Policy & Practice | Fall 2023

technology speaks

By Molly Tierney

Bits to Atoms: Tech Vision for Human Services

W e see a new way of being in our relationship with technology— and now is the time to reinvent the way we think about it, specifically how bits (our digital world) and atoms (our physical world) have been on a journey toward each other. This journey is a story of two things: a story about a merger, and one about time. Forty years ago—1983—Motorola introduced the first cell phone: The DynaTAC 8000x. It was 10 inches long, weighed 2½ pounds, and had a whopping $4,000 sticker price. And it was the butt of more jokes that most of us can remember. Anyone seen putting that ginormous thing up against their ears was instant fodder for “Saturday Night Live.” And the idea that we’d all soon have phones in our cars? Absurd. Ten years later, far more affordable options were on the market. Another ten years, and cell phones were widely in use. Then came app stores. And new functionality like cameras. Today? Each of us knows exactly where our smartphone is, and we rarely leave a room without it. This is where this fascinating story unfolds. The Merger Let’s take merger first: our walking around life—the physical world—is no longer separate from our technology. We, my smartphone, and I, are one. Why, I’ve solved dozens of problems with it today. Haven’t you? What’s curious is the power of that merger has not yet been realized in government. In many parts of the public sector, technology is absent alto gether. People are working with index cards and paper forms and big metal

filing cabinets. In other parts, tech nology is present but not as an enabler. It’s slow, frustrating, and outdated. Most employees hate their technology and see it as separate from their work. They see it as keeping them from the things they believe they need to be doing to get their jobs done. But remember me? I am one with my smartphone. And so are you. And so are all those good people who work in government when, at the end of the day, they and their smartphone go home. The merger has already happened. The work ahead is to provide the public sector with the same kind of merger we all have at home. It does not have to take 40 years. It does mean we have critical choices to make:

n Think about tech as constantly changing and needing to be in the cloud so that it can keep getting updated. Resist the impulse to custom code, as it becomes static and will stay exactly like it was the moment you designed it. It’s like getting a cell phone and never updating the software. n Thoughtfully design tech so that it is fit for purpose and easy to use. Think about when you took your most recent cell phone out of the box. Instead of hours and days of training, you just turned it on and followed simple, accessible instructions. n Open our minds to the power of Generative AI and its implications for the public sector. Think about all

Illustration by Chris Campbell

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