- [voiceover] funding for overheard with evan smith is provided in part by mfi foundation, improving the quality of life within our community. also by hillco partners, a texas government affairs consultancy. and by the alice kleberg reynolds foundation. - i'm evan smith. he's the 44th president of the united states. don't need to say much more than that. in this special episode, i sit down with barack obama at the south by southwest interactive festival and conference to talk about civic engagement and public service in the digital age and a few topics in the news. he's potus. this is overheard. (music and clapping) - [voiceover] let's be honest. is this about the ability to learn, or is this about the experience of not having been taught properly? how have you avoided what has befallen other nations in africa? you could say that he made his own bed, but you caused him to sleep in it. you saw a problem and over time, took it on. let's start with the sizzle before we get to the steak.

are you gonna run for president? i think i just got an f from you actually. (audience laughter) this is overheard. (audience clapping) - mr. president, you're very nice to be here with us today, and you came for a purpose. you want to accomplish something. you said as much in your weekly radio address last weekend. i got the opportunity to hear it. some people in the room have not heard it. for their benefit and people outside the room, would you say why you're here. make the pitch in miniature, please. - well first of all, i'm here cause i like excuses to come to austin, texas. (audience cheering) that's a good enough reason. and i want to acknowledge your mayor, steve adler, who bought tacos with me. (audience clapping) i normally don't do this, but i'm going to embarrass somebody. i want to also acknowledge the chancellor of the texas system because he's one of my favorite people and a truly great american, bill mcraven, who i think is over there.

(audience clapping) it's pretty rare where a chancellor of a university system can really mess you up so in case any of the students are wondering, don't mess with your chancellor. (audience laughter) but i knew him as admiral, and he's served america as well as anybody's served it. look, we are at a moment in history where technology, globalization, our economy is changing so fast. and this gathering, south by southwest, brings together people who are at the cutting edge of those changes. those changes offer us enormous opportunities, but also are very disruptive and unsettling.

they empower individuals to do things that they could have never dreamed of before, but they also empower folks who are very dangerous to spread dangerous messages. and part of my challenge since i've been president is trying to find ways in which our government can be a part of the positive change that's taking place and can help convene and catalyze folks in the private sector and the non-profit sector to be part of the broader civic community in tackling some of our biggest challenges. and just three things that i talked about during my weekly address where this group i think is prime to make a difference. number 1- we're spending a lot of time figuring out how can we make government work better through technology,

digital platforms and so forth. so for example, we've reduced the fafsa form process, where you apply for student aid by about two-thirds, just by digitalizing it, putting it online, making it a little more common sense. we have made it now possible to apply for social security online in ways that couldn't be done before. across agencies, we're interacting every day with our government, and the question is how do we make that work better because an anti-government mentality grows if people feel frustrated cause they're not getting good service. the second thing that these new technologies allow us to do is to tackle big problems in new ways. we had a conference in washington a few weeks back on

what we're calling precision medicine. the capacity today to potentially cure diseases because we understand the human genome and we understand that a cure for me may not be the same as a cure for you. and there's incredible research taking place all around the country, but we haven't gathered all of that data together to make sure that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. and number 3, we want to make sure that we're using big data, analytics, technology, to make civic participation easier. voters, increasing voting rates and making sure that people are informed about who they're voting for and why they're voting. making sure that community organizations or

activists are able to meet and help to shape our society in new ways. so the reason i'm here really is to recruit all of you. it's to say to you as i'm about to leave office- how can we start coming up with new platforms, new ideas, new approaches across disciplines and across skill sets to solve some of the big problems that we're facing today because i've said this before, i've said it at the state of the union. the most important office in a democracy is the office of citizen, and right now with all the talent that's out there, our government's not working, and our politics isn't working as well as it should. the only way we're gonna solve that is make sure that we're getting citizens involved in ways that we haven't up until now. - mr. president, the theory of bringing tech more

closely aligned with government in solving problems is great, but the reality is that the culture of the tech sector and the culture of government could not be more different. government is big and bloated and slow and risk averse, and it's run on outmoded systems and outmoded equipment. tech is sleek and streamlined and failed fast and enamored of the new and the shiny. how do you take these two things that seem culturally to be so unalike and put them together in a way where they can and want to work together? - (sighs) you know (audience laughter) well let me give you an example of the big and the bloated and the frustrated. you may recall that i passed this law called the affordable care act (audience applause) to sign people up for health care. (audience applause) and then the website didn't work. - [evan] i heard that. (audience laughter)

heard that. - and this was a little embarrassing for me because i was the cool early adapter president. - [evan] not exactly an advertisement for... - my entire campaign had been premised on having really cool technology and social media and all that. well here's what happened was that the procurement systems, the specifications, the way that software was built in government was adapted for the age when procurement was for buying boots or for buying pencils or buying furniture as opposed to buying software. and so there's an example of an outdated system, bloated, risk averse, not working well. here's what happened as a consequence of healthcare.gov breaking down though. we had to bring in a swat team of all my friends from

silicon valley and from austin and some of the best software engineers in the world to come in and fix it, which we did in about 3-4 months time. and what we realized was that we could potentially build a swat team, a world class technology office inside of government that was helping across agencies. we've dubbed that the us digital services, and we've got some of the top talent from google, (audience applause) from facebook, from all the top tech companies. these folks are coming in in some cases for 6 months, in some cases for 2 years. and they are making an enormous difference in making sure that veterans are getting services on time, fixing outdated systems,

making sure that agencies like the small business administration that has been clunky is redesigning itself so that if an entrepreneur wants to start up a business here in texas that they can go to one spot, and within a day, they've handled all the regulatory red tape that used to require them maybe months to navigate. now the folks who are working in this digital service, they're having a great time, and in part because they are harnessing incredible skills to a purpose where they know that millions of people can be helped. and what they'll tell me is that as long as they feel that they've got a president and somebody who's providing some air cover, there's no system that they can't get in there and work and change and make it significantly better.

so part of my job is to try to institutionalize that over the next several years. and i want to make sure that the next president and the federal government from here on out is in constant improvement mode and we're constantly bringing in new talent and new ideas to solve some of these big problems. it can be done. it requires some effort. but everything requires some effort. - because mr. president, i talked to tech people in advance of you coming, and i said, if you were asked by the president or by the administration to come in and work with them, what would the conditions need to be that would make it possible? and they said, well we would need some kind of a carve out, some kind of flexibility from rules and regulations. we would be willing to work with the government. maybe we would then donate back the ip to the public sector. or if we wanted to give some of the employees from our payroll the opportunity to work in government, maybe we could get, as you would with another kind of donation, some sort of a tax break back. we would be willing to work, but the government would have to come at least a little bit in our direction.

you're saying you're willing to do that. - well, i'm not saying i'm willing to do it. i'm saying, we're doing it. - [evan] you're doing it now. - it is currently happening. and the opportunities are there. but i want to focus on the fact that there are different ways for people here to get engaged. it's not just you coming in although that's, we want to create a pipeline where there's a continuous flow of talent that is helping to shape the government. the other thing that we're doing though is we're also convening people to solve problems, and they may in their existing roles be able to work together to make a huge difference. i will give you a specific example. before i came in here, i met with an incredible group of people- entrepreneurs, movie makers, organizers, tech leaders, to talk about how we make a real difference on countering violent extremism.

it's not enough if we're going to defeat isil just to take out their leadership, or to control certain territories. if in the virtual world, they are consistently reaching kids here in the united states or elsewhere in the world, and recruiting them and twisti their mds to dterrible things. for good reasons, we don't want the government to be the lead on that. first of all, we're not credible with the people who might be receiving those messages. second of all, it's dangerous if the government gets in the business of propaganda. so what i said to them was, we'll help convene and put you guys in a room together, where there are resources that are necessary we can help provide it. essentially you figure out

how we can reach young people who might be vulnerable to extremist messages. you tell us based on the analytics and the data and the algorithms that you're working with on a day to day basis to sell products. what is it that's really gonna penetrate here? how can we amplify powerful stories that are already taking places so that they're on platforms that can reach as many people as possible? - so whether you solve the problem or they solve the problem, it's all good. - exactly, i'll give you a second example. and that is the issue of voting. i mentioned this earlier. we're the only advanced democracy in the world that makes it harder for people to vote. (audience laughter) no, you're laughing, but it's sad. we take enormous pride in the fact that we're the world's oldest continuous democracy,

and yet we systematically put up barriers and make it as hard as possible for our citizens to vote. and it is much easier to order pizza or a trip than it is for you to exercise the single most important task in a democracy, and that is for you to select who's going to represent you in government. now i think it's important for a group like this, as we come up to an election, regardless of your party affiliation, to think about how do we redesign our systems so that we don't have 50% or 55% voter participation on presidential elections and during off year

congressional elections, you've got 39 or 40% voting. the worst voter turnout in the country over the last 3 elections. we would take 55% tomorrow if we could get it. - there is a reason i'm bringing this up. (audience laughter) but it's not just texas. so one of the things that we're doing is engaging folks who are already doing interesting work in the online space, how can we create safe, secure, smart systems for people to be able to vote much easier online. and what are the technologies to help people get aware of what they're voting about, who they're voting for. that's again, an issue where you don't want the federal government engineering all that. but what we can do is to have the incredible talent that's represented in this auditorium

really spend time thinking about that and getting to work on it. - but governments, mr. president, governments need to play a role in that they have to pass legislation that enables some of these things. so in texas, again the state with terrible voter turnout over time, we broke records on primary day, but we still had the 2nd worst voting age participation of any state that's voted so far. we can't get out of our own way. you need in texas legislation that enables this. we won't even allow people to register to vote, register to vote, not vote, register online in texas. register online. we can pay our taxes. we can hold our phone up at the supermarket to pay with our credit card, but somehow online voter's registration is perceived to be insecure or same day registration. - it's not insecure. it's done because the folks who are currently governing the good state of texas aren't interested in having more people participate. (audience clapping) so obviously you've gotta make a political argument

about why this is important and not every state is gonna move along the same direction. but i will tell you that if we can create more and more models that show that if made easier, more people vote. and that it is seamless, and that it is secure. and jurisdictions that are willing to adopt and support these new mechanisms are in place. and if we were building more models of civic engagement and using the tools and technology that we're using to buy things, to participate in self-governance, then over time, look, texas is never gonna be an early adapter of what i'm talking about here. (audience laughter) but over time, pressure builds for us to create systems that make government more responsive, and make it work better. - let me stay with texas, and touch on something you alluded to earlier that there are a lot of people

in the world today who don't like government, don't trust government, don't think government can do good. you are in texas, the hating on government capital of the western world. (audience laughter) we hate government so much, we'd rather have no government except we then wouldn't have anybody to sue. (president obama laughs) so we need government for at least one reason. how do you change the perception that government can do good at a moment when people have decided government can't do good? - well part of it is the fact that when government does great things, we take it for granted, and it's not a story. every day government is delivering for everybody in this room, whether you know it or not. i can find the fiercest libertarian in the room, who despises every level of government, thinks it's all corrupt, but they're checking the weather on their phone, and lo and behold, it turns out that

there's a government satellite out there - [evan] that's government. - (president obama) that is facilitating that. and they'd be really irritated if they couldn't figure out whether it was gonna be 70 and sunny or 60 and rainy tomorrow. but that's not reported as government. we just take for granted. of course there are roads, and of course there's a geo satellite system. and of course we have special forces who are making sure that folks aren't blowing up our buildings. the part of our task is to tell a better story about what government does. now government is often its own worst enemy in the sense that it has to also be more responsive where people interact in a direct way with government. i've said before that i could change the politics

of america faster than just about anything if i could just take control of all the dmvs in the country (audience laughter) because if somebody goes to get their license renewed, and it takes them 2 hours, - [evan] and they walk away frustrated. - [president obama] and everybody's kinda surly, that's their impression of government. or if there prior interaction with government is the irs, you just don't have a good association with government when you're writing that check. but if we make it easier, if it's being done online, if suddenly you have the capacity to interact with government in a way that also gives you some feedback about how your tax dollars are being spent or why this is important for what you're doing so that it's a two way exchange as opposed to something that feels distant and that you have

no control over, then people's attitudes change. here's the problem, and this is why politics matter. if there are those who despise government, often times because the absence of government allows them to pollute or keep as much money as they can or not have to answer to consumers who are complaining about their practices. if they are controlling those who are currently in government, and government gets starved of resources, then it can be a self-reinforcing notion that in fact government doesn't work cause it's being starved. a great example of this by the way, i met with financial regulators this week to just get a report back on how we're doing on wall street reform.

one of the things that the left and the right agree on is that after the financial crisis, nothing changed. and all those folks on wall street who had done these terrible things just got away with it, and we didn't change the system, and it's just the way it is now. well the truth of the matter is that actually a lot changed. the banks have been forced to capitalize much more. some of the shoddy practices have been shut down. we set up a consumer finance protection bureau that prevents some of the mortgage practices that had ended up not only hurting individuals but also destabilizing the entire system. derivatives now have to be set up on a clearinghouse platform that allows oversight in a way that didn't exist before. the financial system is much more stable than it used to be, and too big to fail

actually is much less likely because if somebody engages in reckless practices, we can now unwind them without them bringing down the entire system. - [evan] so how come we don't know it then? - well first of all, that's not a story that is interesting to people. what's more interesting is a cynical view that terrible things happen and nothing got changed. and that's how it gets reported both in popular culture as well as in the media. but the second thing that's happened is where we still have work to do in this space. the main reason we have work to do in this space is because this congress has prevented oversight agencies like the fcc and the cftc from having enough staff and resources to be able to enforce as well as they could some of the laws and the rules that are put in place.

and so we go back to the need for civic engagement. we can not solve the problems in government, and we can not solve the problems that we face collectively as a society unless we, the people, are paying attention. and in a age in which people are getting information through digital platforms, through the internet, where people's attention spans have shrunk, it is critical that all of you who are shaping this environment, are spending time thinking about how are we getting people, how are we getting citizens engaged. and you yourselves have to be engaged and spend some time thinking about it. - thanks for watching this special episode of overheard. you can see the rest of my hour long discussion with president barack obama by visiting the south by southwest website sxsw.com.

- you can not take an absolutist view on this. so if your argument is strong encryption no matter what, and we can and should in fact create black boxes, that i think does not strike the kind of balance that we have lived with for 200, 300 years. (mellow music) - [voiceover] funding for overheard with evan smith is provided in part by mfi foundation, improving the quality of life within our community. also, by hillco partners, a texas government affairs consultancy. and by the alice kleberg reynolds foundation.