing laws in different cities that would allow mobile voting to even exist. And once we do that, in 2026, 2027, we can start to have elections where people can vote in local elections on their phones.

• 21:17Manoush Zomorodi?

  Is the tech ready for that in this scenario?

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah. The tech will be fully posted, including all of the code and all of the documentation, to GitHub by mid-December.

• 21:25Manoush Zomorodi?

  And, and cryptographers presumably will take their crack at trying to break it.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, and we've been doing that all throughout. So we've been doing all kinds of different, you know, chaos monkey situations and hacking it and everything else, you know, the whole time. And by the way, part of the reason to make it open source is so that people can improve upon it, right? This is, you know, I'm not the keeper of America's democracy. So, you know, if other people can contribute, that would be great. I would love that. If you have a way to take the tech and make it even better, fantastic. And with a little more work, I think we could do even more. We could register people to vote on the app. We could give voters nonpartisan information about candidates or ballot measures, so you actually know what you're voting on. And versions of this already do exist.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  Mobile voting, in a way, exists in Estonia. They use it in party elections in the UK. Some municipalities here in Canada use it, but not in the US and not in most democracies. And that's where the hard part really kicks in. Getting politicians to let us use our phones to vote in elections, because in my experience, people in power don't like making it easier for other people to gain power. And that's, yeah, exactly.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  And that's why I'm here, because they're not just gonna do it if I ask nicely, they're not just gonna do it if I snarl at libertarians on X or at the liberals on Blue Sky, they're only gonna do it if you make it happen, if we all make it happen, and we can.

• 23:05Manoush Zomorodi?

  Is it fair to call what you're doing, just in tech parlance, a moonshot for democracy?

• 23:13Speaker 01

  I like to think that our odds are a little better than a moonshot at this point. You know, we've now run elections in seven states, 21 different jurisdictions, we've built really unique, secure technology, we are working with local governments right now around the country who are interested in trying this thing out. And so I think we're closer than that. But, yeah, I mean, this is a big idea that is really ambitious, and I would say, and I've had a lot of hard jobs over the years, this is the hardest thing I've ever done.

• 23:41Manoush Zomorodi?

  Yeah. Can you keep, this could take, like, the rest of your life, Bradley, no?

• 23:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I hope it doesn't, but it might. Um, here's what I have had to learn, and this was not sort of natural for my personality, which is I tend to be very results oriented. And I feel good when the thing is done, when it's accomplished, I can check it off the list. And because mobile voting is so hard and it's going to take so long, um, I have to let myself feel good about the process instead. Um, but yeah, it's hard for sure. But at the end of the day, like, you know, look, I was a really weird, this is now way too personal for this interview. But like, I was a weird kid when I was growing up. I was a misfit and I just didn't really ever fit in anywhere.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  And, you know, to me, I just always knew that I wanted my life to have impact, to have meaning. I don't even know if I knew what that was. I didn't want to just kind of live, have a normal life and die and that was it. And so to me, you know, trying to do things that are moonshots have always made sense because it's sort of the only way that my mind has ever worked. And, you know, I don't know if I'm going to succeed with mobile voting or not. And it is maybe a little crazy that just one totally random guy is just taking this thing on when it should really be the responsibility of the government, quite frankly. Um, but our government doesn't try to make voting easier. In fact, they frequently try to make it harder and someone's got to do it. And so I'm willing to try.

• 25:15Manoush Zomorodi?

  That was Bradley Tusk. He's the head of Tusk Ventures and Tusk Philanthropies. To get the latest on the mobile voting project, you can go to moblevoting.org and you can see Bradley's full talk at ted.com. On the show today, how upgrading the way our government works could actually strengthen democracy. Because sometimes you want to put aside politics and just renew your driver's license or get to work on time or sign up for health insurance. That was nearly impossible to do in 2013 when the then new platform called healthcare.gov launched.

• 25:59Manoush Zomorodi?

  The online system has been overloaded since

• 26:01Speaker 05

  Since October 1st, when the exchanges opened. A series of glitches, delays and crashes kept people from getting to state exchanges as well. Obama acknowledged some early hiccups with the government's website. Health care to gov was an enormous, enormous task.

• 26:14Manoush Zomorodi?

  This is Jennifer Polka. She had just joined the Obama administration as the deputy chief technology officer when the launch happened.

• 26:23Speaker 05

  The policy was enormously complex. They had to serve really every possible person who would be looking for healthcare insurance. Affordances for folks who are gig workers and then for those who have, you know, special status or special needs. It wasn't really supposed to be for non-citizens, but there were actually exceptions to that that got to like very, very small groups of people. And to get to that, you had to code in a lot of really specific logic to be able to sort of do that flow.

• 26:54Manoush Zomorodi?

  It was complicated.

• 26:56Speaker 05

  It was really complicated. But there were some people behind the scenes saying, look, could we do what we'd call a soft launch that just works for like the easiest folks and then work out the bugs with them and then add the other people's needs in? And of course, what they got back was you can't do that. It would have been a very different experience had they been allowed to do a soft launch and have it grow in its functionality over time. I think the concern there that say a gig worker, for instance, that they'd be able to access it later than the other people is certainly a valid concern. You can add those people a month or two later or three months later, depending on, you know, how long it's going to take you to work out these bugs.

• 27:41Speaker 05

  And the reality is that those people actually could not access the site in the way that they did it. And so there's this sort of false sense of trade-offs. We've got to have it work for everybody from day one, when in fact, that tactic means that it will work for almost

• 27:58Manoush Zomorodi?

  No one on day one. Within a few months, Jen's team got healthcare.gov back on track. And Jen, along with many others, set about bringing a more digital mindset to government. Because before the White House, Jen had worked in Silicon Valley and then launched a nonprofit called Code for America in 2009. From her perspective, marrying the new digital ways of doing things with old-school bureaucracy presented a huge opportunity. She talked about it back in 2012 on the TED stage.

• 28:31Speaker 05

  I started a program to try to get the rock star tech and design people to take a year off and work in the one environment that represents pretty much everything they're supposed to hate. We have them work in government.

• 28:47Speaker 05

  Program is called Code for America, and it's a little bit like a Peace Corps for geeks. We select a few fellows every year, and we send them into the wilds of City Hall. And there, they make great apps, they work with city staffers, but really what they're doing is they're showing what's possible with technology today.

• 29:05Manoush Zomorodi?

  I think we can't emphasize enough how much there was a change in thinking at that point. Around then, 2012, I think is when the lean startup by Eric Ries became sort of the Bible of Silicon Valley, which was a completely different way of approaching how you built a company, how you problem-solve. For folks who maybe aren't familiar with the lean startup, you start small. You try it, you see what works, you pivot in the lingo. That's become a bit of a cliche now, but at the time, it was kind of radical, right? And I assume that when you first got to Washington, that lingo was not common at all.

• 29:42Speaker 05

  Oh, I think it's still not very common, or at least not as common as it should be. But it is gaining more traction. This idea that if you have the right people in house and you're really focused on the people who need to use the service and their experience of it, then you're going to be able to follow your way. Yes, pivot, though it is a cliche. Pivot your way to something that works. But it's very hard for government, not necessarily to adopt the technology. It's hard for government to adopt the ways of working that make that technology have a big impact. If you think about who goes into government, it's lawyers and economists and administrators.

• 30:24Speaker 05

  Very much people sort of a certain way of thinking about the world. I mean, I talk to people all the time in government who are planning things for 2035. You know, it's like, what is the world even going to look like in 2035?

• 30:37Manoush Zomorodi?

  So before we go into the future, Jen, can we talk about another more recent fiasco? In 2020, Congress passed a law to make it easier for hopeful college students to fill out a form to get a loan. It's called the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA. But that upgrade, it did not go as hoped. Was this just healthcare.gov all over again? Or were there lessons learned this time?

• 31:05Speaker 05

  Unfortunately, the better FAFSA kicked off what is known in government technology world as a modernization. And I say that with heavy air quotes around it. And that modernization process resulted in a new system that did not work and was absolutely terrible for millions of young people who needed to be able to apply for financial aid and really just couldn't because the system wasn't working in, you know, in sort of much the way that healthcare.gov didn't work. The good news, though, is that the Department of Education brought in some people to help out, a team from the United States Digital Service and an outside team from the College Board, both of whom practice in a really different model.

• 31:49Speaker 05

  It's what we call the product model. And the FAFSA this year has worked quite well. People are very satisfied with it. It has high marks.

• 31:58Manoush Zomorodi?

  According to Jen, this rescue team, including the US Digital Service, which she had helped found, dug in with more of a digital approach. They worked nonstop to find bugs, beta-tested new features, and fixed the problems fast.

• 32:13Speaker 05

  They sort of brought this lean startup thinking to the rescue effort.

• 32:17Manoush Zomorodi?

  But ironically, this team ended up getting in big trouble.

• 32:20Speaker 05

  In the midst of this great success, the Government Accountability Office writes a letter saying, hey, the FAFSA team isn't doing things by the books. And so you're in trouble. They wrote a 60-page slap on the wrist, essentially.

• 32:35Manoush Zomorodi?

  The rebellious Better FAFSA team refused to accept their reprimand.

• 32:40Speaker 05

  And said, yeah, we're doing things by a different book. We automated a lot of the testing so that the parts that computers could do, they could just do quickly. And the parts where we really needed people on it, watching humans struggle, they would do their part right. They're actually spending less and getting better outcomes now. But they caught this nasty gram from the GAO because the GAO is holding them accountable to the old way of working.

• 33:08Manoush Zomorodi?

  When we come back with shutdowns and layoffs in Washington, Jennifer Polka explains how states are stepping in and how we can bring bureaucracy safely into the AI age. On the show today, updating America's operating system. I'm Anush Zamirodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. We'll be right back.

• 33:40Manoush Zomorodi?

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This episode's sponsor is HubSpot, which offers the following message. What if, instead of updating your CRM, your CRM updated you? No catching up on manual edits, no more guesswork. HubSpot's self-updating CRM keeps your customer context current and helps you understand what to do next. So, marketing builds more demand, sales wins more deals, and customers keep coming back. Learn more at hubspot.com.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  This message comes from Angie. Angie has been helping homeowners find skilled pros to get their home project Done well for over 30 years. For everything from minor repairs to major remodels, find reviews, pricing and booking at Angie.com or on the Angie app. This message comes from Quo. You're on a job, in a meeting, slammed, and a customer calls. If nobody picks up, they go to your competitor. That's why over 90,000 companies choose Quo, the business phone system built for busy teams. Smart call routing sends calls to the right person. Shared numbers let your team cover for each other and an AI agent picks up when nobody can, capturing every lead so nothing falls through the cracks.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  Always say hello with Quo. Try it free at quo.com/NPR.

• 35:05Manoush Zomorodi?

  It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. Today on the show, giving the government a digital upgrade and how it could actually strengthen democracy. We've been talking to Jennifer Polka, founder of Code for America and former deputy chief technology officer with the Obama administration. She thinks the government can be smaller and smarter, even though between federal shutdowns and sweeping layoffs, it's hard to imagine what a smaller, faster, more capable government might look like.

• 35:41Manoush Zomorodi?

  One of the things that has happened very recently is the sense that people are like, fine, forget it. It's not working. Let's start all over. I'm thinking of Elon Musk, his Department of Government Efficiency. And say what you will about what he did, but one thing he definitely did was shock the system. Elon's delivered a colossal change in the old ways of doing business in Washington. And I wonder if sometimes that's what it takes when things are so entrenched that people think a very certain way. They are scared to make changes. They're scared to iterate. They're scared to fail, frankly. And maybe, were you hopeful, actually,

• 36:25Manoush Zomorodi?

  when Doge came on the scene?

• 36:27Speaker 05

  I was hopeful, and I know many other people who were. I think Doge cut the workforce, but didn't really cut the work that needed doing. We have so many policies and procedures that have accumulated just like layers of croft over decades and decades that unfortunately, public servants are still stuck doing those things that aren't the core work that they want to do. Public servants want to serve the public for the most part. And we really need to free them to do the work that most gets the outcomes that the public expects. So just cutting the people, but not actually reducing that decades of procedural bloat

• 37:10Speaker 05

  isn't really what I was hoping to have happen. But that's the reality we live in today. There has been a shock to the system. So what do we do with it? You can't want really transformational change and then think it's going to happen without anybody ever getting upset about anything. Right? They always say, right? You're going to have to break a few eggs to make the omelet. Kind of where I think of us right now as is like the eggs have been broken, whether you like how they were broken or not. And it's up to us now to make the omelet.

• 37:44Manoush Zomorodi?

  What do you think it is that makes people struggle to do things differently? Is it a matter of simply a generation that we get stuck in our ways? That young people and fresh blood and different perspectives? What do you think it is that keeps government from keeping up?

• 38:05Speaker 05

  There are a lot of reasons that it's hard to move this. The one I would point to right now, just because it seems so timely, is that people don't like the idea of just getting rid of the old. They need to be able to envision what the new thing is that they're moving to. Mostly, people kind of want a lot of the same things. Right? We want better schools. We want better roads. We want to feel safe and secure as a nation in the world. So we look to the policies that we think drive those better outcomes. But we've been doing a lot of policy work, and we're not getting those better schools.

• 38:43Manoush Zomorodi?

  Jen says following four rules can bring the government up to speed. First.

• 38:49Speaker 05

  We need the right people in government, which means we probably need some sort of civil service reform so that our systems get us and retain and develop the right people.

• 38:58Manoush Zomorodi?

  Second, those people can't be stuck dealing with red tape.

• 39:02Speaker 05

  We need them focused on the right work. So there needs to be some procedural reform to right-size all of that procedure that people are stuck with.

• 39:11Manoush Zomorodi?

  Third, you need those right people doing the right tasks with tech that actually works.

• 39:17Speaker 05

  They need purpose-fit systems. We have to find better ways to build and buy the technology that runs our government.

• 39:24Manoush Zomorodi?

  And finally, they need to be able to test, learn, and pivot so they can actually achieve their goals.

• 39:32Speaker 05

  Once we see that that foundational work needs to be done, and this is the perfect time to do it, then I think people start to get, I know where we're going. Let's all go there together.

• 39:46Manoush Zomorodi?

  I guess what I'm concerned about is like, all this bureaucracy you've been talking about as the biggest barrier to an effective government, but many people would say those bureaucratic rules were created by political choices. How do you separate the two? Immediately, it becomes a telegraphing or a signaling of what you believe is right or who you hate, in some cases.

• 40:08Speaker 05

  I think there's so much more of this that isn't polarized. We have always added and added and added to our laws and policies and regulations, from the left, right, and the center, and from the best of intentions, and we never subtract. So, you know, giving example, people were outraged at how many states accrued backlogs of unemployment insurance claims during the pandemic. You had people waiting months for their benefits, and that's not okay. When someone's out of work and has no money for food, we have an obligation to get them that money, and yet we weren't. And one of the state labor commissioners, a guy named Rob Asaro-Andelo in New Jersey, when he was called to testify about why that state had a backlog,

• 40:53Speaker 05

  he brought these huge boxes and put them on the table in front of the state legislature. We're forced to go through a gauntlet of federal requirements before paying out claims. Federal rules and regulations-

• 41:05Speaker 01

  Regulations have changed about 30 times just in the past two years. For New Jerseyans who found themselves out of work after COVID hit, these are all the unemployment regulations they had to wade through. Over 7,000 pages.

• 41:17Speaker 05

  And point of the demo, it said 7,119 pages of active UI regulations in our state. It's like if you want the system to be able to scale up to 10 or even 15 times the volume overnight, you need something that is just a lot more streamlined and simple and clear. You can't just always add to the regulations and never go back and simplify or rationalize them.

• 41:43Manoush Zomorodi?

  Well, I can imagine someone saying like, we need checks and balances. Government requires oversight. The stakes are too high not to get into the details. What do you say to someone who's worried about people, well, moving fast and breaking things?

• 42:00Speaker 05

  I 100% agree that we need checks and balances. I think the question is, do we need 7,119 pages of them in just one program in just one state? This is not a call for deregulation in that sense, or no regulation, or just to sort of go willy nilly. But it is a wake up call, I think, that we need to make choices, that additional rules and regulations don't come without a cost. We've really gotten to the point where it's almost impossible to understand how you would create a set of rules that would govern that system that would be, you know, scalable and robust.

• 42:42Speaker 05

  Except now we have AI that can help you get through 7,119 pages of regulations. So that's another reason where like, this is the right moment to be doing this work.

• 42:52Manoush Zomorodi?

  So let's talk about that. I read an op ed you wrote for the New York Times, which said that New Jersey is actually kind of becoming a model of smart, safe AI use in government, that it trained more than 14,000 employees to use some tools more efficiently. Tell me about what you are seeing about AI working in government, because I think it scares a lot of people, frankly.

• 43:18Speaker 05

  I think people get scared when they think about AI making decisions that people should make. And the Greatest uses of AI are to help people make decisions and to help people do their work faster. So in New Jersey, they've said our public servants really can do a better job with AI in their hands. So not only have they made sure that their people have access to models that are appropriate, but they've also been training them in how they could use these tools to do their jobs better. And I don't think that's as scary if there's a human in the loop.

• 43:58Speaker 05

  In many cases, folks are worried about AIs making decisions that encode bias, and I think we need to take that very, very seriously. I also think we need to remember that the status quo is that people are making those decisions with a lot of bias, even despite all the rules and regulations that have come into place. And so let's not compare a system that may make some mistakes to a theoretical, perfect system, because that is not the system that we have. Do we want AI helping us go through literally thousands of pages of regulations and saying, where might we make this program a little bit easier to administer? Yes, we're still in charge. Guess what?

• 44:41Speaker 05

  You can't let AI make a decision about turning back law or policy or regulation, because by law, that has to be done by the legislature or the regulator.

• 44:50Manoush Zomorodi?

  I mean, I can also assume that there's so much busy work that happens, that that's where a lot of the backlogs are, and nobody really wants to do that stuff. How do you begin to think of jobs and the role of the humans in the government system, whether that's in, you know, local government, state, or federal?

• 45:12Speaker 05

  There are a lot of people doing a lot of work that computers could do better. And that wouldn't be a problem necessarily if you didn't have a lot more demand coming from the public for the state to do stuff, right? So we're about to enter an era where states are going to have real budget crises. If you say, and AI cannot play a role in this. The people that is going to hurt are the public. You also have enormous staff shortages at the state and local level that are talked about much, much less than the shortages that we have now in federal government for a different reason. So we need people in the public sector.

• 45:56Speaker 05

  You could be moving people into the jobs that aren't being done. But we're going to have to make some choices here. And I really hope that our leaders in state and local government in particular decide to be thoughtful about how to adopt AI in such a way that we meet the needs of the public first.

• 46:15Manoush Zomorodi?

  I have to say, I renewed my passport for the first time online, and it was awesome.

• 46:20Speaker 05

  I am so glad to hear that. I can tell you that until, I guess it was last year, you couldn't renew your passport online.

• 46:30Manoush Zomorodi?

  No.

• 46:30Speaker 05

  But a fantastic team from the United States Digital Service went and worked with the Bureau of Consular Affairs and helped them really move their model of working into this product model. They brought in the right people and the right approaches. And I think you have them to thank for a much improved experience.

• 46:54Manoush Zomorodi?

  I mean, I remember just a few years ago renewing my kids' passports, and we still had to go somewhere to get our pictures taken. I was like, oh, my gosh, this is so archaic and ridiculous. But this time, it was like, upload a new picture. And I was like, oh, no, what am I going to do? And it was like, just stand against a white backdrop and take a selfie. And I did. I did it in my hallway, loaded it up. It was like, great, you're all set. I was like, what? Magic. It feels like magic when it works, but it's not. It's groups of people figuring out the kinks and making it work.

• 47:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, and challenging the notion that the way government has always done it is the way we need to do it today.

• 47:34Manoush Zomorodi?

  That was Jennifer Polka. She's the board chair of the Recoding America Fund and the senior fellow at the Niskanen Center. Her book is called Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better. You can see her full talk at ted.com.

• 47:53Manoush Zomorodi?

  We've talked a lot this hour about upgrading America's operating system. But there's one place that we mentioned that is way ahead of the digital curve: Estonia. So we want to end with an expert on e-governance there. Here's Anna Paprel on the TED stage in 2019.

• 48:12Speaker 05

  Almost 30 years ago, my country was facing the need to rebuild everything from scratch. After years of Soviet occupation, Estonia regained its independence, but we were left with nothing: no infrastructure, no administration, no legal code, an organizational chaos. Out of necessity, the state leaders back then had to make some daring choices. There was a lot of experimentation and uncertainty, but also a bit of luck involved, particularly in the fact that we could count on a number of brilliant visionaries, cryptographers, and engineers. I was just a kid back then. Today, we are called the most digital society on Earth.

• 48:56Speaker 05

  I'm from Estonia, and we've been declaring taxes online since 2001. We've been using digital identity and signatures since 2002. We've been voting online since 2005. And for today, pretty much the whole range of the public services that you can imagine: education, police, justice, starting a company, applying for benefits, looking at your health record, or challenging a parking ticket. That's everything that is done online. In fact, it's much easier to tell you what are the three things we cannot yet do online.

• 49:35Speaker 05

  We have to show up to pick up our ID documents, get married or divorced, or sell real estate. That's pretty much it. Indeed, one of the features of the modern life that has no reason to exist anymore considering technological possibilities of today is the labyrinth of bureaucracy. The central idea behind this development is transformation of the state role and the

• 50:02Speaker 01

  Digitalization of trust. Think about it. In most countries, people don't trust their governments, and the governments don't trust them back. And all the complicated, paper-based formal procedures are supposed to solve that problem, except that they don't. They just make life more complicated. I believe Estonian experience is showing that technology can be the remedy for getting the trust back while creating an efficient, user-centric service delivery system that actively responds to citizens' needs. Now, of course, running a digital society with no paper backup can be an issue.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  Even though we trust our systems to be solid, but one can never be too cautious, as we experienced back in 2007, when the first cyber incident happened and it literally blocked part of our networks, making access to the services impossible for ours. We survived. But this event put cybersecurity at the very top of agenda. So how do you back up a country-wide system? Well, for instance, you can export copy of the data outside the country territory. So today, we have data embassies that are holding of the most critical digital assets of Estonia,

• 51:32Speaker 01

  guaranteeing continuity of operations. The Estonian system is location-independent and user-centric. It prioritizes inclusiveness, openness, and reliability. It puts security and transparency at its center and the data into the hands of the rightful owner, the person... They refer to. Don't take my word for it. Try it. Thank you.

• 52:02Manoush Zomorodi?

  That was e-governance expert Anna Paprell. You can see her full talk at ted.com. Thank you so much for listening to our show today. If you liked it, learned something, please leave us a rating or a review on Spotify or Apple. We read all your comments and we love hearing from you. This episode was produced by James Delahoussaye, Phoebe Lett, Katie Monteleone, and Fiona Guerin. It was edited by Sanaz Meshkhanpour and me. Our production staff at NPR also includes Rachel Faulkner White, Matthew Cloutier, and Harsha Nahada. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Our audio engineers were David Greenberg and Zoe Vangenhoven. Our theme music was written by Ramtin Arablouei.

• 52:45Manoush Zomorodi?

  Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Roxane Hylash, and Daniela Balarezzo. I'm Manoush Zamirodi, and you have been listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.