Between Tech Escapism and Institutional Paralysis
The Moment for Government Transformation
It is outrageous that the mandate to dream big about tech and government has been captured by AI accelerationists, crypto evangelists, and Mars escapists. Meanwhile, progressives confine themselves to the existing machinery, then act surprised when the outputs disappoint. Institutional vision limits AI to doing the same but faster, and treats anything beyond the horizon as folly.
What happened to ambition? What happened to “Make No Little Plans“? To stirring hearts with what only government could accomplish?
Tech bros can’t compute our messy, inefficient, deeply human institutions and the irreducible communities they serve. They jump to two options: delete or start over. They miss the intricate ecosystems of place, the accumulated wisdom of governance. The timing of their fatalism couldn’t be worse.
Right now, at this exact moment, AI is unlocking the deferred dreams of public sector workers—the deep fixes that once required blue-ribbon commissions. AI can decode legacy agency databases so residents are auto-enrolled in the benefits they qualify for; coordinate twenty permits so streets get fixed once, not monthly; aggregate and prioritize scattered feedback—social posts, comment threads, 311 calls—into real park renovations and bike lanes.
There’s a third path between destroying state capacity and defending broken systems: Government Transformation. Yes, ‘transformation,’ that word smart city marketing ruined. I’m reclaiming it because this moment demands ambition, not incrementalism. This is a chance to reconceive and build government that listens, simplifies, digitizes, connects, automates, adapts, experiments, learns, innovates, delivers—and delights. A chance for optimism about technology’s ability to not just remake government, but what government makes possible for all of us.
The Paralysis of Perfect
The continued anti-tech posturing from progressive advocates and institutional leaders is maddening. That stance hardens into paralysis. The left’s ‘Tech can’t be trusted’ mirrors the right’s ‘government can’t do anything right,’ and together they shrink what’s possible. Every suggestion of using AI in government is met with reminders that image classifiers confuse black skin with gorillas, hiring algorithms reinforce gender biases, or participation tools fail to comprehend local dialects.
Yes, those were real. They were also fixed through expanded participation and representation, better design, and oversight. Current face ID checks clear 99% accuracy across demographics, AI overcomes human biases in hiring, and the latest apps translate better than most humans. We’re litigating battles from 2015 while agencies maintain spreadsheets from 1995.
This reflexive reach for decade-old failures has become a defense mechanism for those who find criticism safer than construction. While we debate equity and demand perfection, others plow forward. Governments and markets push trillions into AI systems to reach a fuzzy tech-utopian future . Tech platforms reshape behavior and discourse while denying their influence. Silicon Valley oligarchs buy up land to realize their private SimCities.
The question isn’t whether AI is perfect—it’s whether it’s better than the broken systems people navigate today. Governments’ hidden codes embed discrimination that takes decades to surface and generations to repair.
Transparent processes with clear public goals, unlike opaque bureaucratic procedures, can be interrogated and continuously adjusted. We can shape AI’s deployment on behalf of our communities and set the missions AI serves—look abroad for what’s possible: seamless digital services, anticipatory care, radical participation. Or we can critique from the sidelines while others deploy it for their own ends.
The Real Tragedies
The people I’ve met in government service are high-trust and public-minded. They keep laboring within systems they inherit, underpaid, yet still pushing on past the latest abandoned initiative.
These people aren’t resisting transformation—they’re desperate for it! They’re exhausted from battling against layers of procedure and systems, forever cataloging why things can’t and don’t change. Literally maintaining shadow systems because official ones don’t work.
The same weary resilience is true of our cities and communities. Dysfunctional, yes! Sometimes corrupt. Often outdated. But altogether amazing! The people within them have fierce pride in those places, determination to improve them, ideas for how to make them better, and in many cases, willingness to fight to make that happen.
For every staffer who’s built a workaround, every citizen with a vision for their neighborhood, every public servant who came to serve but spends their day fighting systems—this is your moment. Not to be automated away or abandoned, but to finally do the transformation you’ve been dreaming about.
The Choice Before Us
Every change model, from socio-technical systems theory to Collective Impact, preaches the same gospel: Don’t attempt too much. Align stakeholders first. Test small. Scale slowly.
I call bullshit.
That’s the same learned helplessness that delivered us to autocrats and wrecking balls.
There’s another operating mode: ambitious transformation. Imagine a city that tunes itself: bus lanes and curb rules that self-correct to keep crosstown speeds above 12 mph; pre-approved weekend open streets and micro-festivals on corridors with double-digit storefront vacancy; benefits that trigger when hours are cut or UI claims spike. Bureaucracy fades to the background. Participation replaces theater with collaborative decision-making based on simulations with real costs and consequences.
This isn’t blank-slate fantasy; existing institutions can be reshaped. The unglamorous infrastructure of cross-agency data flows, real-time modeling, and machine-readable rules is now tractable without political miracles. AI makes the invisible machinery of government legible, its labyrinthine procedures automated, its responsiveness dynamic.
The choice is to wield AI to transform our civic institutions, or watch others reshape them for us. DOGE was a trainwreck that plowed through federal foundations, but it revealed one thing: there’s massive appetite for bold action. That energy is still out there, desperate for direction. We can harness it for creation instead of destruction, but the window is closing.
This is the time for audacious reenvisioning of what government can be. Not in some floating libertarian paradise, but in the places people already call home. Stop debating whether AI will change government. Start debating what we want government to become, because AI is finally making transformation feasible.