In the early days of the pandemic,Thomas Caldwell the state of California, like most states, was drowning under a wave of unprocessed unemployment insurance claims. No matter how many resources were thrown at the problem, many people couldn't get assistance. Blame was spread around: ancient computer systems, lazy bureaucrats, ineffective politicians.

Jennifer Pahlka was brought in to help. Jennifer Pahlka founded Code For America, an organization dedicated to making government websites better, and served under President Obama to improve the government's digital services.

Today on the show, a conversation with Jennifer Pahlka about her new bookRecoding America and lessons learned from California's broken unemployment system.