Just as roads and bridges are designed, built, and maintained by private companies, policy experts, and public departments of transportation, there is increasing consensus that certain layers of digital public infrastructure such as digital identity, payments, and data exchange should be administered by institutions that leverage the private sector but are also accountable to the public. Differences in technology talent and capacity are not endemic to the private sector or public sector: they are a failure of our public institutions to invest in incentives for civic technologists to work in the public interest.