Jennifer Pahlka: preference

Transcript context

…If we think about the United Kingdom — the country, their government — it seems quite stuck. Do you have an interpretation of how that’s happened? They haven’t had productivity growth since the great financial crisis. They have a big fiscal problem. It’s hard to see signs of progress. The government appears paralyzed. They’ve had many different prime ministers. What are they doing wrong? I don’t know. It’s not really my topic. I actually get a lot of inspiration from the UK because they started the Government Digital Service there, which was the inspiration for USDS. In fact, a lot of the work they did for Code for America. Also, just picked up on their principles and their values, but I don’t think that has been a salve for stagnation economically. This is a little bit out of my territory, but when I look at what’s written about the problems in the UK, I see a lot of that here in the US as well. Take Singapore. I’ve been to Singapore many times. It’s arguably the best functioning government in the world. When you look at Singapore, does that in any way give you pause? You just think, “We should be more like Singapore.” Or you see what has been required to make Singapore work, and it puts you off a bit. I’m not talking about how democratic is it or not. I know that’s one set of issues, but just the talent drain from the private sector. There’s a certain conformity in Singapore. Some of that comes from size. But when you have the super cooperative, well-disciplined civil service, that does come with some costs. How well have they really done when you consider all possible factors?…

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