
I’ve Joined the White House’s U.S. Digital Service - gmays
http://nacin.com/2015/03/29/us-digital-service/
======
TheMagicHorsey
A bunch of smart Silicon Valley hackers cannot fix what is wrong with
government IT. Government IT problems stem from the fact that government IT
contracts are worth Billions, and they are doled out through privileged
networks of insiders.

There are plenty of smart companies in America that can fix America's IT
problems if they are paid to do so. There is no political will to do so. That
is why companies you never heard of come up again and again as subcontractors
for things like Healthcare.gov

Believe it or not, there are some very smart people working in government.
They actually don't need us in Silicon Valley to tell them how to do stuff.
They know what they could do with the latest technology. They are not allowed
to do so because of bureaucracy.

~~~
brandonb
"There is no political will to do so."

That was true a couple of years ago, but healthcare.gov was a wakeup call, and
everybody from the president on down takes reforming government IT seriously.

I was part of the healthcare.gov "tech surge" and I can tell you firsthand
that the government is willing to change. In the last year, the healthcare.gov
UI was streamlined from 76 to 16 screens for the average user. Large parts of
the site now run on AWS and more is moving. The most problematic individual
component, the login system, was rewritten from scratch with an API-
compatible, drop-in replacement which now serves 100% of traffic. And this has
been done within the same agency responsible for the original site. It is not
a story of "smart hackers" parachuting in and wresting control away from
government bureaucrats, but rather partnering with the agencies and creating
reform from within.

USDS itself, although started by the White House, now has bipartisan support
and a real budget to grow. Although you are right that there are powerful
entrenched interests in the beltway, the political will to change is there,
and now the challenge is to recruit people like Andrew to seize the
opportunity.

~~~
_asummers
> Large parts of the site now run on AWS and more is moving

I'm curious what, if any, security obstacles you faced with this, especially
considering HIPAA and all that.

~~~
brandonb
Short answer: no real security issues. AWS itself runs everything from credit
card processors to hospital software, they have great documentation on how to
design your system so that you comply with the major certifications like
HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and FedRAMP:
[http://aws.amazon.com/compliance/](http://aws.amazon.com/compliance/)
[http://aws.amazon.com/compliance/fedramp-
faqs/](http://aws.amazon.com/compliance/fedramp-faqs/)

Our security audit was apparently the first one in years to pass with no "high
findings" (high-priority security issues that must be fixed before the system
is approved to go live).

The main barrier we ran into was that although AWS was already FedRAMP-
certified, it had not gone through CMS's own internal security review process,
which requires hundreds of pages of additional documentation and an audit of
the code, team, and penetration testing of the live system. At the end of that
process, you get an Authority to Operate, or ATO, and that's what every site
in the government legally must have in order to launch.

You can get a sense of how much paperwork is involved here:
[http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-
Systems/CMS-...](http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/CMS-
Information-Technology/InformationSecurity/downloads/ATO_Package_Guide.PDF)

Navigating this ATO process was the single largest roadblock in developing the
various parts of healthcare.gov 2.0. It meant that what we expected to take
two months ended up taking more like eight.

The good news is that once we had gotten an ATO for AWS [1], any project
within CMS--not just healthcare.gov--could start using AWS. [2] And within
weeks of the ATO, we started hearing about other groups building their new
projects on AWS, including Accenture, who's now the primary healthcare.gov
contractor.

And that also means that if a startup wants to work with CMS, rather than the
typical set of DC contractors, now they can use AWS too and have one fewer
barrier keeping them out of the system.

[1] as a small technical point, we split the ATO into "infrastructure" and
"application" portions so that the infrastructure (AWS) portion could be
reused.

[2] If you're wondering why it matters that the government can use AWS, it's
because most data centers that cater to the government are really terrible. In
the initial data center used for healthcare.gov, the way you provisioned a new
server was to send a word document to a sales representative, listing the unix
packages you want installed, and then a few weeks later they would give you a
virtual machine which may or may not have what you asked for. You can't be
agile at all in that type of environment, and you certainly can't do DevOps
well because you can't script anything.

~~~
ckozlowski
I'm seconding everything said here.

I recently finished a project whereby it took over a year, from kickoff to
handoff to deploy two blade servers.

Government IT is often extraordinarily hamstrung in the types of solutions it
can deploy due to mandatory requirements to use certain security software, or
employ specific policies. [1] While those policies come with a framework for
adapting them to the needs of an environment, most don't understand them, and
so you're often stuck with a computing environment that any DevOps engineer
would find to be practically broken. There's an enormous amount of manual
steps and needless shuffling between systems to accomplish the most
rudimentary of tasks.

This enormous inefficiency is accepted as being inevitable. Because simple
tasks take so long, and making them more efficient would require enormous
effort (such getting exceptions to policies approved), the issue is often
solved by adding more people. Contractors make their money through staffing,
so if you can show that you can get more done with more people, then it can be
a good sell. Costs, however, go up. This is where your overruns come from.

(Regarding ATOs, that sounds like the "Type" vs. "Site" accreditations I'm
familiar with.)

------
mattdeboard
I am really not clear on the structure of the "US Digital Service."

The phrase "US Digital Service" makes it sound like a "reified" civil service
organization in its own right. There is a USDS Headquarters, which seems to
support this notion.

In the copy[1], however, it says that the bulk of the work is done by "agency
teams" which, if I'm understanding right, kind of "embed" with their assigned
gov't agency. The copy also says they're recruiting founding members for new
agency teams. The phrase "founding members" makes it sound, almost, like the
teams are independent operations but knowing the federal gov't as I do, that
can't possibly be right.

Does anyone here have any light they can cast on whether the USDS is an agency
unto itself? If not, what cabinet secretary does it fall under? I have a ton
of questions about how this works.

edit: My biggest fear with the USDS is that it can be smothered in the cradle
by the next administration. There simply doesn't seem to be enough employees
to make dissolving it -- or, maybe more likely, starving it to death budget-
wise -- a big deal.

[1] [https://www.whitehouse.gov/digital/united-states-digital-
ser...](https://www.whitehouse.gov/digital/united-states-digital-
service/story)

~~~
daveman692
Structure wise the Digital Service is made up of a headquarters team within
the White House, 18F which is an internal software development organization
within the General Services Administration, and then embedded teams growing to
be within each cabinet level agency. This creates a mixture of distributed
execution plus centralized resources to help each team as needed.

~~~
kingkilr
(I work for the Digital Service @ the VA)

This is correct. The HQ team is a part of OMB, the White House's Office of
Management and Budgest.

The agency teams can be thought of as a franchise model, we work closely with
the HQ team and the other agency teams, but we're also a for real part of the
agency we work at.

(Just realized who I was replying to, welp!)

~~~
mattdeboard
I was disappointed to find out yesterday from Jeff M. that there is no remote
position available. I hope this changes at some point in the near future.

------
eropple
So, I interviewed with the USDS. Very smart people, seemed like it'd be a fun
and challenging gig. Then I was told two weeks later that, oops, they didn't
actually have a req for the USDS at all when I had interviewed, would I like
to go work for the Department of Veteran Affairs? (No, no I would not like to
work for the Department of Veteran Affairs, the list of things I would rather
do than that is quite long and includes stapling parts of myself to other
parts of myself.)

Felt like a shady as heck bait and switch. Can't speak to the work they do,
but I was not thrilled at their hiring practices.

~~~
brandonb
I'm sorry you had a bad experience. I am sure it was not their intention to
bait and switch; I've forwarded your comment to somebody at USDS so that they
can make sure things like this don't happen anymore.

~~~
usds_hiring
This isn't a one-time thing, let me tell you about my experience. (Throwaway,
for obvious reasons.)

But first a little about me: CS degree, straight to engineering at blue-chip
tech companies, did full stack development, then moved to product management,
with a bit of project management experience jumbled in. I'm probably not the
guy you want banging out 20K LoC/day on the Linux kernel, but I am the guy who
can sketch out both the UI and the architecture of a new product, hold the big
picture in his head on the one hand and still speak intelligently to
specialists about minute details on the other hand. Fixing all the broken
systems in government sounded like a dream job at the time. I thought I was a
good fit from everything I heard.

I initially reached out to you, Brandon, around the second big round of press
that USDS got -- summer/fall 2014ish. You helpfully put me in touch with J.

J rescheduled our calls twice. It's fine, shit happens. When we did get on the
phone though, after explaining the above (with more evidence), she asked me if
I wanted to do web-dev with 18F. No, I did not want to do web-dev with 18F,
and there's very little in my background to suggest I'd be a good fit for web
development. She flat out told me she didn't think I could hack it at USDS,
but when I asked where she thought I wasn't a good fit, she backed down and
said she'd get an engineer to interview me.

Next thing I know, I get an email from H @ 18F, who I understand is a manager
there, and says that J said I wanted to speak to her. Okay, fine, I figure
what's the harm in a conversation? I respond that I'd be happy to chat.

A month goes by, no response to 2-3 emails to J (or H).

Finally J responds, so sorry, got busy, etc. Alright, fine, shit happens I
guess. The call with the engineer is set up. The engineer and I speak,
technical stuff, no phone-coding though (yay!). Seems to have gone well. I
give it a week, no sign of life, so I email: nothing. I let two more weeks go
by, email again: nothing. Two months later (by now I was just doing this for
the curiosity): nothing.

So. Maybe there's political will. Maybe they're bipartisan support. But I
doubt you're hiring the best and brightest. Because hiring the best people is
job #1 of any leadership team, and the best and brightest know that if this is
the hiring process, run by deputy directors of these organizations, with the
deputy CTO of the US cc'd on all these emails, and it's _this_ bad...well, it
can only be even worse on the inside. And all the desire to give back and
serve your country falls apart when you know that organization is going to
hamstring you when it comes to the "giving back" and "serving your country"
parts of the job description.

Oh, but what about H/18F, you're wondering? Over the course of 8 months (half
of that time radio silence), I've scheduled 5 phone calls with her, and she's
missed every single one, most of them without a courtesy email saying she'd
have to cancel before the call. It got to the point where I was scheduling
them during times I knew I'd be driving or waiting around at places because I
didn't want to waste anymore hours sitting by a phone that was unlikely to
ring.

So yeah, there was no "bait and switch" here, just the "bait and". Not that
I'm irritated by this or anything...

~~~
usds_hiring_2
This sounds pretty familiar to me as well. I have the same type of background
as you (you don't want me banging out 20k LoC/day either) and when I
interviewed with this team I got nowhere fast. I didn't get the run-around
like you, but I did get shot down pretty quickly because I didn't know some
fancy algorithm straight off the top of my head.

I'm seriously heavy into building systems in AWS, architecting solutions, and
was really excited about changing the government for the better. I never even
got a chance. :(

------
gmays
Another similar interesting gov't gig is Presidential Innovation Fellow:

\-
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Innovation_Fellows](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Innovation_Fellows)

\-
[https://www.whitehouse.gov/innovationfellows](https://www.whitehouse.gov/innovationfellows)

\- [http://www.jasonshen.com/2014/everything-wanted-know-
preside...](http://www.jasonshen.com/2014/everything-wanted-know-presidential-
innovation-fellowship-afraid-ask/)

\- [http://www.jasonshen.com/2013/a-new-adventure-working-at-
the...](http://www.jasonshen.com/2013/a-new-adventure-working-at-the-
smithsonian-as-a-presidential-innovation-fellow/)

------
Animats
Well, they've created a set of minimal-information web pages with big type and
useless clip art, using Wordpress. That's so modern.

More usefully, they're creating a large number of minor software components
and putting them on a Git server.

[https://www.govcode.org/repos](https://www.govcode.org/repos)

------
thegreatpeter
If this means the government's moving everything to Wordpress...

~~~
rjbwork
My thoughts exactly.

"Oh cool, maybe some digital natives are going to beable to bring development
practices in government into the 2010's. That would be a cool thing to be a
part of! ...Wordpress?"

/closetab

~~~
smt88
I was tempted to think the same thing, but I'd assume his work with the
government will _not_ actually involve coding.

It _will_ involve driving adoption of web technology, which WordPress has done
incredibly well.

I'd also say that WordPress has/had a rotten core of code, and it's now 11
years old. This guy has only been working on it for 5. If you inherit a code
base like that and make huge strides forward, people will still judge you
without seeing how much you've cleaned it up. So unless you look at the code
base before and after him, you can't judge his engineering skills.

~~~
nacin
Well said, thank you.

------
jacquesm
I'm pretty sure people go into government with the intention of really
changing it from the inside out, this time things _will_ be different.

The evaluation period for efforts like these should be a decade or more, that
would be a good time to review and see if things have _really_ changed and if
the change stuck or if the machine turned out to have too much inertia after
all.

------
aceperry
Great to see a lot of interest and desire to help from the tech community.
Most of what I've heard during the last few years regarding the government was
a lot of complaints and a desire to get rid of it. I'm glad that there are
people doing something positive instead of whining.

------
anthonyarroyo
Congrats! I feel like too much of what I read on here is about despair and how
TPP is going to eat us and Ted Cruz is going to steal our lunch money. Good
for you for taking a positive step.

------
nateabele
Sorry, but the lead developer of WordPress belongs in, I don't know, maybe the
office of the Press Secretary (since they're so great at marketing), but
definitely nowhere near anything anybody depends on.

------
17people
So the White House got a new intern? How is this news?

------
shit_parade
Disgusting that anyone would receive praise someone for assisting an entity
which tortures and murders.

------
praxeologist
"an open, transparent, and efficient government" is a blind alley. While the
tasks you will be doing are not criminal, you are working for criminals. You
might reject my radical statements out of hand but if you are open to why I
say this and want to know more please let me know.

~~~
smt88
Even though some of the people operating the government are criminals, the
function of government is necessary (as it is for all large human
organizations).

"Open, transparent, and efficient" may be a lofty goal, but it's still
important for civilians to get involved in moving the government toward that
goal.

Nothing is black and white. You seem to be unwilling or unable to see the gray
in your chosen area of extremism.

~~~
praxeologist
>Even though some of the people operating the government are criminals, the
function of government is necessary

History disproves that a government (geographic monopoly on arbitration and
security) is necessary for maintaining civil order. Of course, you aren't
taught this history in state education.

I'm most familiar with the polycentric legal order of medieval Iceland, which
lasted longer than the US has so far, so I will point there first.

[https://mises.org/library/medieval-iceland-and-absence-
gover...](https://mises.org/library/medieval-iceland-and-absence-government)

Medieval Ireland is similar but there's less good info. See also the Law
Merchant and Zomia.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_mercatoria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_mercatoria)

[http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/the-
undiscov...](http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/the-undiscovered-
country/)

>but it's still important for civilians to get involved in moving the
government toward that goal.

Actually, I'm quite proud that I don't vote or otherwise trouble myself with
electoral politics as a whole.

[http://voluntaryist.com/nonvoting/](http://voluntaryist.com/nonvoting/)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKANfuq_92U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKANfuq_92U)
(Myth of the Rational Voter by Caplan)

I think it's important that more people start to recognize government for the
evil that it is and build businesses that help keep money out of gov't coffers
rather than keep heading down the blind alley you suggest.

If you are an honest person, you'd now would admit you are wrong that gov't is
__necessary __. You just don 't know the history yet. Who's really the black
and white extremist here? It's okay, I'm familiar that the majority of
statists like yourself are oblivious to their Stockholm syndrome and hardened
indoctrination. (The rest may be able to see gov't for what it is but lack the
creativity to start to work toward alternate solutions.)

You seem pretty set that this gov't thing is necessary. There's at least a few
thousand abolitionists like myself ready to pioneer the land a state is
willing to cede. Let's go grey baby. Are you even open to the idea you could
be wrong?

~~~
bildung
Besides the fact that this also was quite a bloody period of Icelandic
history, the population also most probably was below 50000, which is the
census result of 1703.

If you have no population to speak of, and practically everyone is a
subsistence farmer/fisherman, and you have a population density of about one
person per square mile, then yes, you don't much coordination/government.

~~~
praxeologist
Qualify "bloody". You can say it all you want, but once the polycentric system
fell to the cultural perks and a new monopoly given to the church and chaos
ensued, the people begged the king of Denmark for a relative stability.

We're talking about many centuries before your irrelevant census point. A 2 or
20 person society is relevant on a theoretical level.

Go look on wikipedia for the earliest abolition of slavery:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_slavery_timeline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_slavery_timeline)

>1117: Slavery abolished in Iceland.

After the early rush of settlers, the need for external slaves became
unnecessary because the population eclipsed exploitable resources.

Whatever bullshit objection like small population or they are "backwards"
subsistence farmers is irrelevant to the fact that civil order was maintained
by polycentric law for 3 centuries. Could it work today? Your type won't even
allow the experiment so people are forced into schemes like seasteading or
"free cities" in Central America.

~~~
bildung
> Qualify "bloody".

Bloody as in decades of civil wars:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Sturlungs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Sturlungs)

> Whatever bullshit objection

No need for ad hominems, let your arguments speak.

> like small population or they are "backwards" subsistence farmers is
> irrelevant to the fact that civil order was maintained by polycentric law
> for 3 centuries.

Both subsistence farming (e.g. means of production that are by definition not
exhibiting division of labor) and an extremly low population density mean that
both communication and coordination between people are orders of magnitude
smaller than in complex and dense societies. That's pretty much consensus both
in macro economics and in sociology.

> Could it work today? Your type won't even allow the experiment

I'm an empirical scientist, so not exactly opposed to experimentation. Has it
occured to you that "my type" simply isn't persuaded by your argument?

~~~
praxeologist
Haha. The Age of the Sturlungs, the "bloody" era is after the early
Commonwealth I am talking about. Way to not even read my links or have a
remote clue about the topic. Look 2 up on the right list on your link for what
I am talking about.

You're complaining about what happened after people switched over to the
statist mindset you simultaneously are trapped in.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_Commonwealth](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_Commonwealth)

>Both subsistence farming (e.g. means of production that are by definition not
exhibiting division of labor) and an extremly low population density mean that
both communication and coordination between people are orders of magnitude
smaller than in complex and dense societies. That's pretty much consensus both
in macro economics and in sociology.

Seems like just another bullshit excuse for an increase in bureaucracy like OP
is joining into.

>Has it occured to you that "my type" simply isn't persuaded by your argument?

I don't care. The fact remains that we are not allowed any land to experiment
with. Say you aren't opposed to experimentation all you want but let me know
when we can experiment and I will care. Your democracy experiment will crumble
before this ever happens anyhow so whatever. Democracy was not common outside
the US pre-WW1.

~~~
bildung
> Haha. The Age of the Sturlungs, the "bloody" era is after the early
> Commonwealth I am talking about.

The Age of the Sturlungs is what Commonwealth devolved into in a relatively
short period. Are you suggesting the Age of the Sturlungs just appeared out of
nowhere?

> Seems like just another bullshit excuse for an increase in bureaucracy like
> OP is joining into.

Ok, apparently you haven't yet read much about economics. Division of labor is
a precondition for both wage labor and capital accumulation. If you have
neither wage labor nor capital accumulation, you can't have capitalism. It's
that simple. You have markets, yes, but everbody had markets for thousands of
years. Markets =/= capitalism. Your argument boils down to using a society
that is neither culturally nor demographically nor economically similar to
present day societies as a role model for present day society. Can you now see
why I'm not persuaded?

And again: Ad hominems don't help. You want to persuade the majority to try
out a grand libertarian experiment, but you get all worked up because a single
person questions your reasoning. It won't work that way.

~~~
smt88
I appreciated your comments and learned some interesting things from them. I
also admire your ability to have an argument without letting it drift toward
becoming personal. I wish there were more people online who could do that.

Unfortunately, I think you're feeding a troll at this point. No amount of
logic or reason can undo countless hours stewing in his/her own confirmation
bias.

~~~
bildung
> I appreciated your comments and learned some interesting things from them. I
> also admire your ability to have an argument without letting it drift toward
> becoming personal. I wish there were more people online who could do that.

Thank you :)

> Unfortunately, I think you're feeding a troll at this point. No amount of
> logic or reason can undo countless hours stewing in his/her own confirmation
> bias.

I suppose you are right. But text-only casual communication gets
misinterpreted so easily (e.g. I have the tendency to read agressiveness into
texts that are just dense factual answers) that I try to stay calm one answer
longer than I'd emotionally do. Works for me :)

------
bunkydoo
Congrats, now just don't follow the lead of the secret service by drinking on
the job and letting people over the fence

------
sarciszewski
I think this is good for Nacin. He's helped lead on of the most popular open
source projects on the Internet for years and a well-paid (am I being too
optimistic?) job which comes with a bit of autonomy, opportunity for mastery,
and a sense of purpose is definitely well deserved.

However, I do empathize a lot of the sentiments in the hidden-by-downvote
comments on this thread.

Although Nacin will probably never directly support any of the government
agencies responsible for torture, drone-murdering innocent civilians in other
countries, or the unprecedented surveillance state that has emerged in the
wake of the terrorist attacks 14 years ago, _he has still willingly become a
cog in the machine of the US government._

Whether he manipulates his environment or gets manipulated by it remains to be
seen. Hopefully, he is able to do more than make sure the US government's
human-rights-violating machines remain well-greased.

For those who are concerned: From my limited interaction with him, I got more
of a Jedi vibe than Sith side, if you catch my drift.

~~~
ohashi
I don't understand this perspective of if you're willing to work for the
government you're joining the dark side. If you aren't willing to work freely
to make your own government better, what good are you as a citizen? He's
willingly started a new job to try to improve people's lives. You want to make
the government better? You have two major options, voting and joining the
government and actually taking responsibility for some tiny piece of it.

~~~
sarciszewski
> I don't understand this perspective of if you're willing to work for the
> government you're joining the dark side.

The US government does more bad than good.

[http://www.livingunderdrones.org/](http://www.livingunderdrones.org/)

[http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/09/17/3568232/the-
unit...](http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/09/17/3568232/the-united-
states-had-even-more-prisoners-in-2013/)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosure...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosures_%282013%E2%80%93present%29)

> If you aren't willing to work freely to make your own government better,
> what good are you as a citizen?

Agreed. That's why I applaud Nacin; I believe he is someone who has enough
strength of character to help move the US government towards a better
good:evil balance.

> He's willingly started a new job to try to improve people's lives.

Agreed.

> You want to make the government better? You have two major options, voting
> and joining the government and actually taking responsibility for some tiny
> piece of it.

Well, they took my voting right away (which means it's not really a right,
it's a temporary privilege). :P

No; I'm going to take the path less traveled. I'm going to try and improve
everyone's lives, regardless of where they live. Borders be damned. Ethnicity,
gender identity, sexuality... none of these things matter at all.

American or not, we're all human.

If I ever help any government, it will be on a city level, not a nation-state
level. Which is probably closer to what Andrew Nacin is doing now.

If you don't like that answer, simply walk your own path in life. This is
mine.

~~~
ohashi
I'm not sure I have the moral authority to weigh the good and bad things the
US government does and choose which it does more of.

I think we agree on just about everything else. Local government is good, it
always starts local.

~~~
sarciszewski
Heh. That sounds like a very typical christian American answer.

I say the federal government is more evil than good. I point to its atrocities
and overwhelming apathy towards its own atrocities, while at the same time
being wholly insecure about the whole ordeal and classifying everything it
can. Why do they have so much to hide if they haven't done anything wrong? :]

I believe the problems are more cultural than just a few bad apples in power.

America will be a lot better off when it returns to being truer to the
Constitution, while it is a flawed document, on which our government was
founded. We're still moving further away from this; though the rate does ebb
regularly. Gay marriage is almost ubiquitous, yet the right to privacy that
was interpreted by our judiciary to be implied by the fourth amendment shrinks
every year.

If anyone hopes to make change, they can start by actually making sure their
local judges are competent and suited for the job. Even if this means running
against them in local elections.

