The Consequences of Leaving Tech to the Private Sector

Paris Marx is joined by Rosie Collington to discuss the consequences of outsourcing tech to the private sector, how it causes governments to lose important capacities to serve the public, and how the push for open government data empowered large tech firms.

Rosie Collington is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at University College London. She’s also the co-author of The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens Our Businesses, Infantilizes our Governments and Warps our Economies with Mariana Mazzucato. You can follow Rosie on Twitter at @RosieCollingto.

• Rosie wrote a paper called “Disrupting the Welfare State? Digitalisation and the Retrenchment of Public Sector Capacity” for New Political Economy, and a report calling “Digital Public Assets” for Common Wealth.
• Palantir has a massive and controversial contract with the NHS. That hasn’t stopped Peter Thiel from criticizing the UK’s public healthcare system.
• Mar Hicks wrote about the masculinization of the computer workforce in Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing.

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• The Gilded Rage of Tech Billionaires w/ Jacob Silverman
• Palantir is Thriving Under Trump w/ Caroline Haskins
• The New Military Industry Complex w/ Sam Biddle