This Is What Happens When Governments Build Software

Joe Weisenthal (0:10)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:15)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:16)

Tracy, you know what I felt was a really interesting thing in a recent debt ceiling episode that we did was about all the coding it would take if the Treasury were to introduce a new kind of bill.

Tracy Alloway (0:27)

Yes, that was interesting to me too, because I think there's a perception out there that if Treasury wakes up tomorrow and decides to sell a new type of bond, they could just do it. But actually, there are all these backend changes that would need to be made.

And as you and I know from multiple conversations at this point, it feels like government technology can be a little bit clunky sometimes. Is that a fair way of putting it?

Joe Weisenthal (0:54)

It is, I would say, in defense, I mean, get into this, yes. You know, corporate technology can be clunky, but that point reminded me that we've done, software is like a fascinating thing.

And we talk a lot on the show, I think, about the sort of built economy, like the CHIPS Act and battery investment and semiconductor and all these things are like, can the US build things again? Like as a government, state capacity, these ideas, but in the 21st century, also building software and tech has to be part of that question.

Tracy Alloway (1:25)

Right, so it's one thing to announce that you're going to do this new thing, but almost everything that we do nowadays comes with some sort of software requirement. Like, I'm sure there is a system for processing applications for chips funding and things like that. And someone has to actually build that. So there's two questions contained in the can America build things question. It's like, can it build the actual things?

And then can it build the software systems that would allow it to build the things?

Joe Weisenthal (1:53)

And in the pandemic period, we got sort of smacked in the face, I would say, by this realization that the software component is not trivial at all. And most notably, it was like every state had some sort of problem with their unemployment insurance system. And there were just such a surge in claims, obviously, in those initial, you know, really for that first year, just on the scale that no one had ever seen. And it reminded people, it was like, oh yeah, 50 different state systems, much with like tech that was probably built by some contractor and I don't know, the 80s or 90s, and the people who knew how to run it have left.

And, you know, it was a, eventually, I guess it got smoothed out, but it sort of exposed like, okay, why did that happen? And what else is lurking out there that we don't really know how it works until it's broken?

Tracy Alloway (2:38)

I'm sure this is gonna end up being a classic episode where we mentioned COBOL quite a few times. It's inevitable, right? It's coming, you can feel it.

Joe Weisenthal (2:45)

One day we're gonna do like an actual, just like what is COBOL episode, where we just like focus on that directly. But yes, we're gonna talk about software and we're gonna talk about it from the public sector perspective. What does it mean when the government tries to fix something? What happens when the government tries to build something? What happens when the government tries to buy something?

Some of these themes, we talked about them from a private sector perspective with Patrick McKenzie earlier in the year, but more to do on this topic.

Tracy Alloway (3:12)

Yeah, I'm excited. I have a lot, this is gonna be a really good chance to actually ask like the decisions that are going into some of these things being built. I'm still floored every time I log in to the Treasury Direct website, that you have to click the buttons, like the actual letters and numbers to type your password. It won't let you just type your password.

How did that come to be? I have questions.

Joe Weisenthal (3:39)

That is a great question. So we have, I think literally the two perfect guests to discuss this, two guests with extensive experience answering and working on exactly these problems. We're gonna be speaking with Jennifer Pahlka. She is the founder of Code for America.

She helped found the US Digital Service. She co-chaired the California Task Force on fixing its unemployment insurance system during the pandemic. And she is the author of a new book called Recoding America.

And we're gonna be speaking with Dave Guarino, who's a number of things, currently an independent consultant researcher focused on this stuff, founding engineer at Code for America, helped create Get Cal Fresh, which was like allowed Californians to easily access Snap, has recently worked on unemployment insurance modernization at the Department of Labor, also worked in California. So two people with extensive experience on exactly these things. So Jennifer and David, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots.