The troubles with HealthCare.gov that filled news cycles in late 2013 were embarrassing and deserving of concern. But ultimately the website is being fixed, and Americans are using it to find health insurance.
More problematic is the broader issue these struggles make painfully clear: the government has a deep deficit of technology expertise.
As I saw during my time as chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, new technologies can create tremendous opportunities to improve the ways in which we provide public services. Bold young companies, many in Silicon Valley, are revolutionizing our economy and challenging old models of oversight.
Unfortunately, in too many cases, government is not close to keeping pace with innovations in the private sector. And often, this failure stems from a lack of technology talent working in public service.
In a recent report commissioned by the Ford Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation, nearly 50 experts from the public and private sectors warned that the government lacks a talent base of individuals with technology skills, and that the pipeline for expanding it is inadequate.
Some of the explanations are endemic to government recruitment and retention generally; for example, a pay gap with private companies. Other challenges are more specific to attracting technologists to build the government of tomorrow. This includes a perception that government culture does not support innovation and a concern that technologists won’t be asked to address major public policy challenges.
However, the government’s in-house technological expertise is crucial on from basic operational matters, like providing services or overseeing technology contractors, and on fundamental questions like rethinking and reinvigorating regulation for a digital age.
At the FTC, many of the issues we tackled involved complex technical elements. We held major technology companies accountable for failing to ensure their users’ privacy, modernized the rules that protect children on the Internet and promoted competition by fighting patent abuse.
On these and many other issues, having employees with technical expertise was critical to the agency’s capacity to perform its mission: protecting American consumers.
Our agency was proud to have hired the FTC’s first chief technologist and other talented individuals who made valuable contributions to our work and helped make the entire institutional culture more tech-savvy. But more work is needed to build an effective pipeline that will move technology talent into government.
All sectors have an important role to play.
For our nation’s universities, a key change is helping students explore the intersections between their technological fields of study and public policy questions.
Businesses also should have an interest in supporting these efforts. In the absence of such expertise, technology companies will be contending with policy makers and regulators who misunderstand the economic and technological landscape, leading to unhelpful policy or regulation and missed opportunities.
Finally, there are many things the government can do to better attract people well-versed in emerging technology issues.
First, government must continue to develop and expand programs that encourage talented technologists to work in public service, even temporarily. The administration’s Presidential Innovation Fellows program offers a promising model.
Second, government agencies must commit to nurturing a culture of innovation and openness. They need to move beyond seeing technologists solely as technical support or network administrators and instead identify fundamental roles for them in fulfilling core missions.
A 21st century government requires a complete set of 21st century skills. To ensure the government is prepared to tackle the challenges of tomorrow — and avoid the embarrassments of today — our government must better attract and integrate technology expertise.
Jon Leibowitz, a partner at the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell, was chairman of the FTC from 2009 through 2013. He wrote this for this newspaper.
