What I do
I provide short- and long-term hands-on and advisory support to public sector executives, senior officials, and other institutional leaders grappling with how to deliver on their mandates and build public trust in their governments' systems and services. The work spans technology, organizational, structural, and cultural assessment and change to improve practices and outcomes; tech capacity-building, procurement, and governance advice and review; crash courses in starting, building, and improving digital service teams; and delivery crisis simulation and readiness.
Hi
I'm Aaron Snow. I built and led digital service teams for two governments. In 2014 I co-founded and then led 18F, the US government's in-house technology and design consultancy, and helped create and was the first Deputy Commissioner of the Technology Transformation Service. From 2018-2021 I was the first CEO of the Government of Canada's Canadian Digital Service.
I spent last year as a Principal Advisor for AWS, helping senior executives in governments around the world, including South Africa, Japan, and Canada, on their digital service journeys. Before that, I spent three years as a Faculty Fellow at the Georgetown University Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation, and six months as its interim Executive Director. I'm currently on the eGov DIGIT Governance Council, the FWD50 Advisory Board, and the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Public Code North America.
I got my start working on government technology in 2013 as a Presidential Innovation Fellow. Before entering government service, I developed software and managed product development for small and large enterprises, including Microsoft, and co-founded Daring Software, building the back-end for its flagship Arro shopping app.
I've posted a few articles on my personal website.
Current projects include helping a national government's digital agency through the World Bank, and advising a U.S. grantmaking NGO.
A little DPI fun
On the side, I've been using AI coding tools to see how quickly and easily a small working app can come together, from idea to something real people can use, with just a few Internet LEGOs to generate content and enable payment processing and physical mail. Call it DPI: Dadjoke Public Infrastructure.
Pun & Post — a dad joke, mailed as a real postcard.
Pick a joke, address it to someone who deserves it, and it gets printed and mailed as an actual postcard. A weekend-scale experiment, not a serious venture — but the payments and the mail are both real.