The speed of government vs. the speed of today’s culture.

The consensus amongst economists and the government in the 2009 financial crisis was that “they didn’t see it coming” and “once they realized what was happening it was too late." 

Is the same thing happening with the health insurance crisis? Are the health economists going to claim they were blindsided? Or are the Democrats going to blame it on the Bush-era Republicans for doing nothing?

I think the real issues here are:

  • We now have quickly-moving technology that enable new business models that can outpace government regulation
  • Entrenched special interests influence our leaders with money
  • Our culture now moves too fast since our economy became computerized and internetized

The government can’t proactively respond because they’re simply too slow and bogged down in processes designed around the 20th Century. From now on, will it be relegated to reactionary intervention?

I’ll be keynoting the next Gov 2.0 Expo in DC in May speaking on these very issues and how it relates to healthcare:

"Government has an extraordinary responsibility to harness the best, most efficient systems for delivering citizen services and overcoming the barriers of complexity and bureaucracy,” said Tim O’Reilly, CEO and founder of O’Reilly Media. “There has been a revolution in the private sector, with new technologies including cloud computing, web services, mobile devices, social media, and open data bringing unprecedented new services to individuals. The Government 2.0 Expo is the place to understand how these technologies can be applied to advance the mission of government agencies.”

Here are the other speakers:

  • Dave Girouard, President, Google Enterprise
  • Tim Berners-Lee, World Wide Web Consortium Director
  • Danah Boyd, Microsoft Research
  • Linda Cureton, NASA CIO
  • Jack Dangermond, ESRI Founder and President
  • Anil Dash, Expert Labs
  • Mary Davie, General Services Administration Assistant Commissioner
  • Bill Eggers, Deloitte Director and author of the book, Government 2.0
  • Price Floyd, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs
  • Clay Johnson, Sunlight Labs Director
  • Jeff Jonas, IBM Distinguished Engineer, Chief Scientist IBM Entity Analytics
  • Tim O’Reilly, O’Reilly Media, Inc. Founder and CEO
  • Jay Parkinson, The Future Well Partner and Co-Founder
  • Alec Ross, State Department Senior Adviser on Innovation
  • Gary Vaynerchuk, VaynerMedia Partner and Co-founder