Sludge: Is Government the Problem, or the Solution?
- Apr 14, 2025
- 1 min read
Updated: Sep 18, 2025
If you’ve ever been stuck in a loop of bureaucratic madness, filling out convoluted forms or trying to cancel a subscription, you’ve experienced sludge. This episode explores how we might actually fix it.
What really struck me was Jennifer Pahlka’s insight that government often designs processes where no judgment is used. Rules are just followed. And the results are predictably poor. Her framing of the problem as "not what government does but how it does it" was a lightbulb moment for me. It reminded me why I care so much about the connection between design, strategy, and real-world implementation. Roadmaps and policies mean very little if they’re not grounded in a clear, user-tested understanding of how things will actually work in practice.
She also talked about her role as an “intra-English translator”, helping different sides of a system understand each other. That idea resonated deeply. So much of the dysfunction comes from a lack of shared understanding and language.
Ultimately, her call for more ‘go’ energy and less ‘stop’ energy in government is a reminder that momentum matters and thoughtful, user-tested, iterative design could be our way through the sludge.
If you enjoyed this one, here is part 1: 627. Sludge, Part 1: The World Is Drowning in It
If you enjoyed Jennifer Pahlka’s views and insights, then you have to listen to this one where she goes into more detail about her book “Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better”. https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-ezra-klein-show/id1548604447?i=1000615839464.
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