At the Data Science Conference, I had a conversation with Gustavo Maia from Colab about something we don’t say enough in tech: if you want to build things that actually reach people, look at the public sector.
Yes, governments are complex. Yes, procurement is slow. But here’s what almost no startup can offer: you get to build tools that millions of people have no choice but to use.
That’s not scale for vanity metrics. That’s scale with consequences. When you build the interface for unemployment benefits, or the system that assigns school places, or the portal where people access healthcare, your design decisions determine whether vulnerable people can actually access their rights.
The private sector optimizes for users who can leave. The public sector has to serve everyone, including the people no market would choose to serve. If we want digital transformation to reach beyond the affluent, tech talent has to lean in.
This isn’t about romanticizing bureaucracy. It’s about recognizing that the hardest, most important infrastructure problems are in government. And right now, we’re leaving them to the lowest bidder.