Today I participated in a fascinating conversation hosted by MySociety on the topic of public-private partnerships in civic tech. Civic tech practitioners discussed the challenges they face when trying to work with government, including the mismatch between agile design processes and government budgeting and policy cycles, the inflexibility of government approval processes and departmental silos, and dated and overly onerous public procurement processes. For my part, I brought to the conversation an appreciation for the historical patterns that predated and set the stage for dysfunctional public-private partnerships in the tech space. I also laid out a series of promising research avenues that will help us improve how governments and civic technologists partner going forward.