Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Quick Takes Tim Stenovic on Bloomberg Radio. Our loyal followers
Speaker 1: know that we love talking about innovation and disruption impacting
Speaker 1: our world, our investment world in particular. Our next guest
Speaker 1: to spent our career looking at innovation too, and how
Speaker 1: it intersects with government. I've been looking forward to this.
Speaker 1: Joining us right now is Beth Simon Novak. She is
Speaker 1: the first Chief Innovation Officer of the State of New Jersey.
Speaker 1: She was the U S Deputy Chief Technology Officer for
Speaker 1: Open Government and led President Obama's Open Government government initiative
Speaker 1: at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Speaker 1: She's got a new book out. It is called Solving
Speaker 1: Public Problems, A Practical Guide to Fix our Government and
Speaker 1: change our world. She is on the phone in New
Speaker 1: York City. Beth, Welcome to Bloomberg Radio. Hi Carol, Thank
Speaker 1: you for having me. It is so great to have
Speaker 1: you here. We do talk a lot about innovation and disruption,
Speaker 1: not just from an investment perspective, but how it is
Speaker 1: either improving the livelihood of individuals and citizens around the world.
Speaker 1: Tell us about your background and how it set the
Speaker 1: stage for this book. Oh Well, my background, I have
Speaker 1: been both a professor of engineering and a professor of law,
Speaker 1: and I've had the pleasure to serving government both at
Speaker 1: the federal level and now at the state level, and
Speaker 1: work with international governments around the world, and my capacity
Speaker 1: as director of the govern Lab, and that's where we've
Speaker 1: gotten to see and especially something we've all witnessed out
Speaker 1: during COVID. We've gotten to see countless failures and bungles,
Speaker 1: really the problems what happens that happened when government doesn't
Speaker 1: work well. But at the same time, we've gotten to
Speaker 1: also see a lot of successes and we've come, I think,
Speaker 1: to really realize how important it is to how how
Speaker 1: important it is to really have government that works. So
Speaker 1: in my own background, especially when I was in the
Speaker 1: Obama administration, we got to see how much of a
Speaker 1: difference it made when people started to do things like
Speaker 1: use open data, which we were putting online for the
Speaker 1: first time to help solve problems in a more evidence way.
Speaker 1: What it meant to actually use new technology to then
Speaker 1: go out and engage with citizens, to use with some
Speaker 1: people calling Human Center Design to really ask citizens about
Speaker 1: the problems that we're facing and how we can deliver
Speaker 1: services that work for them better. It's something that we
Speaker 1: now do regularly in our work in the state of
Speaker 1: New Jersey. So we really got to see about what
Speaker 1: it meant to work differently and how important those different
Speaker 1: working practices are to innovating and to improving how we
Speaker 1: solve problems. So, Beth, I have to ask you, as
Speaker 1: a member, me, as a citizen of the United States,
Speaker 1: as someone who has lived in New Jersey her whole life,
Speaker 1: I have seen a fair amount of dysfunction in government.
Speaker 1: Does government work right now? And if it doesn't in
Speaker 1: your view, or are there ways that it could work
Speaker 1: better in your view? Well, again, there are lots of things.
Speaker 1: There are lots of success stories that I can tell you, um.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, regardless of those stories, most
Speaker 1: people today feel that government is a clumsy, bungling giant
Speaker 1: that is not in a position to spend its money. Well,
Speaker 1: as we stand poised today to have one of the
Speaker 1: largest federal budgets and World War One. Really, um, I
Speaker 1: think all of us are very concerned about how government
Speaker 1: spends our money. And you know that's reflected in the
Speaker 1: poll numbers. Which over not just since COVID but over
Speaker 1: a generation, have seen declining rates of trust and government.
Speaker 1: So as many things as are going right, and we're
Speaker 1: all looking around us as New York and New Jersey
Speaker 1: are reopening obviously, and we're all happy, maybe not to
Speaker 1: be out in the heat today, but happy to be
Speaker 1: able to leave our houses at least um uh and
Speaker 1: go to a restaurant and whatnot. We see the benefits
Speaker 1: again of when things work, but we know that they
Speaker 1: could work better than they're doing today, and especially we
Speaker 1: know that we need to take advantage of the tools
Speaker 1: we have available today, big data, new technology, UM, human
Speaker 1: centered design again, innovations in ways of working that we
Speaker 1: need to adapt and adopt in order to do a
Speaker 1: better job at solving problems. Well does the pandemic and
Speaker 1: everything that kind of how it played out, And obviously
Speaker 1: this was in many ways of black swan event, but
Speaker 1: nonetheless the inequities that were they bear once again there
Speaker 1: weren't new problems. Is that an indication that government hasn't
Speaker 1: been working as well as it could, that we still
Speaker 1: have such incredible gaps in our society. We've got about
Speaker 1: forty seconds and then we'll come back and talk some more.
Speaker 1: Absolutely so, I think COVID brought a lot of this
Speaker 1: into release. But the acute challenges we saw during COVID,
Speaker 1: whether it was the public health crisis, exploding unemployment, rampant
Speaker 1: racial inequity, just amplify the long term and chronic inequalities
Speaker 1: we've been seeing, whether it's climate change or whether it's
Speaker 1: economic inequality. We have tremendous challenges ahead of us that
Speaker 1: we need to do better at fixing. So as well
Speaker 1: as we might have done things up until now, and
Speaker 1: that's a debatable point, we really need to do better
Speaker 1: if we're going to respond to the tremendous crisis that
Speaker 1: we're facing. All Right, best to time for a second.
Speaker 1: We're gonna do a little bit of news, then we'll
Speaker 1: come back. We are talking with Beth Simo Novak, chief
Speaker 1: Innovation Officer for the State of New Jersey, former Deputy
Speaker 1: Chief Technology Officer. She did that in the Obama administration
Speaker 1: and her new book that's out, Solving Public Problems, A
Speaker 1: Practical Guide to fix our Government and change our world.
Speaker 1: She lays it out, but she also gives advice on
Speaker 1: how to make those changes and help our world. I
Speaker 1: want to get back to our guests. We're talking with
Speaker 1: Beth Simon Noveki. She is the first Chief Innovation Officer
Speaker 1: UH in New Jersey. She was the US Deputy Chief
Speaker 1: Technology Officer for Open Government. That was during the Obama administration.
Speaker 1: Her new book, Solving Public Problems, A Practical Guide to
Speaker 1: Fix our Government and change our World. There's a lot here, Beth,
Speaker 1: and I do wonder you know, one chapter. I just
Speaker 1: love the headline of it. The government that governs least
Speaker 1: governs best. Is that an argument for smaller government or
Speaker 1: just more effective government, or government with real leadership or
Speaker 1: a little bit about your your your onto exactly what
Speaker 1: I'm getting at. We've had a generation long debate about
Speaker 1: bigger versus smaller government. I think that's really a red herring.
Speaker 1: It distracts us from the idea that we need to
Speaker 1: have better governments, and frankly, not just government, it's business.
Speaker 1: It's activists and students and every one of us as
Speaker 1: well as our government that needs to really develop the
Speaker 1: skills I would argue for being more effective at solving
Speaker 1: public problems. So a lot of us these days really
Speaker 1: want to, you know, man the barricades. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of demand for social change. But I think the ability
Speaker 1: to go from demanding change to really making it happen,
Speaker 1: to cross that chasm from idea to implementation is something
Speaker 1: that I think a lot of us find very difficult
Speaker 1: wherever it is that we work, whether it's in the
Speaker 1: private or the public sector. Well, when you look at
Speaker 1: something like climate change. We we talked earlier um with
Speaker 1: Sura Manker. She's created this company called grow Intelligence, and
Speaker 1: she was a former commodities trader. She's a Bloomberg New
Speaker 1: Economy catalyst and she basically is gathering tons of global
Speaker 1: data using aime machine learning to tackle things like food
Speaker 1: security issues and climate change. And our customers are food suppliers,
Speaker 1: food producers, governments, the financial world. You know, these are
Speaker 1: some really big problem is that if we don't tackle,
Speaker 1: we're all going to be not in a good way.
Speaker 1: So I do wonder about in particular, I guess what
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you was the use of data,
Speaker 1: smart data to get us to a better place. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I think you know, every day we were glued to
Speaker 1: the television screen or the radio to hear you know,
Speaker 1: the governors or the mayors of our communities show the
Speaker 1: graphs with race of COVID and how transmission was progressing.
Speaker 1: If we didn't know about the value of data before,
Speaker 1: we definitely I think all understood it doing during COVID.
Speaker 1: But if you look around and look at the fact
Speaker 1: that the top twenty five schools of public administration do
Speaker 1: not require the teaching of data science. If you look
Speaker 1: at the fact that in government, we have the majority
Speaker 1: of our government, only five percent of people are under
Speaker 1: the age of thirty in our civilian government. So if
Speaker 1: age is any proxy for mastery of new technologies, digital skills,
Speaker 1: big data, um, you know, we really are I think
Speaker 1: lacking in the way that we're training and teach people
Speaker 1: to use these new tools that are available to us.
Speaker 1: You know, our training law and government dates to ninety
Speaker 1: eight are training framework. Uh there's yeah, there's a need
Speaker 1: for a refresh and really looking at what are the
Speaker 1: skills that we're teaching people inside government. Um, but it's
Speaker 1: not limited to government. Look in universities, we're teaching people
Speaker 1: to become the next Mark Zuckerberg. We're teaching everybody to
Speaker 1: become entrepreneurs and to start a business, which is wonderful,
Speaker 1: but we also need to equip people with the skills
Speaker 1: who want to do things like tackle climate change, or
Speaker 1: tackle racial inequities, or tackle some of these big societal problems,
Speaker 1: and all the more so really in business. So you know,
Speaker 1: today I think CEOs really know uh and the Aidelman
Speaker 1: Trust Barometer shows it. You know, people want CEOs to
Speaker 1: speak out on societal issues, they want CEOs to be
Speaker 1: accountable to the public. The new movement around stakeholder capitalism
Speaker 1: really is a movement towards companies playing a more socially
Speaker 1: responsible role right and employees frankly or demanding it. You know,
Speaker 1: millennials who are the people going into the jobs of
Speaker 1: both today and tomorrow. Of millennials are considering a company's
Speaker 1: social and environmental commitments when they're deciding where they're going
Speaker 1: to go to work. So I think there's a real
Speaker 1: need for people also in the private sector to upscale
Speaker 1: themselves to be able to tackle society societal problems because
Speaker 1: it's everybody's responsibility, not just people inside government. It's funny
Speaker 1: we just had Richard Edelman on because we often talked
Speaker 1: about the trust Barometer and your spot on what's also
Speaker 1: interesting and having recently talked to a bunch of CEOs
Speaker 1: that are in the food space, leading companies. They are
Speaker 1: definitely watching climate change because it's impacting them and their businesses.
Speaker 1: Is it ultimately you know, I have worked in a
Speaker 1: capitalistic society. I cover the capitalism that goes on globally.
Speaker 1: Is it money that ultimately brings about the change? Because
Speaker 1: I feel like we've been talking about climate change for
Speaker 1: a long time, We've been talking about diversity for a
Speaker 1: long time, but finally it feels like the needle is changing,
Speaker 1: partly because it's having a financial impact on companies, on cities,
Speaker 1: on states, on governments and countries. Absolutely. Well, look, we
Speaker 1: can always use more money put towards social good. But
Speaker 1: right now we're seeing you know, the largest federal budgets
Speaker 1: in a very very long time. We're seeing companies also
Speaker 1: wanting Especially during COVID, we saw a lot of corporate
Speaker 1: social philanthropy, social responsibility, people spending money on trying to
Speaker 1: do well by doing good. I think it's really a
Speaker 1: question though, of skills and of know how and the
Speaker 1: ability to understand how to leverage the tools at our disposal,
Speaker 1: and that includes both digital tools and data, but also
Speaker 1: includes institutions and how we can leverage institutions and their
Speaker 1: power and their convening power to really implement change. You know,
Speaker 1: when we talk about innovation, a lot of the focus
Speaker 1: is on the spark of the good idea. So you
Speaker 1: talk about the social entrepreneur who has this cool new
Speaker 1: app for this cool new thing, um, But the real
Speaker 1: question is driving through implementation. How do we make change
Speaker 1: happen in practice? How do we go again from the
Speaker 1: good idea to implementing that good idea. How do we
Speaker 1: take these amazing new technologies around machine learning and AI
Speaker 1: and translate them into social good impractice for real people.
Speaker 1: That's a skill set, and it's a learnable skill set.
Speaker 1: Is the argument that I make. I love what you're saying.
Speaker 1: I feel like I've been having this conversation a lot lately,
Speaker 1: especially in the last year, but also for a little
Speaker 1: bit longer, Like these are all great ideas, they make sense.
Speaker 1: Someone a loyal listener and watch her on our YouTube
Speaker 1: channel tweeting at me and saying, better government begins with
Speaker 1: better people running for public office country before party. Isn't
Speaker 1: that part of the problem? And just got about forty
Speaker 1: seconds left here, Well we're going to solve it all
Speaker 1: in seconds. But you know what, I'm saying, in terms
Speaker 1: of politics, EEP getting in the way of kind of
Speaker 1: some really smart and needed and necessary, very longer term planning.
Speaker 1: Just quickly, let me just say I'm so glad we're
Speaker 1: having this conversation because so much focus is obviously on
Speaker 1: what happens on election day, and not enough is what
Speaker 1: happened on what happens to day after election day? What
Speaker 1: are the skills we're developing with the capacity that we're building.
Speaker 1: Are we up skilling ourselves to be able to tackle
Speaker 1: the challenges that we're facing today. So it really is
Speaker 1: about first and foremast focusing on the problems that we're
Speaker 1: solving and not on the politics around those problem. Well,
Speaker 1: I hope you will come back. Beth Simone Novak, chief
Speaker 1: Innovation Officer for New Jersey. Her book is Solving Public Problems,
Speaker 1: A Practical Guide to Fix our Government and change our world. Bet,
Speaker 1: thank you so much.