Field Digital Agenda Draft 0.1

A field-level agenda for government that works

Government needs to work. AI gives us an opening

A generational technology shift is changing what small, capable teams can build and how quickly they can learn. The opportunity is not to bolt AI onto government as it exists. It is to use this moment to build the lasting capacity government needs to deliver.

Read the agenda Explore the Workbench

The basic argument

The technology changed. The obligation did not.

01

Government must deliver

People experience government through whether its institutions and services actually work. Delivery capacity is not secondary to policy. It determines whether policy becomes real.

02

AI creates an opening

AI changes the economics of building software, analyzing information, and redesigning work. It gives government and its partners new room to move.

03

Digital is the opening, not the destination

Better digital delivery should create pressure and proof for deeper reform: a stronger public workforce, right-sized procedure, purpose-fit infrastructure, and incentives organized around outcomes.

See Recoding America’s full strategy

The working agenda

Five priorities for the field

These are choices about where the field should concentrate effort, authority, talent, and money. They are a starting position, not a catalog of every useful activity.

  1. 01

    Build government’s capacity to deliver

    Build permanent multidisciplinary teams, modern talent systems, and leaders with the authority to own outcomes and continuously improve services.

  2. 02

    Use AI to redesign work and right-size procedure

    Remove inherited process, reporting, approval, and compliance burdens as services, roles, and controls are redesigned, instead of using new tools to accelerate old routines.

  3. 03

    Build shared public digital infrastructure

    Invest in reusable components, standards, data infrastructure, and institutions that solve recurring problems across government.

  4. 04

    Align funding, procurement, and oversight with delivery

    Fund capable teams, learning, measurable outcomes, and responsible iteration rather than static plans and prescribed solutions.

  5. 05

    Turn implementation knowledge into field capacity

    Make practical experience, evidence, decisions, and reusable artifacts easier to find, trust, adapt, and improve.

From agenda to action

A strategy should move resources and behavior.

The agenda will connect priorities to concrete commitments from organizations and leaders across the field. A commitment has an owner, a time horizon, and a measure of progress.

No commitments are being claimed yet. The Workbench now includes candidate commitments: concrete bets we are exploring and scoping before anyone has agreed to own them.

See the candidate commitments →

For people working in this field

This is a point of view to build on and argue with.

The public agenda will stay clean and coherent. The Workbench shows what is in development, where input is useful, and eventually what happened to the ideas people contributed.

You will be able to

  • Challenge the diagnosis
  • Share evidence and implementation experience
  • Improve or propose an action
  • Make or support a commitment

Contributions will inform editorial decisions. Recoding America will retain final responsibility for what appears in the Agenda.

Workbench now in development →