hi everybody my name is Matt Cutts and I
worked at Google for almost 17 years as
a distinguished engineer there I was
pretty close to the top of a Silicon
Valley ecosystem then I decided to
follow some inspiring folks and do a
short tour at the u.s. digital service
that's the group of geeks that helped
rescue healthcare.gov when that website
went down hard in 2013 yeah so I signed
up for a three to six month tour and
almost three years later I'm still in
Washington DC working for the federal
government because the government really
needs technologists right now at my old
job every room had videoconferencing
integrated with calendars power cables
were built right into the furniture when
I moved to a government agency I had to
call a person to set up a phone
conference and when we moved to a new
office we didn't have furniture for a
while so we set up the phone on a trash
can one of the things that surprised me
whenever I moved to DC is how much the
government still has to deal with paper
this is a facility in winston-salem
North Carolina where people were worried
that the building might be structurally
unsound from the weight of all that
paper yeah paper has some downsides
here's a pop quiz if your last name
starts with H or higher H or higher
would you raise your hand I have some
bad news your veteran Records might have
been destroyed in a fire in 1973 yeah
paper processes are also slower and more
prone to errors if you're a veteran and
you're applying for your health benefits
using a paper form you might have to
wait months for that form to be
processed we replaced that with a web
form and
now most veterans find out if they can
get access to their health benefits in
ten minutes
here's another launch that I'm proud of
we work with the Small Business
Administration to move one of their
systems from paper to digital so this is
a picture from before and this is
afterwards same cubicles same people
just a better system for everyone at one
point we wanted to celebrate modernizing
a different system and so we went to a
local grocery store and we said can you
make a cake and decorate it with the
form that we've digitized and the
grocery store got really weirded out by
that request they wanted a letter on
official government letterhead well we
worked for the government so we caught a
letter that said you can use this public
domain form on a cake for celebratory
purposes which led to bad jokes about
filling forms out in triplicate
yes bad jokes in government now I've
talked a lot about paper but we also
bring up computer systems that go down
we bring in modern technology practices
like user centered design and the cloud
and we also help improve procurement it
turns out government by software the
same way that it buys chairs and
brownies and tanks from government
regulations that are over a thousand
pages long so yes there's some stuff
that's messed up in government right now
but if you think Silicon Valley is the
savior in this story you've got another
thing coming some of the best and
brightest minds in technology are
working on meal delivery startups and
scooters and how to deliver weed to
people better is that really the most
important thing to work on right now
Silicon Valley likes to talk about
making the world a better place but you
feel your impact in a much more visceral
way in government this is somebody whose
dad passed away he hunted me down on
Twitter to say that a system that we had
improved worked well for him during a
tough time those tough times our wind
government needs to
work well and why we need innovation in
government now I have a confession to
make when I came to DC I sometimes use
words like bureaucrat these days I'm
much more likely to use words like civil
servant like Francine who can make you
cry or at least she made me cry because
she's so inspiring
I am also deeply fiercely proud of my
colleagues they will work through
illogical situations and put in late
nights to get to the right result the
government can't pay huge salary bonuses
so we ended up making our own awards our
mascot is a crab named Molly and so that
award is actually a crab shaped purse
screwed into sheet metal these days I
believe less in silver bullets that are
going to fix everything I believe more
in the people who show up to help if
you're looking for something deeply
meaningful and full disclosure
sometimes incredibly frustrating here's
what you need to know there is something
difficult and messy and vital and
magical happening when civil servants
partner with technologists at the city
and state and national level you don't
have to do it forever but you can make a
difference in public service right now
thank you
[Applause]