The GovNavigators Show
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We hope to enlighten and enliven your week with news and insightful, entertaining guests all on the topic of government management.
Check out more at www.govnavigators.com
The GovNavigators Show
John Bernard Takes America’s Pulse: Building a Direct Line Between Citizens and Their Elected Officials
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Special thanks to Allocore for supporting this episode.
Ensuring politicians remain accountable to those who vote for them is no easy feat, but our guest this episode may have the solution. On this episode of the GovNavigators Show, Robert and Adam try not to have too much fun talking with John Bernard, Founder, President, and CEO of America’s Pulse, as he takes us through his project to measure state performance and connect citizens’ priorities directly to their elected officials. Plus, learn how America’s Pulse is building a direct-input democracy that extends beyond elections, and how you can use it to make your voice heard.
Show Notes
- Allocore.com
- Washington Post: Divers recover a bottle of Guinness from a 162-year-old shipwreck
- OMB: TikTok Memo M-26-17
- White House: Expanding Capabilities to Combat Transnational Cyber-Enabled Crime
- Nextgov/FCW: Palantir calls on GSA to withdraw draft AI acquisition rule
- Washington Technology: Palantir’s no-bid pipeline just got bigger
- Treasury: FinCEN Permanently Ends Beneficial Ownership Reporting Requirements for Millions of Small Business Owners
- Amazon: Government That Works: The Results Revolution in the States
- Amazon: Business at the Speed of Now
- America’s Pulse: Americaspulse.org
- Harvard University: The 3.5% rule
What’s on the GovNavigators’ radar?
August 20th
August 24th
- A Hole in One with ACT-IAC, Leesburg, VA
August 26th-27th
August 27th
- The MeriTalk Mission Room on Agentic AI and the New Federal Workflow, Washington, D.C.
August 27th
- Potomac Officers Club 2026 Navy Summit, Falls Church, VA
Welcome everyone to the Gov Navigator Show, a government-focused program that won't make you seasick. We're the Gov Navigators. I'm Robert Check. And I'm Adam Hughes. We hope to enlighten and enliven your week with news and insightful entertaining guests, all on the topic of government management.
SPEAKER_02Enjoy today's episode of Gov Navigators, brought to you by the creative geniuses behind the award-winning podcast Fedheads. So, Adam, it was kind of a slow week. It felt a little slower. But it started on a high note. Divers recovered a bottle of Guinness from a 162-year-old shipwreck in the English Channel.
SPEAKER_01I was really hoping we were going to start with this. Because I just fascinated by this story.
SPEAKER_02I mean, you know it's going to be a good week when that's how it starts.
SPEAKER_01They're going to try to see if it's still consumable. Would you have some? I mean, well, does the bear shit in the woods say? That's right. And there's more down there. They have unopened cases. So they think they can have more that wasn't destroyed in the shipwreck.
SPEAKER_02I think we've got something for the next government happier.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I think we need to look into this for client gifts. And your client gifts, you get a vintage bottle of Guinness. Perfect.
SPEAKER_02But seriously, folks, TikToks now free and clear for federal agencies.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I got a bone to pick here.
SPEAKER_02How will that impact productivity? Is that what you were going to do? You were going to bring it up.
SPEAKER_01Now that I can climb up on my own soapbox. So we couldn't use this forever because it was a national security threat. And this is not a Trump administration thing. The Biden administration agreed. And then President Trump came in and was like, well, we're going to sell the company, we'll get it to work, we'll work around, blah, blah, blah. Kept asking for extensions, extensions, extensions. And then everyone kind of forgot about it. And then they just slipped this little memo out that's like, eh, screw it. Who cares? Go ahead. Use TikTok. The main reason I have a bone to pick about this is because the federal government's stance against TikTok is one of the main reasons I've been able to get my kids to not get TikTok. So I know they don't listen to this podcast, but don't tell them as you see them, because then they're going to want to get it.
SPEAKER_02I know we don't like to do this because we don't want to bore our listeners too much, but I'd like to read the memo in full. Please give me that liberty. The floor is yours. Pursuant to the opinion of the Office of Legal Counsel issued July 17, 2026. TikTok's no longer a covered application for purposes of the No TikTok on Government Devices Act. TikTok is no longer a covered application for purposes of the No TikTok on Government Devices Act. Well, what is? Accordingly, OMV Memorandum M2313 is rescinded. TikTok may be used on government devices. It might be the shortest OMV memo of all time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we got to get the uh governav intern on that, do some research, see if it is the shortest of all time.
SPEAKER_02Riley, get on its stat. Actually, I think Ted Calc might be the guy to run that. We should test that through his new system.
SPEAKER_01With his new AI tool. Yes, we should. Other, maybe more major government management stories. There's a new Cyber EO that was released.
SPEAKER_02By the way. You know what it says? It authorizes private American companies to conduct offensive cyber operations against foreign criminal groups on the government's path. We have a new business line. Government.
SPEAKER_01We're gonna need to do a little more research before we wade in too deep on that one. Riley, get on that. There's a number of stories out about Palantir. Palantir yelling at GSA to take their AI rule down. Most contractors ask for some revisions, some tweaks. Palantir's like, absolutely not. We don't like playing by rules. You have to just scrap this.
SPEAKER_02How about the Department of Defense saying spend more? Don't just stand there spend more on Palantir.
SPEAKER_01On Palantir, specifically. And don't worry about you know those pesky acquisition rules. Those can't matter for anything. Yeah. So two big stories on Palantir and somewhat related. They're like, we want to do what we want to do and we want to take all the money.
SPEAKER_02Tinge of jealousy.
SPEAKER_01Well, and then there's one other thing. It's just a tinge. Just I mean, if you look at the market cap of GovNavigators and the market cap of Palantir, it's like a 6-7 situation.
SPEAKER_02They could just swoop in and buy us and quiet us down.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so you don't hear from us by next week. You know something happened. But you had mentioned, too, that there's this update on this FenCIN rule.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Another development that impacts GovNavigators, the requirement to file beneficial ownership reports with FinCEN has been withdrawn. So we don't have to disclose the vast extent of our foreign ownership.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So this to be clear for those that don't know, this is something that Congress passed a while ago to try to understand how terrorists are financed. So just to be clear, we don't are not involved in that in any way. But before they postpone this stupid rule, I filled out all this paperwork as one part of that one. Yeah. And then they're just like, oh, we're gonna delay, we're gonna delay. Actually, never mind. Don't worry about it. So it's off the to-do list, but that's 45 minutes of my life, I'm never gonna get back to it. What else happened? Well, not that much. I mean, I worked a full week. That's the that should have been top of the news. Breaking news.
SPEAKER_02We should have issued a press release on that as a matter of fact. Speaking of somebody who's been working real hard. I'm excited because somebody's doing the Lord's work. Let's get to it. This episode is brought to you by Alicor, which powers the technology behind public sector lending, grant, and capital deployment programs, helping agencies modernize operations, improve oversight, and better serve the public. And you can learn even more at Alicor.com.
SPEAKER_01Thanks to our friends at Alicor for sponsoring this episode of the Gov Navigator Show.
SPEAKER_02So, Adam, you know I like all of our guests equally, right?
SPEAKER_01Just like your children.
SPEAKER_02But I'm really excited to have my good friend John Bernard on today because he's someone who I genuinely like and admire. And I'm delighted we get to share his story and what he's working on with our listeners. John, welcome.
SPEAKER_00Hey, thank you. And I do want to comment when I listen to your podcast, you guys have way too much fun. So let's try to amp it down.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Okay. We will try to make this the most boring episode we've recorded today. Challenge accepted.
SPEAKER_01Challenge accepted. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You guys said that in unison.
SPEAKER_01Disturbing. We wear the same shirt to the office sometimes, too. It's not great.
SPEAKER_02I could go on and on about you, John. You are a gadfly of government performance. Governors follow every word that you utter. You wrote the book Government That Works, the Results, Revolution in the States, and Business at the Speed of Now. You've been working on improving government efficiency for decades. So what's the problem? No. Share a little bit more about your background and how you've come to this work and what you're working on today.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I really got into this management stuff because my background is journalism. I ended up running a supercomputer manufacturing plant. What that had to do with journalism, I still don't know. And uh worked for a big insurance company as an executive. But along the way, early on, I got into this thing called lean. And lean is about taking the waste out of everything we do. But what captured my attention was the fact that we didn't think of lean as a system of management. We saw it as process improvement activities. So I started thinking, what if we applied this to the work of management? Because management provides the greatest source of waste possible. Disorganized, can't mobilize the talent, no measurements of accountability. So management in general is a mess, except in really well-run companies. So I had a chance to do this in the private sector at companies like Nike and Baxter Healthcare and even Arthur Anderson in the day, they were one of my clients.
SPEAKER_01That's great. So, John, talk a little bit about your current efforts. And we were chatting a little bit before we started recording. So we'll get into some of those details too. Honestly, it would be great for you to continue comparing how we organized elections at the beginning of the country 250 years ago and how we do it now, and how little progress and how poorly we did compared to that. But tell us a little bit about America's pulse and what that is and what you've been working on.
SPEAKER_00Sure. So what we talked about early on, I always think of James T. Kirk in Star Trek as my idol. And it was interesting, even though he's way ahead in the future, he acts like he's from the 50s, always looking for a fight. That's kind of how elections work today. We're still doing it the way we did it way back when, based on rumors and whether we like someone or want to go have a beer. We think that person's approachable. There's absolutely no connection between what they actually get done. And by the way, after we elect them, they go off and they don't listen to us anymore. Our voice is dim and dull. And now they have all these other voices they have to listen to until the election cycle comes. So what we're really working on is creating a, we call it direct input democracy, really raising democracy to a level where we as citizens have a lot more influence and power over those that we vote for to get them to actually get stuff done that matters to us. And so as you start to look at that, the only source of power there is in government is one thing, getting elected. So unless you insert the citizen's voice in between the election and them getting in office where they have power, if we don't put ourselves right in the middle of that, we have no power. It's just talk. And that's why you see today protests and petitions and all these things that go on to what avail? It's not clear, but this is going to stick us right in the middle between those we elect and what they get done and whether or not we vote for them.
SPEAKER_02So we're talking about America's pulse. This is an effort that you've launched to basically compare performance across states in a number of important variables. Tell us about the site and how you expect people to use it.
SPEAKER_00Sure. Go to www.america's pulse.org. There you can get the link to the site because it's actually functions as an app. And what you do is you go look at measures, you look at your state's measures, and when you sign up, by the way, you get wired to every elected official at the state and federal level. That means you're directly connected. So as you look at these 54 dimensions of our lives, I've worked with governors for years. Every governor has always said these are the measures that people really care about, you know, public safety and environment and taxes and all of those things. And then what you do is as you're looking at the measures and you can see how you rank in the nation and what the trend is and all that, you simply put a heart by the ones you care about. And then you go to your page, my gov page, and you drag to the top the things that are most important to you. Once you've done that, that automatically aggregates every one of your elected officials from all the other citizens who elect that person. Guess what? They now have an agenda from the citizens of what they want them to work on and a means to measure whether or not they actually do anything with it.
SPEAKER_01So you're trying to design this not only to inform the citizenry, but also to inform the elected officials to create a conversation around what's important and whether it's working.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I would go beyond a conversation. It really is what we want them to do for us. This is what we are saying. Not only am I going to elect you, Adam, but I want you, not you necessarily. I don't know that I'd vote for you. I haven't had doer yet. No, what exactly?
SPEAKER_01And you're wise man for that for sure.
SPEAKER_00So what I want to do is say, Adam, these are the things that are dear to me and I think we need to fix. Could be homelessness, could be healthcare access, whatever. These are the things that matter. I want you to work on them. You and I now have a connection. We can communicate with each other. You can talk about that issue. We're going to track legislation and news on that issue so that you're going to be able to see are they actually working on it? Now, when they go to the legislature, they have almost no say over what their agenda is. And so we're going to give them that agenda.
SPEAKER_02So, can you talk a little bit more about some of the variables that you tracked? You call them vital signs. What are the things that you think are most important to track as far as government performance is concerned?
SPEAKER_00Well, you have to begin with what is tracked, because you can't make these measures up. There's a lot of issues with fake facts. These are facts that have been gathered for years. So it's everything from public safety issues like traffic fatalities, property crimes, general crimes, and overall things like the environment spaces in, let's see, we've got economy where it's jobs, how many jobs are being created? What are the average wages in your state? Is there access to health care? How healthy is your state? What's the obesity level? So they're really almost a walk across the spectrum of things that matter in life and how we're doing. Government plays a significant role in all of these issues.
SPEAKER_01I might be jumping ahead too far here and let me know if I am. But what's the response been from elected officials about the work that you've been doing? Are they excited to see this? To me, part of it is sort of like, God, this kind of feels like something the government should be doing directly. And they do to some extent this better and worse in different areas, right? Here's the data about how we're performing, and you let us know if you think we're doing a good job. But we know that's not happening. So the site you've created is delightful, by the way. So we'll put the link in the show notes too, but people should go and check it out. But talk more about the elected officials and folks working and even the staff working in government and the feedback that you've gotten from them about what you've put together.
SPEAKER_00So one of the realities is we've confused transparency with accountability. So we have 350,000 publicly available data sets from government today, and we have zero incremental accountability. So that's why we're trying to make these right in plain sight. I don't expect, Adam, that people in elected office are gonna come running. I think they'll be resistant to it, and we will track and make visible who is engaging in it. I've talked to many elected officials who, to my face, say they love the idea. One who said I went to the state legislature and found out that my agenda that I spoke about when I campaigned was not even in the conversation because the agenda was determined by the party leaders, not by the citizens. And so I think there's a piece of it that's probably the most appealing to elected officials is to be freed from the bonds of everyone else who thinks their voice is more important than us, the citizens. So I think that's where the opportunity will be. Nonetheless, I do expect there's 7,962 elected lawmakers in the country. And we're shooting ultimately to get 80% of them. And I think it'll be a bit of a battle. Second question I didn't answer about people in the agencies who are tied up in this craziness that comes from the legislature. The average state in the U.S. produces about 500 new laws every year, in addition to the 500 from last year and the 500 from the year before. So, where do all these needs come from? They're not coming from citizens, they're coming from other sources. Those get imposed upon the agencies, they have to spend money, create regulations, and all the things that go with that. And you you know how much fun that is.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. Well, and then if you take out the ones that are naming courthouses and other public spaces after people, it probably goes down significantly, but not enough to make it something that's something that humans can just keep up with, right? Yeah, totally.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and to just make one other comment that made me think of is it's an astonishing thing to be on a team and be able to put a point on the scoreboard. You know, if you've ever been on a team in a collective effort to move the needle, it gives you all the energy in the world to move the needle again and the next needle and the next needle. In the absence of that, people go to work for government thinking they're going to make a difference. And guess what they discovered? Good luck with that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So I'm on the site now, looking at the uh Commonwealth of Virginia, our home state. You break it down by economy, education, environment, government efficiency, health, our children, public safety, and vulnerable volumes. Yeah. Red, yellow, green is used extensively, which warms my heart. But you also rank where the state is in various variables. So for instance, in every measure is ranked against the other states. Yeah. If we're in homelessness, we're number three out of 50. So we're better than 65% of the state. But if you look at K through eight testing, we're 27th. So we're worse in that regard. And our infant mortality rate likewise is not as good as half the nation's.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and who knew that?
SPEAKER_02Yep. There is no other source for this kind of data. Can you talk a little bit about your data sources and whether we have consistent reliability across all of these metrics?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we've been very picky about what data we use. These have to be data that is required by law, is defined in law. A good example was recidivism. We don't have recidivism in there because states don't measure it consistently. So it's not apples to apples. All of this data is validated. The vast majority of it is watched by third parties and the check and balance part that happens from the public side of things. But this is data that we feel is very solid, has been reported generally for more than 20 years and has not been tampered with in recent times.
SPEAKER_01You've got some trend graphs, you've got some historical data too. This is something you're upkeeping on an ongoing basis. Yep. How much work was it to get to the point where you have good data across a number of years previous? Is that consistent across these measures? Are you going measure by measure, depending on the quality of the data set and how long it's been tracked and that sort of thing? How big is the data cleansing problem, I guess, is my question.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I have a gentleman, our entire team is all volunteer. Nobody's been paid to build any of this. And I have a PhD data scientist who, when he joined us, went back through everything and purged and validated and created automatic feeds and all this stuff. So the data has been really cleansed, but we're about 18 months into building this. And the data has been by far the most challenging part to feel that because we believe if the data is not right, then we're not credible. And credibility is the platform we have to be built on.
SPEAKER_02Can you talk about your governance and our friends who are helping you lead this effort?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, including my friend Robert Shea.
SPEAKER_02Not that shameless a plug.
SPEAKER_00I was gonna say we don't all have the best of friends, but I do. So did I recover? Yeah. So the really most important thing is that we have two governors who are highly respected from opposing parties. So Martin O'Malley, who most of the people in the measurement world know who he is and what he's all about. He's co-chair with Doug Ducey, who is the governor of Arizona. I had the pleasure of working with both of them in my previous life. And they are honorable men who are committed to actually making sure government really does work. And they've come together. They had never met. We met a couple months ago in Phoenix for the first time, and they really hit it off. And they both, during their times as governor, were chairs of their governor's association, so respected by others. And they're going to be the spokespeople as we roll this out to say the thing that they genuinely believe in that they talk about all the time is that there's far more that unites us than divides us. And we as a nation focus on what divides us. Not that I think that's intentional, creating polarity. I don't think that's intentional at all. That's meant to be a joke. And what they're saying is why don't we work on the things that we agree on, the things we want to fix together? And why don't we figure out who's good at it and figure out how they're doing it and maybe we could learn from them.
SPEAKER_01John, you just mentioned kind of the rollout and your future plans. Talk a little bit about what. you've got coming up or what you're hoping to accomplish, say, in the next one to three years with this project. Just to be clear too, what you've already created is quite remarkable in a short amount of time with volunteers. So you could also say, no, this is it. People should go use it because you might have other things that you want to work on. But tell us a little about if you've got some plans for what you want to do next with it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So what's critical if you understand Dr. Erica Chenowith's work at Harvard is the tipping point in this space is 3.5%. So what that means is if we can get upwards of seven, seven and a half million people, this actually becomes a driver. Now, her studies aren't directly what we're doing, but they show that movements when they get to 3.5% of the population become the driver. They become the driving dynamic. So our target is to get to that number in the next 18 months and then to go to 20 in the two years following that. And that way we really do have an open channel between legislators, the people who make our laws and citizens where they're actually talking to each other, working together on priorities, sharing stories. So we think that that is going to be really a critical part of it. Did I answer your whole question?
SPEAKER_01Yeah I think understanding what does success look like in these instances and that can take on a variety of views and lenses to understand that. I mean I feel like that's an ambitious goal. I love it.
SPEAKER_02I love that you're asking the measurement guy a measurement question. Yeah. But I mean I think based on our numbers you might be at critical mass just after this episode goes live.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah. Yeah I'll let you know how that goes. Okay. Because you might guess we actually do measure it. We have two 15-minute check-ins a week and one hour meeting a week where we do more strategy, but we're watching the numbers all the time. And I'll tell you they're not very big yet, but we haven't launched this has all been word of mouth. Our hope right now the biggest challenge is to get funding because this is now a marketing effort. So we have to get social media out there. We've got to get our governors on television programs. And if we do that I think people will welcome the opportunity for their voices to be heard.
SPEAKER_02Well we're excited about it. Congratulations on what you've accomplished so far. Thanks for spending time with us. Thanks for your lifetime of contributions to make government work better for people. And we're proud to be a part of your effort and we'll do whatever we can to make it successful.
SPEAKER_00Thank you guys. I admire what you do and I would like to have more fun with you anytime we have the chance. Excellent. Maybe it'll involve a beer or something. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Just like you said at the top challenge accepted.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Thank you gentlemen.
SPEAKER_01Thanks to well if we can get John up to what did he say three and a half million percent of I think the nation. Oh now we're like seven yeah so let's see what we can do. Maybe set a goal by the end of the year and we'll get him up there.
SPEAKER_02I think we're done after this episode. If everyone listening goes and signs up right now for America's Pulse then I think we're done.
SPEAKER_01It is a cool website.
SPEAKER_02I was playing around with it before we did the recording so every you get a free 162 year bottle of Kindle consume at your own risk.
SPEAKER_01It's validation which will be sketchy that's right and what there's nothing really going on this week right I mean we're in the middle of the doldrums of August in Washington DC Yeah sadly having celebrated your first full week in the office for a while you'll be away again. You know I don't schedule the golf trips Robert I just go you're blameless. It sounds like you're like a victim I have no involvement whatsoever.
SPEAKER_02Okay it's a late week but I noticed that Kirasoft AWS have on August 20th a Fed Tech innovation summit.
SPEAKER_01Yep speaking of golf ActIC has their golf outing on August 24th in a week so I haven't checked to see if that's closed or not but if you need an excuse to get out of the office on a Monday you should sign up. I'll be there you need an excuse and also next week a little more than a week away AFSIA and INSA have their intelligence and national security summit in Rockville Maryland two days August 26th and 27th and I will also be there at that so two opportunities to hang out with me the week of the 24th.
SPEAKER_02Our friends at Meritoc have an agentic AI in the new federal workflow session on August 27th.
SPEAKER_01Yeah so a lot we're getting back into the fall fallish weather so lots of stuff picking up Potomac officers club also has their 2026 Navy summit on the 27th.
SPEAKER_02So keep you busy if you want it. If you'd like yeah if you talk you can avoid it and stay near man cave or girl cave whatever. Have a great week hey thanks again to our friends at Alicor. I think we can afford now to to go another couple of weeks.
SPEAKER_01Yeah the podcast will continue thanks to the lovely people over at Alicor. Make sure you go to Alicor.com and check out what they're doing. They're working hard every day they're improving government and we appreciate them. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Gov Navigator Show brought to you by GovNavigators. We sure hope you enjoyed it and learned something in the process. And didn't get seasick right of course. If you want to know more about us and what we're up to please follow us on social media or visit govnavigators.com. Ahoy