Better use of technology could bolster support for activist government in the 21st century
Americans’ trust in government is rapidly declining; major spectacles like the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, the perception of government inaction in response to the 2008 financial collapse, and the debt-ceiling debacle of the summer of 2011 have created a public relations crisis for government at all levels. According to Gallup, in the 4 years leading up to September 2013, the average proportion of Americans responding that they have "a fair amount" or "great deal" of trust in the federal government to solve domestic problems was 43%, down from an average of 54% in the preceding decade. Believing government to be ineffective, most Americans seem to prefer that government just stop trying; "since Obama became president," writes Democratic strategist Doug Sosnik this past week in a piece for Politico Magazine, "the number of Americans who want to expand the role of the federal government has decreased sharply."
I worry about how this trend is affecting the long term view of government and politics taken by my generation --- "millennials," as we are known. A majority of millennials generally supports an activist government, but we are withdrawn from the political process. We've grown up without knowing what it means for government to be effective; to many of us, the word “politics” means some combination of "boring," "pointless," or ”corrupt.” According to the Pew Research Center's "Political Typology" report, millennials make up a plurality of the two most disengagedtypology groups in our culture today. But if the generations that are on the rise continue to disengage from the political process, the political environment will never be ripe for action on issues like climate change and income inequality. Advocates of government action need millennials to get in the game. What can be done?
The disastrous launch of HealthCare.gov last October cemented the belief of many young people that the government is inherently incompetent compared to the private sector. After all, no legitimate business would try to launch a complex web application without load-testing it first. But this sorry episode also offers a path forward for government to start winning back its credibility among millennials: it must close the information technology gap between the government and the private sector.
Millennials don't just trust technology more than any other age cohort; they consider the use of technology in routine processes to be a dire necessity. But the federal government’s adoption of technology make it look like a relic of the 1950s compared to today's agile businesses.
As an example, skim this Washington Post profile of an underground complex in rural Pennsylvania where all federal retirement papers are processed by hand. The average time it takes to process a federal employee’s retirement is more than three months.In an era where almost all business data is stored on the web, accessible via an easy interface from any location, and updated in real-time for use by workers, it's a shame that federal employees are still tied to a system devised in the 1970s.
Other examples of processes done on paper that could be accomplished much faster and more accurately using software abound; the Census Bureau recently reverted to paper after a failed experiment with hand-held computers, and the VA once accumulated so much paper in one office while trying to move to an online system that the floor was in danger of collapsing.
By replacing laborious, paper-based processes with processes based in software, the government could deliver services faster, more efficiently, and more accurately than it ever has. Politically, this would be meaningful to many voters my age who believe that government should act, if only it had the ability. If government agencies used software half as well as the best web businesses do, many more young people would actually believe Democrats and other advocates of activist government when they promise that state-sponsored programs will improve citizens’ lives.
If the government is going to adopt good software, it would be helpful if its workforce knew how to use it; right now, only 9% of the civil service is under the age of 30. This is because the government's hiring and compensation systems were designed for a bygone era, and it does not bode well for the future of technology in government. Millennials expect to have careers where good performance, not just seniority, will be rewarded with higher pay and opportunities for advancement. Right now, pay for federal workers is tied to a series of 15 complex classifications which are difficult to change. Promises of long-term financial security aren’t that appealing to us, because we don’t expect to be provided for in our old age. We'd rather be in a place where we have a chance to do well without having to commit to twenty years with the same organization. To pull millennials into public service, the government could update its recruitment and compensation procedures for civil servants to be more competitive with the private sector. By allowing individual agencies and offices to budget compensation under a firm cap, managers could have flexibility to reward good performance, unlike today. This, and other reforms, would go a long way towards attracting talented young people who are deciding between a job in public service or a job at a tech start-up.
Integrating software into the administration of public programs and reforming the civil service will not by themselves end the federal government's crisis of credibility. They certainly would not have prevented some of the crises in recent years that have undermined trust in government to begin with. But looking forward: even if ideological gridlock in Congress is broken and some sense of sanity restored, millennials will still never trust government to function effectively if its worldview and processes remain stuck in the 20th century.
Successive generations will demand the use of technology even more than millennials do, so technological adoption in government is inevitable. Beginning this process sooner rather than later offers a path for the the government to dig itself out of its crisis of trust, and become the more effective, agile, and competitive force for good that we need.