Derek Alton & The Unglamorous Revolutionaries

While politicians debate what government should do, a global network of "civic punks" is quietly figuring out how to make it actually work

Government innovation suffers from a branding problem. Mention public-sector reform at a dinner party and watch eyes glaze over faster than a clerk processing forms. Yet while political theatre captivates the masses, a more consequential drama unfolds in the unglamorous machinery of state: the work of making government function in the 21st century.

Derek Alton, a veteran of Canada's digital transformation efforts and soon-to-be globe-trotting documentarian of government innovation, calls these reformers "civic punks". The label captures something essential about their mission. Like the musical movement, they are rebelling against established systems, but with a crucial difference: their rebellion aims to fix, not destroy. Where politicians argue about what government should do, civic punks obsess over how it should do it.

This distinction matters more than it might appear. As digital government influencer Jennifer Palikka argues, modern governments remain 19th-century institutions wielding 20th-century tools against 21st-century problems: the machinery has not kept pace with society's needs. To answer this, civil servants in every country are building platforms that answer today’s problems—not through grand political pronouncements, but through experimentation and decisions that impact communities at all levels. 

A good example of this is in digital identity work. Though imperfect, the Aadhaar digital identity system in India established that best practice for public sector digital identity is to share the minimum amount of information necessary to establish an identity. That’s efficient, because it achieves the customer’s need to establish their identity without having to deal with any extraneous data. This is the inverse of the private sector, where a maximum of customer data is vacuumed up whenever possible, since possessing more customer data achieves the company’s need of understanding customers better in order further deepen the company-customer relationship. Neither motivation is inherently wrong; they are simply opposite of each other. But this is radical work, as is any work that goes against the prevailing currents, and it is done far from political spotlights and without fanfare.

Two other examples come from the US and from South Africa. In the US, a geographic information systems specialist suggested making emergency supply tents a uniform color so satellites could map them quickly during disasters—a simple idea that likely saved lives. In South Africa, officials grapple with youth unemployment at scales unimaginable in wealthy nations, experimenting with approaches that defy conventional wisdom. 

What unites these disparate efforts is their practitioners' motivations. Unlike their private-sector counterparts, civic punks optimize for community benefit rather than profit. Government, at its best, creates the conditions for society to flourish—stable laws, enabling infrastructure, safety nets for the vulnerable. Economist Mariana Mazzucato notes that governments often pioneer innovations before market viability is clear, creating sandboxes where private enterprise later thrives. This risk-taking rarely garners recognition.

The greatest obstacle these reformers face may be invisibility. YouTube overflows with content on every conceivable niche, yet public-sector innovation—which employs more people than any other sector globally—remains largely undocumented. Apolitical, a decade-old platform connecting 12,000 public servants in forums on artificial intelligence and other topics, represents one attempt to fill this void. But the knowledge-sharing remains largely within the sector itself.

This matters because government quality determines societal health more surely than most political outcomes. Every country, no matter how fractured, maintains some form of government at multiple levels. Experimentation abounds, from municipal initiatives to national programs. Yet public servants, unlike their entrepreneurial cousins, rarely advertise their successes. The civic punks labor in obscurity.

Perhaps that is fitting. True punks never sought mainstream acceptance. But as challenges from climate change to digital governance demand ever more sophisticated state capacity, the work of making government machinery function grows only more urgent. The political debates will rage on, as they should. But someone must ensure the mechanisms exist to enact whatever policies emerge. It’s both Derek and Ishmael Interactive’s opinions that those someones deserve rather more attention than they receive.

What we’re into this week

Scott: 

Derek made me remember this 12-year-old video made by YouTuber Zefrank focusing on how technical innovation essentially democratized taste and culture, in opposition to hundreds of years of monopolization by the well-funded. I feel like the same is happening now with the civil service: with the adoption of digital front doors and Agile methodologies, average civil servants can experiment more quickly than ever before.  

Aaron: 

Okay, “Yes, and…” moment incoming. What about when technology doesn’t actually deliver on the hype? There are more and more articles coming out about how technologies like AI just aren’t all they were hyped to be, like software engineer Mike Judge’s September 2025 article, Where's the Shovelware? Why AI Coding Claims Don't Add Up. I think there’s a lot of good in technological innovation, adoption, and experimentation, but we have to go with the evidence. Sometimes, the shiny new tool is good but it’s not great. 

Ana: 

Yes! Exactly. Which reminds me of Jim Collins’ classic business book, Good to Great, which is not about technology exactly but is about adoption and evidence. The issue when people in any working context either simply follow the next big thing because of the hype or refuse to follow the next big thing because change is hard. Neither is the right path: you have to innovate, but you also have to follow the evidence, even if you don’t really like it. 

Aaron: 

Which reminds me of Change Management expert Monica Suber-Duffy’s CX Pod interview, right at the beginning of the pod back in March! She always used to tell us that “change registers as pain in the brain.” 

Ana:

Yes! Ah, Monica: such a gift. We never would have gotten EDX [our former agency, the General Services Administration’s Enterprise Digital Experience initiative] off the ground without her. So good. 

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Credits

Guest: Derek Alton
Interviewer: Aaron Myers
Producer: Ana Monroe
Text: A Adams
Artwork: A Lady Writing c. 1665 Johannes Vermeer. Via the National Gallery. Why this artwork: Vermeer’s use of the new invention of the clear lens allowed him to see detail in ways that were previously impossible to painters. He unified mastery in his craft with a use of technology to improve it, just as Alton’s civic punks seek to.