I'm in agreement. The problems of government are best solved by pairing civil servants, the ones who know how to run the country, with enthusiastic, well-funded teams.
The end goal should be open, accessible projects built with open accessible tools.
Do you have any knowledge about how Code for America is doing? My understanding is that they're more on the citizen engagement side of things and have built a few cool solutions. Maybe we need more orgs like that (or need to contribute more resources to them)?
Code for America continues to grow and release their apps in new areas of the country. They've got their annual summit in Oakland next week (29th) and they'll be looking to get more director level folks involved because of the current growth.
The end goal should be open, accessible projects built with open accessible tools.
https://gds.blog.gov.uk/