government. that is followed by a discussion on the current state of the economy. later tonight, the funeral service for former washington post editor ben bradlee. c-span, crated by america's cable companies 35 years ago and brought to you as a public service by a local cable or satellite provider. >> aneesh chopra, in your book "innovative state" the first three words are "government doesn't work. why do you say that? >> i think it captures the spirit if you ask the american people in general if they are satisfied, we are saying the number is at an all-time low. the perception is that it is not working. even early days of the obama administration, we saw some of the more challenging launches of services that really we should not expect today in successful modern tech driven economy. closing this gap was a big part

of the motivation both for my term of duty in public service as well as why i wanted to write the book. >> your subtitle is how new technologies can transform government. how does the u.s. government use technology and does it do it successfully? >> we are moving in the right direction. i try to spend a lot of my time thinking about american history in the book. if we go back to our founding fathers we have a long tradition of having government not just keep pace, but often lead the private sector in the use of technology to solve problems. i noted that one of the founding technologies of ibm had its origins in a census bureau employee who faced insurmountable odds to calculate the number of people that were in this country in the late 1800s. governments had long history of being innovative and having the capability to solve and deliver better services. it has been the last several

decades we have seen the big divergence between the capacity of the private sector and the capacity of the public. i think we are ready to prime ourselves for closing that gap. >> why did that diversity happen? >> there are lots of reasons. in the 1990's, late 1980's and early 1990's, there was a bipartisan movement -- it is bipartisan -- to modernize the government. at that time while there was political consensus to modernize, there was not as much technological capacity. at the time president clinton and vice president al gore launched their reinventing government initiative, for example, there were only some 200 plus websites in the world wide web. while that bipartisan commitment delivered great results, they were largely management reforms. the technology today really had not reached what we are seeing in the private sector with big data, mobile technologies, cloud computing. these are more recent capabilities and for history, culture, acquisition, these have not been part of our operational dna in the public sector and that is closing. >> what was your goal when you

became the chief technology officer? >> to serve my president. to make sure every policy he advanced was thoughtfully infused with the power and potential of technology, data and innovation. as an enabler to advance the broader agenda he put forward whether it be fixing health care, helping us not only recovering but building upon a new foundation for our recovery and strengthening the public safety system. >> what were some of the issues you ran into in that position? >> first and foremost, we struggled from three perspectives if you take a big picture of this. first and foremost, you are walking into an environment where there are long-standing ways of operating. if you ask the average employee in the government how likely are you to be able to open up your information to the public? the perception was i cannot. i have limits. i have a cultural or technical or maybe even a policy barrier that says i cannot open up. we have walked into an environment where some of the entrenched circumstances made it

more difficult to achieve some of the objectives. the second thing we came across was a bit of a -- i wouldn't call it a gap in technology, but i might say that is shorthand for it. i literally walked in on the first day, had a computer that was connected to the internet but would not allow me to access my linkedin profile or any other social media sites for fear it may create risks on the privacy and security front for white house personnel. i was literally constrained in my literal access to technology. last but not least, we have had -- i would not call that much of a talent gap but if you think about the private sector, the idea of new product development and innovation had been central to the success of large swaths of our american economy. we do not have that same r&d focus on transforming government services delivery. that was not a muscle we historically worked on in the proverbial gym. with these limits and

constraints, the one advantage we had that trumped all of it was a president who focused on this and committed on day one. that really trumped a lot of the limits we saw in those early days. >> do you think you made headway in the culture gap? >> we have planted a lot of seeds and i am very proud my successor has built on those seeds. with president obama's full support, we are seeing a much broader impact on the principles that i outlined. the opportunity to open up more data, collaborate with the private sector to lower barriers of entry in the form of improving standards, thinking about tapping new problem solvers. on occasion, like the recovering healthcare.gov, putting together a lean startup and how you organize and manage such things so that specific projects get delivered at internet speed and with success as opposed to some of the more traditional challenges. >> in your book, you talk about the procurement process.

let me just quote -- "the government has gotten more bigger, more bloated and not necessarily better in its modern acquisition culture. accepting of exorbitant costs and lengthy delays, rarely considering novel alternatives, etc." >> that is a legacy born of relatively good intentions and that is a couple of things. one, in the interest of fair play, we wanted to make sure everybody had a shot to compete for government business. thus, you have to be very specific in what you are looking for so you have an objective way of evaluating whether you pick a partner a or partner b to provide a that service. that is great if you are buying furniture or pencils because you know what those things are. but, if you are trying to find a new way of serving health insurance to the american people through digital means, it may

not be as easy to define on the outset all the thousands of requirements one would otherwise do to make a fair and open comparison. the notion of agile development that will build, learn, engage the public, add revisions, roll out new capabilities -- that process has a lot more to do with procuring talent and it does particular approaches to software development. there has been a myth busting that needed to be done to say we cannot do some of these things. we learned in the procurement cycle that fixing procurement is in part a congressional issue. we need to get laws on the book that create more openness. it is also a sort of cleaning up operational, administrative capabilities and you see what the president has launched with the new u.s. digital service. one of its clear mandates it's the myth bust on what can or cannot be done on procurement. you are going to see some good things coming ahead on account

of the fact that some of the stuff can be done administratively. >> there was a chief technology officer which was you for a while. there is a federal chief information officer. now there is a u.s. digital services administrator. are we starting a little bit of overlap here? >> no, let me be clear why this is so critical. at the outset when the president appointed the chief technology officer, heaving them the assistant to the president which makes them a policy advisor. as we look at the world that i played and how my successor tied park place, it is a direct report to the president. we meet every morning and engage in the policy issues to say as we craft new policy or reform old policies and manage really important initiatives on behalf of the white house, are we property utilizing technology, data and innovation? it is a collaborative role because health care reforms led by the team focused on health care reform -- there are passages in there to make sure

we have a modern i.t. infused infrastructure for the health-care system. that is an important role. the government also manages $80 billion of i.t. spending. we want to be effective and efficient in how you organize your purchasing power and operationalize the capability that is the servers that operate the medicare system or how we operate websites and immigration. we have a chief information officer who sets basically agencywide or administration-wide policy on how we better utilize the $80 billion. get more with less. as an extension of these two voices, policy focused on the external and policy to fix the internal operations, you are now starting to see more support structures in place. the digital services arm is a support structure to the chief information officer to make government work better. that is a very natural extension of the work we started earlier. >> when it comes to that $80

billion spent on i.t., is it centralized? is it coordinated? should it be? >> i find this a tough question because one can make the argument that centralization leads to economy of scale but you lose that focus on in-state applications. it will be a dynamic continuum based on the need and the circumstances in question. at a minimum, you want to make sure that every decision at the agency level is made with the best information at hand as to how to go about solving the problem. as an example -- the ultimate in centralized is the use of cloud computing technology whether they are provided by the government or the private sector or through hybrid means. it might be the best example that an agency says i am going to use the public cloud to service my infrastructure needs to provide a function critical to my department, but in another circumstance, i might want to have a lot of that infrastructure on premise so i can actually meet the need.

it is not a one-size-fits-all in how you manage the moneys. it is to make sure each decision is infused with the best decisions. what are my options for infrastructure, how do i staff up and get the talent i need to produce the applications? how to gauge my customer in a better way so they know what they are looking for? how might i open up as many of these interfaces as possible so others can build better services to meet the needs of the american people? >> something else you address in your book is whether or not those services should be contracted out or managed by a dedicated federal law force. >> if there is one message in the book to take away is the notion that an innovative state is characterized by handshakes and handoffs. it speaks to your question as to who should do what. the handshakes are what washington's been doing lately. maybe behind the curtain and not as well reported in the media which is shaking hands on some of the key principles.

opening up data, collaborative work around standards, issuing challenges and so forth. that means the opportunity to have a more open government starts with a bipartisan commitment to lay that foundation. what is critical in an innovative state is you are handing off to the american people. innovators and the public, private, academic, federal, state and local levels of government to take that data and to build more interesting products and services. let's take weather. you and i have the right to visit weather.gov. wonderful service. exciting that we have all of the capability to predict the weather and great to have a website that the government supports that make sure you can see what you want to see. if that was the only option we face, if that was the only way we can learn what to wear today or tomorrow, we would be constrainted and limited and frustrated. the weather bureau, the agency that is responsible for the weather service, has opened up the underlying data that fuels weather.gov and invites

weather.com, yahoo! weather apps, your print and tv friends to do whatever they will on top of that data. now we have a $5 billion private industry born in large part because we have opened up all that sensor, satellite data which otherwise would be cost prohibitive for just one company. imagine each company had to build their own satellite network of sensors for weather data. it does not make sense. we have that burden as a public utility. if we do that across health, energy, education, safety, all these domains of government, we can start to see a much more vibrant innovative state which is not characterized by is the government's website working but rather can i get the information i need whether i access it directly from the government or through these incredibly more innovative, personalized services. even healthcare.gov has a handoff. the u.s. news & world report, one of its first assignments was launching the health insurance

finder powered by the data that we released in the first version of healthcare.gov back in july 2010 focusing on an inventory of all public and private insurance options that were available. that website is still live today. you can find a wonderful user experience but the information that powers it is provided by the federal government. >> take it to a 2.0. how else would this system of open government work in health care? >> it is an amazing opportunity because if you asked the question what do we ultimately want? whether you are republican or democrat, you want a system that is high quality, lower cost and deliver satisfaction that people will consume. the former administrator of medicare and medicaid refers to this as the triple aim. i think it is bipartisan. one of the ways you get there is you realize a third of the money we spend in health care is wasted and wasted could be defined as you could've gotten care at a cheaper setting that might've actually been better for you or you should not have

sought that particular care at that time if you had known you are getting worse if you sought earlier treatment and prevented some of the need to have that surgical procedure down the road. where is the biggest source of data on the performance of our health care system? in one location, it is the medicare claims file and for the first time we are opening up that data, protecting patient privacy to be sure, but making sure folks get a handle on if i am at risk of blindness, should i see dr. x or dr. y and what is the likelihood if i see dr. x he or she will prescribe for me a cheaper $50 drug to avoid blindness versus a $2000 drug. that practice pattern is now transparent and public so people can start making informed decisions about the care they seek. support services are increasingly being born to help aid you in making those decisions. >> what are some of the security and privacy concerns, especially when it comes to health care -- electronic health care.

>> the most important thing we must do is to strengthen -- if we are going to use the internet as a way to transform the relationship between the american people and the government and its service delivery, we need to strengthen the internet so that it can provide more secure privacy protecting capabilities. i refer to this as an internet within the internet. in health care, it is the birth of the health internet. you and i may e-mail each other to schedule a visit, but today you and your doctor or not e-mailing your sensitive medical records on your gmail account because that doesn't meet the security standards. thankfully, we work collaboratively with the private sector and say can we use e-mail and add some encryption and security that were not present in the traditional forms that are available? within 90 days, a coalition of public and private stakeholders came together and said let's achieve consensus on what the specifications are for safe

secure e-mail. today, every american could get a secure health e-mail account that is called the direct project where you can get a direct standardized e-mail system. it is in many cases free. i have one from microsoft. i get all my health records safely to me. you can choose another option if you'd like. that will continue to flourish. you want to take advantage of the internet as a communications medium, but you want to have an internet on top of the internet that is more secure and reliable and more focused on your privacy. that is coming and working in the collaborative spirit to be brought to you. >> how did you become secretary of technology in virginia? >> i was a constituent of virginia and working in the private sector. at a firm called the advisory board company writing research studies among things. how to use the internet to make an impact on health care. governor mark warner asked if i would serve on a couple of his commissions. he asked me to serve on the

medicaid board and he asked me to serve on a task force called electronic health records task force. he said we have to find a way to utilize all these technologies to modernize health care. after i had done that, when governor kane was elected, governor warner said aneesh served me pretty well. i met with governor kane and we had a very specific conversation about electronic health records. his vision of a cabinet position called secretary of technology was not to go off and do their own work but to collaborate with the health secretary and say how might we bring some technology to support your mission or public safety? that is essentially the pitch i made and the conversation we had. had a wonderful time. virginia is the best managed state, best place to raise a family and it has a long bipartisan tradition in ensuring we infuse our government with the best technologies and the most appropriate models for innovation to solve problems. >> people listening to this conversation are going to say

that is all great and wonderful, but this revolution that you are talking about really has not occurred because so much is still dealt in paper and phone calls. >> it is changing. in just the last several years, the percentage of doctors that are on electronic health systems went from the teens in the beginning of the obama administration to well over of the majority of doctors today are on health care systems putting your information in the digital form. according to your own privacy rights, every american has the right to an electronic copy of his or her data if your doctor or hospital stores it electronically. you might want to ask yourself if you know about that right. did you know you can access this? if you are on medicare, you have the ability to download three years of your medicare claims. why? because you might want to know what your medication list is so you have an accurate depiction when you talk to your next doctor or you might store it in

a digital service and share it with a doctor so they have the best information so they can avoid mistakes because they didn't have exactly what you are on today. this is all live. some of these things are available but may not be widely understood by the american people yet. we will get there. >> what is the x prize? >> it is a wonderful story of how entrepreneurs and the private sector tapped into the zeitgeist to say just because you are the best health care i.t. programmer it does not mean you are the only person that can solve a particular health i.t. challenge. what about this chemist or this physicist or maybe even that actor? there is talent all over our country or the world. the x prize was born on a spirit if we issue challenges or prizes, unexpected solvers might show up and blow our minds away. in the wake of the bp oil spill, we remember the imagery --

terrible imagery of all that oil gushing into the gulf -- the last real period of innovation on how you remove oil from the surface of the water was in the wake of the exxon valdez. the x prize foundation said i wonder if we could double the rate of oil cleanup not in a decade, but in a year. the traditional industry players said you cannot make it that fast. it does not make sense. the department of interior said we will create a testbed facility. the x prize foundation sponsored the competition. a tattoo artist from las vegas was was among half a dozen teams that have successfully met the challenge and doubled the goal. the winning team tripled the goal. if you provide a stretch goal and a prize that motivates folks to show up like charles lindbergh responded to a prize

which convinced him to fly across the atlantic. see what our country can do. see what our nation can do. we have talented leaders in every corner of our country and if we give them a chance to connect to prizes and challenges like the x prize and the private sector or challenge.gov, imagine how much progress we can make in meeting the needs of our country. >> you also say that charles lindbergh probably would not have pursued his goal if the government had been sponsoring that. >> how does one balance the entrepreneurial spirit of our country with the notion that government cannot be entrepreneurial? the way you square that circle in some cases is collaboration so you have the x prize foundation sponsoring and providing outreach with government support. it also might flip and say there are certain challenges the american people are really motivated to go fix and you can use challenge.gov. let's take the current challenge we are overcoming at the v.a. helping with the appointment

scheduling process to make sure our veterans who deserve world class options have the ability to self-schedule to the v.a. system. even though we spent nine years on $100 million project that did not produce a single line of working code, scratching that approach -- in less than one year, we had three teams demonstrate successfully that their off-the-shelf tools can plug right into the v.a. court system and can run that self-scheduling feature all within that year. people respond to these challenges even if not everybody well. you are going to see a mix. you will see the purely private, private with some public support and the purely public. this is a bipartisan act of congress. every federal agency can issue challenges and prizes in lieu of traditional procurement up to $50 million of prize money. that was through the america reauthorization to compete act. a bipartisan handshake that led

to the handoff to those entrepreneurs and innovators that say they can solve this in a more clever way. >> this book when you read it sounds like it could've been written by a republican. >> sure. i honored one of the policy advisors of father bush, president bush, james pinkerton combining with elaine camark who was a wonderful policy advisor to al gore. we came together and said why don't we work on these issues regardless of who's boss wins the election. if father bush was reelected or if bill clinton would be elected, let's put an agenda together that says let's move beyond this left, right divide and let's modernize. there should be plenty of debate of the role of government in society but once you make the decision that government is doing x, let's do x in an efficient manner and tapping into the expertise of the american people. i think that is the spirit and why i'm so confident this will be the decade of problem solving

even if washington looks like it cannot get its act together on the hill and other places. >> how far along are we in the so-called revolution and are you seeing a change in attitudes in the federal workforce? >> absolutely. we are in the second or third inning of this particular game. the change is this -- i have experience in the private sector. i have now state government experience and federal government experience. the talent across all settings of my life is world-class. i have met some of the best and brightest people working in the federal government, working in the state government and private sector. there is not a difference in talent and passion. what is exciting about the public-sector employees is they have an added mission orientation which is what compelled them to potentially take a lower pay in order to solve a particular problem. they have been operating in systems of constraint. one of the most exciting things of why my successor is a phenomenal chief technology officer, todd park. he was the chief technology officer at hhs.

secretary sibelius launched an every six-month program called hhs innovates honoring the employees who have been innovative. it is not like they have never been innovative but maybe they are doing it under the radar, quietly, fearful that if they were to do something it would get them in trouble. you are telling me i can do this? my wife and i just had a baby boy. we have three beautiful children. installing that infant car seat is a chore. making sure it fits properly is difficult. 50% of us install these car seats improperly. who knew the department of transportation has the database of every place in the country where you can get that car seat checked? well, at a department of transportation event, a government employee said what if we make this more available to you? would anyone here do something with it? that weekend, someone built an iphone app that would allow

anyone using a gps chip in their phone to figure out where i am, where's the nearest place to get my seat checked. it was no fuss, procurement. it was an inspired government employee who said we had this resource, can you work with it? a handoff to an innovator and try to do this with it and all of a sudden a small little tool was made available that made my life a little better. >> how far along are we when it comes to open government? how much of the government is open now to folks online? >> it is getting better. it's hard to measure the percentage of data that is open. if you count data sets, we are in the tens of thousands of data sets you can access now. you can download them. you can connect to them increasingly. you can run a new application. if you asked yourself all the places where we collect information -- can i get what i want? not yet, but president obama has made it clear this is a commitment he has made.

congress with the most recent data act has said financial transaction status shall be made more open. and, piecemeal parts -- the medicare database, slowly opening up. other data sets are coming online. here is the point -- we would no longer have the debate of whether we should or should not open. it will be the pace of which we find new assets and bring them to bear. it opens up a new conversation. what new data should we be collecting that we have not been? how well performing is our workforce system? is there a skills gap? why's it so hard for veterans to find jobs who are heroes and so many employers are saying i want to hire a veteran yet the unemployment rate is much higher amongst the younger cohort. it will be informed by new data that will be made available to the american people. what is the skills profile of the unemployed? how can we better plan and allocate resources to match the

skills that are in demand with the skills that are in the supply of talent. we will get there. it is just going to build on itself. >> we have been talking with aneesh chopra, former chief technology officer of the united states. "innovative state" is the name of the book. how new technologies can transform government. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] >> c-span, created by america's cable companies 35 years ago, publicught to you as a service by your local cable or satellite provider. >> on the next washington journal, we'll talk about what to expect in the final days withng up to election day abby livingston and paul singer of usa today. candidatesk at how are obtaining voters' information and using it to encourage turnout at the polls.

cofounderictory d michael beach will join us. we'll also take your phone calls andcomments on facebook twitter. it begins live at 7 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> next, a discussion on the and howeconomic climate cultural values are impacting inequality and poverty. foundation,itage this is an hour. >> good afternoon. welcome to the heritage foundation. i'm john. welcome you too our auditorium. we, of course, welcome those who website and those that will be joining us on c-span tv today. everyone in-house if