The people in sleeping compartments on the Sunset Limited from New Orleans to Los Angeles see each other mostly in the dining car, which feels pretty fancy as far as American middle class travel goes. White tablecloths with coordinating blue napkins, real flatware, stemless glasses holding decent wine. There are…

How Marc Andreessen’s criticism of governmental responses to Covid misses the mark — Last week, in an interview with Noah Smith, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen casually referred to the “chronic collapse of state capacity virtually everywhere in our time,” noting that the good news was that “the private sector can and does deliver even under considerable duress, and even when much of our…

Our ‘Kill It With Fire’ moment — The amount of money that is about to be thrown at modernizing government legacy systems is staggering. The rescue package alone allocates several billion dollars to it, and that’s on top of what’s been spent over the past year trying to make systems at the federal, state, and local levels…

A stunning announcement about how federal government hires recently passed largely unnoticed. Only in the age of vaccine rollout drama, impeachment, and Gamestop would this not qualify as headline news. …

Tens of millions of people are suddenly out of work. Your Lyft driver, your hairdresser, your barista, the waiters at your favorite restaurant, and countless others have lost their sources of income because of the COVID-19 crisis. In moments like this, government must act, and it has, at least, taken…

AKA Help me with my book! — Digital was supposed to make things better. Platforms for peer-to-peer communication like Facebook and Twitter were supposed to connect and unite us and help us understand each other, ultimately ushering in an era of world peace, love, and understanding. They have done some wonderful things, but if peace, love, and…

This is the time of year when many people make donations to charities. This year it’s more overwhelming than ever. There are so many needs, so many clear and present threats — to our planet, to justice, to human dignity and human life. …

I founded Code for America in 2009 with the hope that we could use the principles and practices of the digital age to help government work better. I was obsessed with the idea that by bringing a user-centered, data-driven, and iterative approach into government we could truly make it work…

Policy designed for and in the digital age Why is policy still educated guesswork with a feedback loop measured in years? — Tom Loosemore, UK Government Digital Service At Code for America, we envision a government that works for people, and by people, in a digital age. The framework of…