first published week of: 12/21/2015
Megan Smith, the United States’ chief technology officer, says the U.S. government is still years behind countries like the United Kingdom in terms of embracing technology. And while she believes it’s possible to catch up, first, she says, the tech industry here needs to “show up” for its government.
“Government is only what we make of it,” Smith said on stage at the Building the Business of Civic Tech conference in New York City today. “If we show up, it’ll include our skills.”
This is advice that Smith herself has taken to heart, having left the private sector and a vibrant career at Google last year to become the country’s CTO last fall. Now, she’s calling on others to do the same.
But this will take some convincing. The standard Silicon Valley attitude to government has been that it gets in the way and slows things down, stymieing the quick work that talented technologists could otherwise make of big, hairy problems. It’s the essence of Silicon Valley libertarianism: Why wait for the government to act, the thinking goes, when we can build nearly anything ourselves? continued…