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Hi everybody.

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My name is Matt Cutts,

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and I worked at Google
for almost 17 years.

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As a distinguished engineer there,

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I was pretty close to the top
of the Silicon Valley ecosystem.

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Then I decided to follow
some inspiring folks

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and do a short tour
at the US Digital Service.

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That's the group of geeks
that helped rescue HealthCare.gov

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when that website went down hard in 2013.

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Yeah.

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So I signed up for
a three-to-six-month tour,

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and almost three years later,

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I'm still in Washington DC,

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working for the federal government,

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because the government
really needs technologists right now.

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At my old job,

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every room had videoconferencing

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integrated with calendars,

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power cables were built
right into the furniture.

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When I moved to a government agency,

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I had to call a person
to set up a phone conference.

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And when we moved to a new office,

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we didn't have furniture for a while,

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so we set up the phone on a trash can.

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One of the things that surprised me,
whenever I moved to DC,

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is how much the government
still has to deal with paper.

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This is a facility in Winston-Salem,

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North Carolina,

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where people were worried

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that the building
might be structurally unsound

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from the weight of all that paper.

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Yeah.

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Paper has some downsides.

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Here's a pop quiz:

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If your last name starts with H or higher,

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H or higher, would you raise your hand?

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Wow.

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I have some bad news:

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Your veteran records
might have been destroyed

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in a fire in 1973.

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(Laughter)

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Yeah.

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Paper processes are also slower
and more prone to errors.

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If you're a veteran

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and you're applying
for your health benefits

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using a paper form,

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you might have to wait months
for that form to be processed.

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We replaced that with a web form,

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and now most veterans find out

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if they can get access
to their health benefits

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in 10 minutes.

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(Applause)

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Here's another launch that I'm proud of.

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We worked with the Small
Business Administration

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to move one of their systems
from paper to digital.

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So this is a picture from before,

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and this is afterwards.

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Same cubicles, same people,

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just a better system for everyone.

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At one point, we wanted to celebrate
modernizing a different system,

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and so we went to a local grocery store

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and we said, "Can you make a cake

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and decorate it with the form
that we've digitized?"

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And the grocery store
got really weirded out by that request.

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They wanted a letter
on official government letterhead.

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Well, we work for the government,
so we wrote a letter that said,

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"You can use this public-domain form

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on a cake for celebratory purposes."

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(Laughter)

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Which led to bad jokes
about filling forms out in triplicake.

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Yes, dad jokes in government.

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Now I've talked a lot about paper,

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but we also bring up
computer systems that go down.

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We bring in modern technology practices,

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like user-centered design and the cloud,

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and we also help improve procurement.

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It turns out government buys software

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the same way that it buys chairs
and brownies and tanks:

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from government regulations
that are over 1,000 pages long.

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So yes, there's some stuff
that's messed up in government right now.

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But if you think Silicon Valley
is the savior in this story,

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(Laughs)

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you've got another thing coming.

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Some of the best and brightest
minds in technology

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are working on meal-delivery start-ups

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and scooters

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and how to deliver weed to people better.

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Is that really the most important thing
to work on right now?

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Silicon Valley likes to talk
about making the world a better place.

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But you feel your impact
in a much more visceral way

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in government.

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This is somebody whose dad passed away.

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He hunted me down on Twitter

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to say that a system that we had improved

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worked well for him during a tough time.

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Those tough times are
when government needs to work well

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and why we need innovation in government.

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Now I have a confession to make.

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When I came to DC,

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I sometimes used words like bureaucrat.

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These days,

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I'm much more likely
to use words like civil servant.

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Like Francine, who can make you cry.

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Or at least, she made me cry,

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because she's so inspiring.

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I am also deeply, fiercely proud
of my colleagues.

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They will work
through illogical situations

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and put in late nights
to get to the right result.

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The government can't pay
huge salary bonuses,

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so we ended up making our own awards.

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Our mascot is a crab named Molly.

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And so that award is actually
a crab-shaped purse,

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screwed into sheet metal.

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These days, I believe less
in silver bullets

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that are going to fix everything.

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I believe more

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in the people who show up to help.

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If you're looking for something
deeply meaningful --

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and full disclosure,
sometimes incredibly frustrating --

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here's what you need to know.

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There is something difficult

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and messy and vital and magical happening

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when civil servants partner
with technologists

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at the city and state and national level.

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You don't have to do it forever.

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But you can make a difference
in public service

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right now.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)