The Internet began as a government project. So why has government fallen so far behind?

In the 1970s, the Internet was primarily a project of the US military. Large businesses adopted the technology later, and ordinary consumers didn't get access until the 1990s. For much of the 20th Century, that pattern was the norm: The government could often use its vast resources to develop cutting-edge technologies that were only later adapted to civilian use. But that trend is starting to reverse itself, according to Aaron Levie, chief executive of the cloud storage company Box.

Today, cutting-edge technologies are often developed first for consumer products and then only gradually adopted by governments. “One thing that government can take from the private sector is the idea that the customer is always right,” said former DC mayor Adrian Fenty, now an adviser at Andreessen Horowitz. Technologies like crowdsourcing and crowdfunding, he noted, offer tools for analyzing citizens in the same way a company analyzes its core customers. Governments at all levels are coming around on moving files and processes to the cloud, but that’s just the first step, Levie said. Now that the foundation is in place, governments have to think about how best to use that tech to collaborate and make things better for citizens.