Hack the Bureaucracy to Make Change Happen

Getting things done in a bureaucracy can be hard, but Marina Nitze and Nick Sinai have found success. Now, they are working to ensure employees at every level and in every kind of bureaucracy can create change despite their environment.

Nitze and Sinai’s new book “Hack Your Bureaucracy: Get Things Done No Matter What Your Role on Any Team” helps employees from the front-line to the top make real change in their roles. In a conversation with host Jason Briefel, Nitze and Sinai explain the real-world experience working in both the federal sector and the private sector that informed the tips they share in the book. The group discusses unique elements of the federal bureaucracy that make change hard, and how employees can push through those obstacles. Not only does the group discuss tips for individual change, but also how employees can lead the charge on organizational change.

Nitze is currently a partner at Layer Aleph, a crisis response firm that specializes in restoring complex software systems to service. Nitze is also a fellow at New America’s New Practice Lab, where she works on improving America’s foster care system through the Resource Family Working Group and Child Welfare Playbook. Nitze was most recently the Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs under President Obama, after serving as a Senior Advisor on technology in the Obama White House and as the first Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the U.S. Department of Education.

Sinai is a venture capitalist, adjunct Harvard faculty, and a former senior White House official in the Obama Administration. As a Senior Advisor at Insight Partners, Sinai serves on the board of Rebellion Defense, Hawkeye360, LeoLabs, and Shift5. He writes and teaches about technology in government and serves as a commissioner on the Atlantic Council’s Commission on Remaking the US Defense Innovation System. Recently, Sinai co-founded the U.S. Digital Corps, a new two-year federal fellowship for early-career technologists, launched in the summer of 2021.

The show airs live on Friday, October 21, 2022, at 11:05 am EST on Federal News Network. You can stream the show online anytime via the Federal News Network app and listen to the FEDtalk podcast on all major podcasting platforms.

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