Recoding America @ Pencil Factory
Updated: Jan 4
"You can have systems that do every possible thing policymakers can think of to ensure 'program integrity' (in other words, making sure no one is getting a dollar more than they should) or you can have systems that scale. You can't have both" - Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better
In early 2025, I stumbled upon Recoding America in my neighborhood’s free book box around the same time the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency, better known as DOGE, took a metaphorical chainsaw to the civil service. A glance at the jacket revealed that the author, Jennifer Pahlka, served as the deputy chief technology officer of the U.S. under President Obama. What's more, Pahlka helped found the U.S. Digital Service — the very government entity later co-opted and rebranded as DOGE. The timing felt uncanny.
I was also drawn to Pahlka's book for more personal reasons. I’ve felt the limits of public service in the digital age firsthand. Professionally, I ran into repeated roadblocks trying to stand up a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform while working for the City University of New York's (CUNY) central office. Personally, as a federal student loan borrower, I found myself caught in the bureaucratic thicket of Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF). So when Pahlka promised an inside account of what government technologists encounter on the ground, I read with more than casual interest.
Her core argument is deceptively simple: public programs grow brittle when every rule, exception, and safeguard is hard-coded into software. Systems designed to protect taxpayer dollars slowly lose their capacity to serve the public at all.
One of the book’s most telling moments comes from a colleague, Alan, who earnestly tried to live on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. Not only did Alan have difficulty completing the 212-question application for SNAP, he experienced challenges utilizing the benefit itself. The design flaw was devastatingly mundane: there was no easy way to check a remaining balance. SNAP recipients only learn where they stand after a transaction, printed at the bottom of a receipt. Stories like this recur throughout the book, making Pahlka’s case difficult to dismiss.
Designing solely for accountability, she suggests, is a dead end. Public systems must be designed for reality, where complex programs demand judgment, iteration, and feedback. Strip those qualities away, and failure becomes both routine and invisible.
Re-coding America reads as both diagnosis and invitation. It asks whether the state can relearn how to build, test, and improve — not faster for its own sake, but better, in ways people can actually feel.
One of my earliest memories of hanging out with friends in NYC was bopping into the Pencil Factory in the summer of 2010. When I learned that it was set to permenently close — concluding a 24-year run — I knew I had to drag the guys there so they could experience it.
A corner bar that always felt less like a destination and more like an appendage to the neighborhood, the Pencil Factory quietly regulated the intersectional flow of Franklin Street and Greenpoint Avenue. With an early evening start, the spring sunlight spilled into the front windows, catching wicker chairs angled just enough toward the sidewalk for top-shelf people- and dog-watching.
The pours were heavy, the Guiness better than expected, and the crowd a mix of longtime regulars, young couples, and babies (or dogs) in strollers. The Pencil Factory was a place that worked whether full or half-empty, where the discussion could stretch without urgency, and where talking seriously about government software failures felt oddly appropriate in a bar that had survived two decades of neighborhood reinvention by staying exactly itself. Grateful to have made one last meaningful memory at one of my favorite NYC bars!
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