The idea of helping government work better has been on my mind for a while. After Mikey Dickerson and several other folks helped rescue the healthcare website, I heard Mikey talk about how much of an impact just a few people could make. Meanwhile, I saw how Jen Pahlka and others tried to improve government with a group called Code for America (and later Jen served as Deputy Chief Technology Officer with the US government).
I’ve seen a bunch of smart people like Ed Felten, Amac, DJ Patil, and Megan Smith go help how they can. At a conference in Chicago called ORD Camp earlier this year, I got to meet Paul Smith, who helped with the healthcare rescue and then formed a small company called Ad Hoc that tries to improve things on the contracting side. At conferences, I’d see a lot of people that I respect (hi, Erie Meyer!) who were tackling all kinds of projects.
So: I’m fundamentally an idealist, and the idea of trying to help appealed to me. A bunch of people that I respect and like were also doing it. My former team at Google was doing well. And I was at a place in my life where I could spend several months in DC. The final nudge came at a conference earlier this year when I had dinner with Haley Van Dyck, an early member of the USDS. After talking to her, the question became: why wouldn’t you do this?
By the way, I feel like I should add: if it sounds interesting to work with a bunch of smart, get-things-done idealists, the USDS is hiring: https://www.usds.gov/join
That’s a great question. We’re part of a larger organization called the United States Digital Service. The USDS started almost exactly two years ago as a startup at the White House. Since then, it’s grown to a network of teams throughout the Federal Government.
Ash Carter, the Secretary of Defense, stood up the Defense Digital Service. The Defense Digital Service tries to bring good ideas, folks, and practices from industry to help solve problems for Department of Defense. It’s a small team (15-16 people), but we’ve got engineers, bureaucracy hackers, designers, and project managers. We’re physically located in the Pentagon, which is pretty wild for someone used to wearing shorts and a T-shirt to work. I still wear shorts and a T-shirt most days. You can see Chris Lynch wearing a hoodie in this meeting with the Secretary of Defense:
As far as projects, an early effort discovered and fixed a problem where thousands of medical records for veterans were getting silently dropping on the floor if a doctor selected the wrong dropdown when scanning a document. Another project called Hack the Pentagon was the first bug bounty program in the Federal Government. Folks in industry know that paying for security vulnerabilities can make products more secure, but the US government hadn’t really caught on to bug bounties before. That project alone has the potential to protect millions of citizens.
The Defense Digital Service is also helping with part of the next-generation GPS system, and they’re also working to replace a tool called the Defense Travel System that the military uses for booking travel. One of my colleagues says that for people looking to improve things, “it’s not a target-rich environment; it’s an environment made of targets.” So one of the challenges is narrowing down the projects that would have the most impact, but also have a solid chance of success.
Different folks work on totally different projects. If you check out the USDS website you can see 12 different projects that give you a good flavor of the variety of stuff going on at the USDS.
I’m ...
Loading…Different folks work on totally different projects. If you check out the USDS website you can see 12 different projects that give you a good flavor of the variety of stuff going on at the USDS.
I’m an individual contributor. I came on as a software engineer, but the team is small enough that people help out in all kinds of ways. For example, one things that the US Digital Service does is called a “discovery sprint.” That involves a team of people spending a couple weeks or so digging into a topic to figure out what’s working and what can be improved.
So far, I’ve been primarily helping with two discovery sprints. In the first sprint, we went to Afghanistan to see what sort of issues were snagging people working there. We came back with 3-4 different important issues that we’ve been trying to help on.
The second discovery sprint that I’ve been working with involves how the government and the military hire people and clear them for specific roles. About a year ago, over 20 million Federal employees had their personal information stolen as part of a breach at the Office of Personnel Management. That was a terrible incident, but it prompted a lot of smart folks to ask how things could be improved. Parts of that system and process are now being improved and parts are being replaced. The Defense Digital Service has been observing that process, and I’ve been helping around the edges with some of that.
For one thing, the USDS is relatively new--it’s celebrating its two-year birthday this week (huzzah!). This approach to technology is also a new way of thinking for government. Startups are typically small and they move and respond very quickly. That means a startup can quickly explore an idea to prove it out or discard it. Government represents a different point on the risk spectrum, but some of those startup qualities still work well our organization.
Many of our startup-like characteristics work well for organizations that sit somewhat apart from the regular day-to-day life of a Federal Agency. It’s fascinating to view this entire issue through the lens of organizations like the original Skunk Works or MITRE. I’ve been reading a lot more books and fiction about organizational dynamics recently.
By the way, Paul Graham has written some great things about startups. Many of those articles are well worth your time.