"Originally published in hardcover in 2023 by Metropolitan Books."-- title page verso

Introduction : Beyond Schoolhouse Rock! -- Archaeology -- Seventeen years -- Concrete boats -- Friendly fire -- The Kodak curse -- Operational in nature -- Stuck in peanut butter -- The procedure fetish -- The fax hack -- Byrne's law -- The insiders -- Up the waterfall -- What we believe matters -- Conclusion : For and by people.

"A bold call to reexamine how our government operates -- and sometimes fails to -- from President Obama's former deputy chief technology officer and the founder of Code for America. Just when we most need our government to work -- to decarbonize our infrastructure and economy, to help the vulnerable through a pandemic, to defend ourselves against global threats -- it is faltering. Government at all levels has limped into the digital age, offering online services that can feel even more cumbersome than the paperwork that preceded them and widening the gap between the policy outcomes we intend and what we get. But it's not more money or more tech we need. Government is hamstrung by a rigid, industrial-era culture, in which elites dictate policy from on high, disconnected from and too often disdainful of the details of implementation. Lofty goals morph unrecognizably as they cascade through a complex hierarchy. But there is an approach taking hold that keeps pace with today's world and reclaims government for the people it is supposed to serve. Jennifer Pahlka shows why we must stop trying to move the government we have today onto new technology and instead consider what it would mean to truly recode American government" -- Back cover