Matt Collier
‘You Need to Understand These Problems as Socio-technical Problems:’ Matt Collier on the Importance of Cross-Disciplinary Thinking in Digital Transformation
| Matt Collier was a Digital Service Expert at the US Digital Service in 2015. Prior, he was Director of Social and Public Sector Practice at the design firm LUMA Institute. Before that, Matt was a Senior Advisor at both the Office of Personnel Management and the Office of Management and Budget, focused on innovation and IT initiatives. |
As a Senior Advisor at both the Office of Personnel Management and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the early and mid 2010s, Matt Collier helped fit together the puzzle pieces that would become the US Digital Service. He worked across a number of projects that catalyzed USDS, including the COOL Initiative, the White House Innovation Cohort, an OPM innovation lab, and the Presidential Innovation Fellowship.
Matt likens the years preceding USDS to Charles Darwin’s “warm pond” — an environment where new entities at the intersection of government and technology were rapidly born and evolved.
Below, Matt discusses how non-technical staff were sometimes undervalued at USDS, and the career civil servants who make government tick — but rarely get the recognition they deserve.
Full interview coming soon.