In Plain Service

  For years, the Social Security Administration has talked about digital service as if putting forms on a website was enough. It’s helped, but not by much. Most people do not live on government websites. They live on their phones. This includes some of the most vulnerable and transient members who need the SSA. If SSA is serious about service, the next frontier is not hard to see. It is time to build a true mobile app that replaces MySocialSecurity. This is about meeting people where they are and respecting their time. The average person cares about one thing. Can I handle my business quickly, safely, and without confusion? Right now, too often, the answer is no. People get pushed into clumsy logins, mailed notices that arrive late, phone calls that take hours, and office visits for tasks that should take minutes. That is not just a technology problem. It is a service design problem. Think about what it feels like to use CLEAR at the airport. You walk in, open the app, and ev...

  I am not amused. There is a quiet expectation in this country that the people who serve in government must be superhuman. Not just competent. Not just ethical. But flawless. Civil servants, elected or appointed, are expected to move through the world without misstep, without contradiction, and without any moment that could be questioned if seen out of context. It sounds reasonable at first, until you stop and look at what it demands. Consider Lindsey Graham walking through Disney, or Martin O'Malley having a beer with union members. So, What? These are ordinary moments. They are the kinds of things millions of Americans do every day without a second thought. Yet when a public figure does the same, the moment becomes something more: a statement, a signal. The question is no longer what happened, but what “the deeper meaning”. Freud said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” These moments do not really tell about those individuals. They demonstrate our own insecurities as a peopl...

Last week, I kept running into the same story from 3 different directions. One headline out of Texas described a lawsuit against a major medical records company accused of gatekeeping patient data. Another reported that a telehealth company admitted it had been providing medical records to lawyers in ways that raised serious questions. A third showed just how much control a small number of companies have over access to medical information. Different facts, same underlying truth. Control of data has become concentrated, and the people who need it most are often last in line. Let’s be clear: Individuals should have control of their own medical records, period. If it is your body, your care, your history, it is your information. Yet the system behaves as if access is conditional, delayed, and sometimes negotiated. If you have ever tried to gather records, you know the routine. Requests go out. Weeks pass. Files come back incomplete. Another request follows. Sometimes there is a fee. So...

  I was glad to see that AFGE won its telework arbitration case against SSA. There are different philosophies on telework, and managing teams today is not what it used to be. I remember the world before the internet was everywhere. In the late 80s and early 90s, we played on unsafe playground equipment and thought nothing of it. I still have scars from the winter ice cutting my knees when the backlot flooded and turned into a makeshift rink. We did things together. We talked about the same cartoons, the same games, the same stories. It was a shared experience. Later, in college and in the workforce, working side by side with others was the norm. You learned by being around people. You built trust by showing up. That matters. It always will. As John Donne wrote, no man is an island. We are social creatures. We get better together. What some people miss is that connection does not disappear just because it moves online. It changes, but it does not vanish. Teams can still collabora...