The Next 250 Years Are Ours to Build

As America celebrates its 250th anniversary, I keep thinking about the relationship between government and the people it serves: its promise, its pitfalls, and what it could be if we choose to build it differently. 

Code for America was founded with a simple and compelling idea: that government can and should work for everyone. 

For more than 15 years, we’ve worked shoulder-to-shoulder with government partners to improve the delivery of critical services from food assistance to pandemic relief to tax benefits to automatic record clearance. In 2025 alone, we helped 7 million people access $22 billion in benefits. 

Despite the marked improvements that Code for America and others have catalyzed, there are still programs that are far too difficult to access, and sadly, people who fall through the cracks. 

These are people, many of whom come from low-income households, who may qualify for help putting food on the table, filing taxes, clearing a record, accessing health care, or getting back on their feet, but never receive it because the system was not designed around their lives. 

That is what we have to change. 

Fundamentally, we have to turn the relationship between government and the people it serves on its head.

A working family should not have to navigate a complicated tax system to claim the money they are owed. An older person should not have to know which form to fill out to obtain their prescriptions. A single mom should not have to become an expert in bureaucratic processes to access food assistance. 

The advent of AI and other advanced technologies makes disrupting the status quo possible, perhaps for the first time in history.

We can build better with people’s needs in mind. In the near future, people will have the power.  They will be able to harness advanced technology that’s intuitive and easy to engage with government. Responsible technology implementation will ensure people can engage with confidence and access every service they are due – whether it's tax benefits, the safety net, or other services.  

Meanwhile, government will be able to meet people where they are, on an individualized basis, to effectively help people navigate their needs and take action without friction or frustration.  

This transformation is in its earliest days as government agencies embrace AI to make the delivery of benefits faster, less confusing, and more empathetic. 

The next step: creating services that are more direct, scalable, and tailored to the person using them. To do so, we need to have a deep understanding of the challenges people face and how the thoughtful use of technology and design can help overcome them. 

At Code for America, this is the work we do every day. We know the communities too often left out. We know the systems they are expected to navigate. And we know this moment will shape far more than the next generation of technology.

The choices we make now – where we deploy our most powerful tools, who we design for, and whether we use innovation to concentrate opportunity or expand it – will help define the future of our country for the next 250 years.

If we get it right, we will build a government that does not simply process people, but shifts the power to the people it was built to serve.

That is a future worth building toward.