[MUSIC]
Today, I'd like to talk to you about what I think is the most interesting,
the most exciting and the most fascinating industry in the world.
Now, it's been flying under the radar for a little while, but
it's starting to attract some really big headlines,
trillions of dollars in investment, and it's projected for explosive growth.
Now is really the time to get involved.
I think it's going to define the next 50 years.
What is this miracle industry?
Government!
>> [LAUGH] >> Yay.
>> [LAUGH] >> So I know what you're thinking,
I slightly tricked you there because government is not cool or sexy.
Well, I think it is.
I think it's fascinating,
and I'm interested in how we do government differently and better.
In particular, I'm interested in how we take the experiences of the people who
really need government and build them into the way we design government services.
Now that's not a new idea.
Abraham Lincoln was talking about government by the people, of the people,
for the people, way back when.
But having spent ten years working in and around government,
it's my experience that we've drifted quite a long way from that.
So, for us, the kind of interactions that we have with government tend to be things
like going to the DMV, or registering with the IRS, or going through TSA processes,
or perhaps US immigration.
And I'm willing to bet that these are not always the most seamless,
enjoyable experiences you've ever had.
>> [LAUGH] >> But imagine how much worse that is if
you're 85, or if you can't read, or if you're severely depressed.
Then having a difficult experience with government isn't just a frustration,
it's a real barrier that locks you our of the service and into poverty.
Now, I had a vivid illustration of this when I was volunteering
in Detroit on a program to redesign the process for applying for food stamps.
I was in a rather damp and dingy community center,
and the strip lights flickering overhead in the 8 mile part of Detroit.
And I was with a young lady called Monica, and she was trying to go in to apply for
food stamps.
Now, the process begins with a 42 page long form of mind-bending complexity,
everything about font size one.
>> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] And it looks like this.
Monica was in the fourth hour of trying to fill in this form, and
she just reached the question which says,
declare all your liquid assets, failure to do so will result in a penalty.
And she looks at me horror stricken, and she said, well,
liquid assets, I've got some milk in the fridge.
>> [LAUGH] >> That was funny, right?
I mean it's funny to us because we're safe.
Our lives are great, but for Monica if she didn't fill in this form correctly,
that meant she couldn't feed her children.
Now it's not just a problem for the people who use government services if they're not
well designed, it's also a problem for the people who are trying to improve them.
I had a forceful illustration of this when I was working to try and
cut crime in West London.
We'd taken the unusual step of going to spend eight days living with
a group of addicts who were in and out of prison.
This was a really amazing experience for me.
One of the things that stood out to me most clearly was their attitude to prison.
So, I assume prison's bad, right?
Prison's bad.
Well, they actually seem to quite like it, and that was puzzling to me.
In fact, when we surveyed them,
eight out of ten, said if I could self-refer into prison, I would do that.
As in, if I could tick a box saying,
I'd like to go to prison now, then that's what they would do.
And I found this really extraordinary.
[LAUGH] So, I said, one of the is called Nick, and I said to him,
could you explain a little bit more to me, Nick, about how this works?
He said, yeah, it's pretty easy.
It's basically, I like a combination of freedom in my life, just like you do, but
I also like structure.
A prison gives me structure.
So, when you're maybe having a few too many donuts you think,
I probably need a personal trainer now.
Well for me when I've had a few too many drugs,
when I've been out on the razz too much, when I'm nicked too much I think,
I need to turn this around, and prison is my personal trainer.
[SOUND] This is like mind blowing, right?
>> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] So we're trying
to design a better service for these guys.
And we're trying to work on what would change their behavior.
And we're so far off that what we think of as the stick, they think is the carrot.
>> [LAUGH] >> I would never have realized that if I
hadn't got out of my ivory tower and gone and spent real time with them.
So, it's not surprising, really, that government gets this stuff wrong.
Because when you think about it, the people who run government
usually have no direct personal experience of the problem they're trying to solve.
That's not to say that they're not well meaning or
hugely intelligent, they're usually both.
It's just to say that the people who work on bad schools
usually went to great schools.
The people who work on aging policy are usually of working age.
The people who work on health policy are healthy.
And in fact, if you want to work on prison reform, it's an absolute requirement,
the first thing we check, is that you've never been in prison.
>> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] So
what do we do instead?
Well, we rely on brains.
It's good to be intelligent, brains are helpful.
But intelligence is a complement to good government.
It's not a substitute for direct experience of the problem.
Now, I know of what I speak because I was one of these people.
I was a technocrat.
After a hot shot job in consulting,
a great education, I was going to serve the government.
And so, I was very excited when on my first day,
I got assigned to a team that was working on homelessness.
I thought, fantastic, this is such an important issue.
So, I said, when are we going to go and interview some more homeless people?
And I was a bit surprised when the team said, well,
I don't really know about that, because we've read a lot of research,
we talked to some academics, and we've also been speaking to the people in
the homeless charities who do the lobbying on this sort of stuff.
All right, well, that's great then, right, brilliant.
But I don't think so actually because I used to, I know some of these guys.
In fact I was at Cambridge with them reading classics.
They're nice people.
>> [LAUGH] >> But
they definitely don't have direct personal experience of homelessness.
The real experts on homelessness are homeless people.
We weren't going to be speaking to any of them.
It's no good being the smartest person in the room
if you never actually go into a room with the people you're trying to help.
So this moment sent me searching for a better way of doing government.
And I'm pleased that I found one and it's actually right here in Silicon Valley.
It's to apply the techniques of design thinking, of human-centered design,
which we use in the lean startup methodology here, into government.
It's not too complicated, basically it's spending time with the people who you're
trying to help and then co-creating something better with them.
Now when I say design, you're probably thinking of something like this,
or this, and that's design.
This is design too.
What makes Airbnb work is not the pretty colors, it is that they
thought really carefully about what would make for a great user experience for you,
and they've built something seamless around you.
Government should be the same.
So when you do this, you get much better results.
First, you create a service which actually works.
I'm sorry to say that a lot of government services don't really work.
They don't solve the problem that they set out to try and solve, and
people cycle in and out of them over many years.
Secondly, it's usually a lot cheaper.
You spend time looking carefully at what service people actually want.
You can usually cut out a lot of stuff they didn't want and
didn't use in the first place.
Thirdly, this is inspiring work.
Because design connects you directly back to the people you came into public service
to help, you get past all that pen-pushing and
form-filling which we associate with government.
It really connects you to what you came into public service for
in the first place.
And finally, it's respectful.
This is not respectful.
So don't give in to the cynicism about what government can do,
it works on crucial topics like ending child poverty,
like cutting domestic violence, by building a fairer society.
And it does so with a huge ton of cash.
We are not talking about 1% of your corporate profits here, we are talking
about really channeling trillions of dollars to things that matter.
If that's not inspiring, I don't know what is.
So what can you do?
Well, if you work in government, then I really encourage you
to take the time to find out a little bit more about human-centered design, and
see if you can apply it to your work.
It doesn't have to be rocket science, it's just about going and spending some time
with the people that you're trying to help, in their office, not in yours.
And if you don't work in government, well, there's still something you can do,
stop trash-talking government.
>> [LAUGH] >> Is it perfect?
No. Could it be better?
Yes.
And would it be a lot better if people who were entrepreneurial,
who know about design, who know about lean startup, who are bright and
talented, people like the people in this room, got involved?
Absolutely.
So, if you want to make your millions in the private sector, great, this is good.
But if you want to work on something that really matters,
if you want to get up each day with purpose,
if you want to build a fairer society, if you want to do the work you were born for.
Then I encourage you to join me in this fantastic joint endeavor
we call government, and together we can build government by the people,
with the people, for the people.
Thank you.
>> [APPLAUSE]
[MUSIC]