Jen Pahlka is the author of Recoding America and a pioneer in making government work for people in the digital age.

She founded Code for America in 2010 and in 2013, took a leave of absence to serve as Deputy CTO in the Obama White House and help found the United States Digital Service.

In 2020, she co-founded United States Digital Response, which helps government meet the needs of the public with volunteer tech support.

Her TED Talk, “Coding a Better Government,” has been viewed over 1M times and Wired magazine named her as one of the 25 people who has most shaped the past 25 years.

Recoding America gets right to the heart of what current and future leaders need to be thinking about to make public services better for everyone.

Twitter ➡️ createchangeGOV

LinkedIn ➡️ Create/Change

Website ➡️ https://createchange.io

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Mark is a Deputy Director at the UK Government’s Ministry of Justice, where he leads Probation Digital.

Mark studied law and became a barrister, drawn to the humanity exposed in criminal cases. However, he found it difficult to make a living in this field and moved into commercial law, where he “lost my passion”. He found a new calling in government and joined the MoJ in 2010. Since then, he’s been given the brief of operationalising GDS as its first Head of Agile, launched DfE’s flagship Apprenticeships Service and now leads the delivery of the digital Probation portfolio at MoJ.

Our co-founder met Mark at the Government Digital Service in 2013 and he's been privileged to work with him and learn from him at several government departments since then.

They had a slogan at the Government Digital Service - Trust, Users, Delivery - and in this episode they talk about how these three concepts are at the heart of Mark’s approach to developing government services and and how bringing policy, delivery and operations together can be a game-changer.

0:00 Intro

0:50 Mark’s backstory

3:37 Climbing on the AlphaGov bandwagon

6:17 How trust can be given, rather than earned

8:05 Why empowerment is essential for agile ways-of-working

10:40 Why government struggles to focus on end users

12:39 Leading the digital Apprenticeships service

14:35 Being in the hot seat on a priority government delivery

18:30 How digital helps deliver MoJ’s probation strategy

23:25 Digital is the business

24:00 What’s next for Probation Digital

26:20 Inspirational leaders

28:45 Lesson learned for new leaders in digital roles

Follow Mark Stanley on Twitter at @moonkin

Twitter ➡️ createchangeGOV

LinkedIn ➡️ Create/Change

Website ➡️ https://createchange.io

For original insights and digital government inspiration, sign up for our newsletter here 👉 https://createchange.io/newsletter-signup/

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As CIO of US Citizenship and Immigration Services from 2010 - 17, Mark Schwartz provoked the federal government into adopting Agile and DevOps practices, overcoming an established planet-sized policy for overseeing the delivery of technology systems.

In this Primer interview, you’ll discover some of the experiences that Mark went through while helping executives from large organizations overcome obstacles to digital transformation, as well as analysing and thinking about what makes a good bureaucracy and what tools are needed to succeed.

Listen to the podcast for some great advice on digitally transforming bureaucracies.

00:00 Introduction

01:07 Mark's backstory

04:40 The US Citizenship and Immigration bureaucracy

09:56 A bad example of a bad bureaucracy

11:56 Management Directive 102

15:42 30 ideas for working with a bureaucracy

17:09 What did MarkS do with Citizenship and Immigration bureaucracy?

25:11 Benefits of Agile

27:23 Patterns/plays to make when working with bureaucracies

34:14 Similarities between the private and public sectors when it comes to bureaucracy and digital transformation

36:58 Mark Schwartz's next book

40:06 Top advice for bureaucrats and large organisations working with digital delivery teams

42:04 Words of hope for digital delivery team’s starting up in big bureaucracies

Follow Mark Schwartz on Twitter at @schwartz_cio

Twitter ➡️ createchangeGOV

LinkedIn ➡️ Create/Change

Website ➡️ https://createchange.io

For original insights and digital government inspiration, sign up for our newsletter here 👉 https://createchange.io/newsletter-signup/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.