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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)