I have a lot of heartburn reading something like this. I spent a decade in government consulting trying to implement anything resembling "data science" or "DevOps" and got repeatedly shut down by higher ups or by random bureaucrats that saw any modern practices, including any technology, as a threat.
Excel macros working one day, then prohibited the next by new IT policies.
Directors demanding that service line bosses meet with me to discuss "data-driven decision-making", followed by a solid week of said chiefs telling me that my job is a joke.
Actual honest-to-God employees trying to make a difference in financial openness having their coworkers walk by their desks and loudly shout they "ain't doing that shit" and walking away.
Two years hunting for a database to store 2 GB of data, and only finding one when a new contractor onboarded and knew a guy in the next office over who would let them have a partition of SQL Server.
I wish I was making any of this up. The federal government has massive, massive employee culture issues. This list is... a nice dream.
These plays can work. Why? Because USDS employees are government employees with escalation paths all the way up to the very top which gives them a lot of power to break down bureaucratic barriers to modern software development that government contractors & consultants would have no chance of doing. They then can bring in contractors to work in the relatively modern shell that they've created.
For example, here's a project started by the USDS in 2015. It's responsible for managing the complex bureaucratic process of VA legal appeals. (https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/caseflow) It's open source, continuously integrated and deployed with close to 100% test coverage, deployed on an AWS GovCloud VPC, and was built on a fraction of the budget of similar systems.
Active development on this system is now done primarily by contractors now that the relevant bureaucratic barriers were removed.
How do we scale this story? More talented people with the desire to serve their country. It's not easy, but it can work.
Contractors can also be part of the problem. Very few contracting firms with access to blanket purchase agreements are willing to dump proprietary tech—as it’s their cashcow. For example, Oracle is huge in the federal gov, and Oracle DBAs are billed at a premium over a dev who can just make Postgres work. Worse, Oracle isn’t the problem rather the problem is some legacy tech or middleware no one has ever heard of that is incredibly fragile and has been hacked into a partially working solution by a vendor over a five year period and management isn’t willing to expend the financial, social, nor political capital to correct and forget about management acknowledging sunk costs.
IMO, USDS makes this worse as someone like Matt Cutts has the cachet to bring in the playbook and get execs to listen. Whereas, I’ve been doing this for 3 years and routinely have to fend off coup attempts as the term “mvp” sounds like a joke to other career employees. As such, it’s often easier to check the box of the federal acquisition requirements and collect a paycheck versus hustling to build a vanilla web app using JavaScript a rest api and Postgres before the checkbox folks shut you down because the baselined version of Jenkins is 5 years old and you installed version 2.26x without a request for change.
So how do we scale this story? Inform politicals and bureaucrats that incentives matter, successful tech start-ups are exception not the rule, sunk costs are real, and you don’t need a catchy name like 18f nor the catchet of celeb dev to right a failing project.
I've also heard of contractors selling nearly identical software to multiple agencies and charging each the full price of development (one reason open source has faced opposition), and sometimes decent excel macros can solve the actual problem.
You're totally right that if the incentives don't change, the choices made by execs won't change either. For example, a contracting officer I've met saved their agency a billion dollars by not continuing a failing contract, and was punished (to the point of leaving that agency) because that wasn't what the incentives supported.
How can USDS/18F be helpful to you and others in your position? The messages you list at the end are all true.
The Playbook is helpful. So is the DoD’s Detecting Agile BS. More publish references similar to these that can be presented to management. Another Avenue would be to engage GAO and OMB in order for their reports to align with above. Thank you!
It's both more difficult than any private company job I've had and it paid less, but knowing the impact my work had on veterans was well worth all of it. I'm extremely proud of the work that my teammates and I did there.
So many people complain about the government, so few are willing to fight to fix it.
I wish I was making any of this up. The federal government has massive, massive employee culture issues. This list is... a nice dream.
Much of what you describe is not unique to the U.S. government. I've run into many very similar scenarios in the jobs I've had over the years, from mid-sized travel company to billion-dollar healthcare companies.
The USDS doesn’t hire people through normal channels or for permanent hire, but hires people who have experience in the private sector and want to change the government. While it’s true that they hire significantly more junior people than before the trump admin (if you compare things like years of experience pre USDS then and now, or pre USDS salaries then and now), it’s still often experienced people who want to make a difference for a short period of time before leaving government.
FWIW, I don't know if there's a significant difference along a senior vs junior axis. I think the set of people willing to consider gov employment at USDS certainly (and reasonably) changed in after the 2016 election, so USDS lost access to some talent, but there is good work happening now.
Most importantly, USDS is seen as non-partisan, and so has been able to have good impact in both administrations.
Have certainly seen and experienced what you did, so I hear you. However, there are improvements slowly being made to be optimistic about. DevOps (or DevSecOps as they like to refer to it now...) is definitely becoming a more ingrained practice. If you’re interested, take a look at initiatives such as Cloud One, or some of the work being done by GSA (especially 18F) and USCIS (of all places).
Interestingly, the 21st Century IDEA Act mandates compliance with the USWDS now (at least for publicly facing sites) and there is a maturity model built around it. We’ll see whether or not agencies comply, but it’s a step in the right direction.
I'm curious how you've heard about USCIS' work / style?
I'm new to the system, so this is the only one I know (wrote about joining here: https://twitter.com/abachman/status/1217795232449859585), but I'm currently on a team of 6, all feds: 1 designer, 1 product mgr, 3 engineers and I'd say we're fairly to extremely self-directed. User-research based product development, pair programming, short iterations, deploying daily, all that jazz. Just a variation on the same sort of thing I've seen in the tech-first / software-product-company gigs I had in the past, but I've mostly worked for smaller indie or niche companies.
That is, I get to work in a way and with people and tools (Rails + React at the moment) that makes sense to me. How far outside the norm are we and where could I go to learn more about the whole system?
Other than previous work experience at DHS, bidding USCIS solicitations was the biggest difference I had observed with USCIS/way I became familiar with their practices. They’re pretty unique/developed with both their acquisition and DevOps practices.
It kind of sucks being on the bidding end, as their tech challenges cost a ton on top of the normal costs with a proposal. But I can understand why they do it and from an acquisition perspective, it makes total sense. I think they will need to strike a balance at some point though - some of their tech challenges are too complicated for the timelines provided.
In terms of development practices, it is pretty much all DevSecOps and they make heavy use of independent verification and validation/QA, and even more importantly, are pretty mature in their adoption of it.
So to answer your question, you guys are pretty far outside the norm in a good way :-).
Not sure the best way for you to be able to learn more other than to do some networking in the DC area (post COVID). If you get the opportunity, there’s a ton of great meetups in the DC area, although if you’re taking the MARC those can be a challenge to attend after work due to train schedule limitations. Other than that, move around to/visit different agencies and get exposure to their work. Work with your PM to see if you can do some site visits to other agencies/organizations as part of professional development and such.
Have you tried reaching out to Nicolas Chaillan or anyone within the AF CSO about some of your observations regarding where Cloud One/Platform One are missing the Mark? Nicolas is pretty active on LinkedIn and he may be open to input that could lead to some positive changes.
I agree with the sentiment that there are cultural issues with the federal space, and it requires continuous diligence of dedicated people to change the landscape and move the needle. Devops take a long time to grow organically - and it's longer in the federal government due to silos, compliance, finance, regulations.
The list is a nice dream, and it is with the will of those in the federal work force who can break down those silos and bring about a common understanding with urgency that'll make it happen for their project.
Were you working for the USDS though? My understanding is that when they're brought in, red tape doesn't have to be cut so much as it jumps out of their way in advance of their arrival. Basically a "special forces" digital intervention team with situational authority over the normal obstructionist BS.
Also used to do govt work. I'm sure everyone has stories.
My takeaways.
1) Understand what people need -> AND LET THEM DO IT.
2) DO NOT ADD A SINGLE NEW THING with the IT / automation. If the old system doesn't have it DO NOT ADD IT. No 20 extra fields for demographics if you didn't track that before. That can be added later IF it's a MUST.
If they would take away all various fifedoms and hassle - people actually would bring a lot more tech into gov. Let the local business / division people make a decision. The only requirement be that they go through a 1 hr training and be exposed to 3 packages in their space (ie, do demos no powerpoint).
Take away all other requirements. Be OK with smaller failures. Govt is so scared of just letting folks try stuff out that everything turns into a 100M project that goes totally of the rails in terms of scope etc (ie, what people need / want is long forgotten, it's what MANAGERS want that gets emphasized).
Result - even if successful (rarely) for downline workers the software brings TONS of extra (not less) work.
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My own examples. The IT folks say that passwords have to change every 90 days. Google for example does not default to this (stupid) rule - they push two factor without SMS (which is better). Bam - you are out or have to pay for a "security" solution on top of whatever standard platform you are using with admin rights that can force rotate passwords (and is a MASSIVE backdoor itself vs self-serve password mgmt).
Then purchasing. We need an ipad to edit some videos. OH, Apple is not supported. This is 10K employees but you can't get an apple product to use unless the city atty will sign off on a variance (no chance).
For a long time this must have been on the recommendation list - because password forms with insane complexity (12 charachters, upper, lower etc), but then non copy pastable forms and 60 day change requirements remained very common.
The current IRS requirements are 90 day password changes. Ergo - many people write their passwords down in a text document next to the software launch icon.
What I don't get - if your computer is hacked, and you force people to write down their passwords on the computer being hacked, they will even more easily be able to access the systems you have access to.
Google seems to get this right. I have had same password for 20 years, if I login with a new device I use my MFA (no SMS). If I do a security sensitive op I need to login and do an MFA again (password reset etc). I imagine they actually monitor and rate limit bad login attempts etc. A 10 character password is really fine then in my view as an example.
I think the biggest problem any US government agency has (federal or state) in producing services that leverage modern technology is that they cannot afford to pay people market rates. We have a mentality in the US that government cannot do anything right, but it seems of late (last 40 years or so) that we are kneecapping government's ability to execute and then complaining about it when it can't and making pronouncements about how only the private sector can understand tech.
Government technology workforces are thus composed largely of either people who are below average in competence or above average and willing to take a pay cut because they care about the cause, but we shouldn't expect people to do that, and there aren't very many of them. We should give government a fighting chance.
Yes, and the "total compensation" is no longer good either. "The pay sucks but you get great benefits" meme is no longer true of most state/federal government jobs, those benefits have been drastically shaved down over the last 30 years.
The other major recruiting problem is marijuana prohibition. Government has a lot of problems retaining high-skill IT people because a huge number of computer-touchers smoke. iirc FBI has commented on their inability to hire good technical staff because they can't find anyone who doesn't smoke.
And it's not just a question of willingness to smoke or not going forward, for most public-trust positions you're going to have to abstain for at least a year before even applying.
What are you willing to give up for a job offer that you might not even get? For computer-touchers with lots of other options, that answer is "not much". And federal jobs are basically low-paying, highly-competitive, and high-bureaucracy, when you could be making bank and having a reasonably satisfying work experience in the private sector.
And thus you filter out a huge number of the exact people you're trying to hire - young techies who are familiar with modern IT and development practices.
In particular you can't get any kind of security clearance if you have any history of cannabis usage, as far as I know. I wanted to enlist in the military a few years ago but unfortunately my history with weed means I'm more or less excluded, I think.
My understanding is those are the rules for automatic approval of a clearance and if you respond with drug use then you will be initially denied and then they will take a look at your specific circumstance.
Marijuana usage is so pervasive that they basically can't exclude anyone who's ever used it, instead they want to see that it's been at least a year (preferably more) since you've used it and you will probably get approved. "Harder" drugs they are more strict on.
If you just smoked pot in college no worries, you'll be fine.
Did you actually try applying? I think they are looking for candidness and some distance between you & the chronic. If you say you used to smoke, but quit two years ago and don’t miss it at all, that’s different than wearing a 420BlazeIt t-shirt to the interview and saying you haven’t smoked in almost an hour.
I haven't tried applying, no. I did some research into it and it seemed dicey. I also have friends with clearance who say it's a complete tossup depending on who you talk to.
While mostly true, let’s put this into perspective: A GS-15 in a metro area like New York, DC, and San Francisco, with experience, can get over $170. Throw in performance bonus and matching contributions, and total compensation is $180k+. That does not compare with the high end of the private sector, but that’s reasonable for a lot of people, even at tech companies.
Also, the sense of duty and serving the public is real. And this is not expressed in a tongue and cheek way... it’s an earnest desire to do meaningful work.
Many people who join USDS, 18F, and PIF from the tech industry are there because they genuinely want to do good work.
There's also the "executive schedule" [1] for management, but it doesn't pay much better: $220K for the highest paid ES-1, and a PhD is a requirement. In fact, the president of the US makes only $400K.
I worked for a state university for several years, and while there were certainly those there to collect their paycheck, there were also many who - as the parent suggests - had a very earnest desire to do meaningful work.
> A GS-15 in a metro area like New York, DC, and San Francisco, with experience, can get over $170.
Agencies like USDS, 18F, etc. who are hiring at this level are atypical, and have to do so in order to attract talent away from private sector. GS-13+ slots are typically senior leadership positions and not entry level for anyone unless they have a PhD.
I think your assessment is flat out wrong... good people are everywhere and most companies don’t fire folks for cause. There are different problems in civil service government entities, but the number of “below average” employees is usually based in size of org, not type of org. A big bank isn’t much smarter internally than a big government agency. A small company lacks the controls and depth of skill just like a town or small city.
I worked for a non-Federal US government, and my team was an amazing group of talented and passionate people.
Despite all of the nonsense of living in a bureaucracy where 500 people can say “no”, the mission and the impact on our neighbors was worth it. Compensation meh, total compensation was good.
But as time went on, the terms of the deal changed for new employees — generous pensions and benefits were tweaked in a way that marginally reduced cost, but dramatically reduced value to the employee. End result was average turnover of new hires was ~70% vs ~20%, and after I’m dead, the state pension fund will be sitting pretty as the new folks pay more to collect dramatically less benefits.
I don't see anything in your post that I disagree with so I find it interesting that you said I was flat out wrong in my assessment. I will say that below average competence is probably the wrong phrase, mostly what I meant is that it attracts some people who are not driven to execute and are fine with putting up with bureaucratic roadblocks to getting things done, when the kind of people you really want are those that are driven to removing certain roadblocks. Those are hard to find.
This is not true! On average, the federal government is paying quite a bit of money for tech people. I'd seriously estimate they're paying almost FAANG rates in a lot of cases all told.
The problem is that a lot of it gets siphoned off in the contracting process. The contracting process needs to be fixed. There's a ton of huge established players doing really bad work. IT specifically gets treated differently in government contracting, and is almost always procured through something called a GWAC which is basically a moat that it's hard for new companies to get into (the goal is to streamline procurement by having "vetted" companies in this pool already but it usually means it's very difficult for new players to get involved.)
That is changing, just very slowly. The agency that created this playbook, GSA, is helping facilitate that with things like introducing good vendors to other agencies and smaller more limited engagements.
I'm aware of the problems with the contracting process. My experience with salary is at the state level where things are much more stark, but I also don't think that federal salaries are comparable with FAANG, particularly Google. Most at 18F are at GS-15, right?
Fair point about state/local. My statement about FAANG was based on some napkin math I did with regard to published rates for certain labor categories by some big contracting companies on some vehicles they were a part of.
But even doing a quick comparison, levels.fyi estimates about $160 - 180k cash compensation for new hires for FAANG. GS-15 Step 3 in DC is 150k. Plus excellent government benefits. It's spitting distance at least.
USDS isn’t going to hire a new grad at GS-15. Also government benefits are not as good as FAANG benefits.
Also GS-15 is the absolute max. 2 yrs at FAANG and your comp will be closed to 220-250k, which is already passed the absolute max you can get paid on the government pay scale.
I wasn’t really talking about direct government roles when I made that comment. I was more talking about what the government shells out to contractors for programming jobs which as many have pointed out is the vast majority of programmers that get hired to do work for the government.
And admittedly, it is a little hyperbolic. I don’t have actual data to directly back it up beyond some research I did earlier this year. But FAANG really represents the most you could get paid as a software engineer and it’s pretty clear to me that these salaries are at least average/middle of the road. There isn’t some widespread low pay issue for software engineers doing this kind of work.
Point taken, but I think that's probably a best case scenario for government IT in general. I am lucky enough to work for a state-level 18F-alike that has the latitude to pay people market rates, but looking at what my coworkers outside of my direct org get paid I often feel incredibly guilty.
Salaries are publicly posted for many USDS jobs. They aren’t particularly competitive as far as I’ve seen. But - only 20-30% low. It might be worth it for the good one could do.
It’s one thing to pay a highly competent person 6 figures. It’s an entirely different thing if you can’t fire them. I’m not saying that the government doesn’t need more competent people but it’s not going to work if there’s a bigger carrot and no stick.
Provide clear mandates and then structurally separate organizations that should exist indefinitely from most interference by elected officials. Some of the most effective institutions of the US Government are the ones that were deliberately structured to be self-organizing, the military, the federal reserve system, and (until recently) the postal service.
>>We have a mentality in the US that government cannot do anything right
Well many many of us have the mentality that the US Government and various local governments SHOULD NOT be doing some of the things they are attempting to do, even if they could
See we believe in LIMITED government, VERY LIMITED government as such we do not believe in giving the government more resources to take over things it has no ethical authority to be meddling with in the first place
Another conclusion based on the same facts is that the government has no business doing its own technology and should do what they do for weapons and roads: contract it out.
That doesn’t work well in practice. The US government pays insane sums for those things. The best direct comparison is roads and other transportation infrastructure, where the US’s costs per unit are way, way higher than the rest of the Western world. It isn’t all regulation, either.
There are a bunch of problems that result from contracting work out though.
The contracting process itself is an incredibly onerous burden with a huge number of factors other than mere technical ability (are you a disabled veteran minority-owned business?). And the companies with the fortitude and resources to actually make it through the contracting process tend to be the exact companies you don't want doing the work - it's not your scrappy 30 person startup that gets the bid.
Furthermore, those companies are the only ones that can, frankly, put up with the government's shit. The problem isn't just that the government doesn't have the technical ability or the culture to get the job done, they don't even have the ability to oversee a technical contract, and it inevitably results in weird and obtuse requirements, stumbling blocks injected from the contract coordinators, etc.
You can sometimes have a setup where one contractor executes and one contractor oversees, but anyone who's worked on a project overseen by one of those contracting management companies (DeLoitte, Accenture, etc) knows that doesn't fix anything either, and the contract coordinator isn't going to stop their bullshit either, now you just have twice as many layers of management shitting things up.
There's no magic bullet here, but management and IT services within the USG drastically need a shakeup, and increasing pay scales to match the private sector has to be there too. On top of that you basically need a top to bottom review of the regulations and SOPs. It's simply too hard to actually get work done, at every level. There is too much security theater, too little real security, too many fiefs, too many bosses, too many approval processes, too many dumb requirements that were coded into law 20 years ago when they maybe made a little sense but have long-since ceased to be best practices.
Also, contracts are for a specific and limited period of time. Often development and maintenance are under different contracts - which will be bid out separately. So the first contractor doesn't really care about anything except getting it out the door, then the USG will be super surprised that they're pulling the plug once they've met the bare minimum of the requirements, and then there's no money to actually maintain it on an ongoing basis. If there is, that money will be bid out again and probably goes to a different contractor.
Keeping it internal at least means that somebody has ownership of the project. Contracting turns everything into a game of hot potato with everyone racing to throw the potato as soon as they've done the bare minimum to accomplish their contractual obligations and get paid.
This is wrong - This playbook actually came out of fixing Healthcare.gov. The original version of Healthcare.gov that failed and had all those issues WAS contracted out.
Your premise that the government should just contract out tech is bad because it already does contract out the vast majority of it. And the results are still bad in a lot of cases.
This playbook has become something that a lot of contracting companies that specifically focus on doing good dev work specifically call out in their websites and marketing. Ex: https://digitalservicescoalition.org/#/story
Yeah, that’s a fair point. It’s going to take more than a playbook to fix the problems, but there are some movements in the right direction. Government is just very very slow to change. Sometimes that’s a good thing, but not so much when it comes to technology.
At Ad Hoc, we have a version of this that expands on the USDS one with our own experiences and opinions: https://www.adhocteam.us/playbook/
If you want to make change in the government, and don't want to become a federal employee, being a contractor is an alternative that you might consider: https://www.adhocteam.us/join/
It can be frustrating work, but it can also be enormously satisfying; I've been doing it now for ~6 years. Feel free to ask me questions if you want, I'm not a recruiter, just an engineer that's been building government products for a few years and trying to improve how they get built.
This breaks govt and public service culture, but that's the point.
Technology really drives those organizations, just very slowly, as they've finally got the hang of those whole "client/ server" concept, and the notion of providing "services" at all.
Of course the most hilarious aspects of this are when departments foist hours of farcical forms on your projects and insist they are providing you a "service," where the service is compliance with their gating demands to fill out forms. (looking at you, infosec) Many of these organizations have evolved precisely to deflect accountability, as authority without responsibility is the ultimate measure of bureaucratic success.
I am an advocate for this playbook, but change will take time, probably until we've moved on to something better...
As an outsider, I hold the USDS in great regard. Probably too much because of Marianne Belotti's writings from her time there, but also from what I would like to think are more nuanced perspectives.
My country does not have anything like it, but what countries do?
As is Australia's. They've diverged a bit more now but when launched it was pretty much a colour change and switching some lions and unicorns for kangaroos and emus.
An acquaintance worked as CTO of the DTA, and ultimately it was a joke. The skills were there, but the clout to bust through politics was not there, so nothing ever got done. He ended up leaving after less than a year.
While this is all well and good it feels like a slick "thought leadership" campaign that provides little in the way of actual solutions to the issues USG orgs face when building/providing digital services. The challenge is not the "approach", but rather a system that constrains the ability to even begin that approach.
I find #7 especially hollow:
> We need talented people working in government who have experience creating modern digital services.
Sure, no one would argue against that, but the solution to this can't come from the team implementing or providing the digital service. Rather the whole of USG's incredibly obtuse, opaque, and inflexible centralized hiring system needs to be addressed. This is no better than telling a USA Special Forces team commander that in order for his operators to be more effective he needs the Army to recruit better soldiers.
I think there's some confusion here on what and how the USDS works.
They embed into government organizations to improve services and systems, bringing expertise that doesn't normally exist in government, while not working directly for the organization they're embedded in.
USDS doesn't follow normal hiring practices either. They recruit directly for limited employment terms, max of 4 years. This helps offset the entrenched beaurocratic mindset that exists in a lot of USG organisations, and allows them to recruit current experts in a particular field.
From the Special Operations analogy this would be equivalent of the Military giving them direct hiring/recruitment ability from both the Armed Services and direct from civilian
#7 "Bring in experienced teams" isn't hollow, it's their core mission.
I think the confusion is not in what the USDS does, but rather who their Play Book is intended for. Is it prescriptive or descriptive? If it's the former (as I took it) then we're not talking about the USDS itself, but the USG. If it's the latter then I defer to you, but still don't think it solves the structural problems that makes the USDS relevant in the first place.
Going back to our US Special Forces team, the US Army actually did (attempt)to solve for this by simplifying the pipeline with the 18X "X-Ray" Program.
A big problem with hiring is just USG pay scales. Even the top pay grades come in at less than what an average (or even less than average) developer can make in industry. Much less if you also consider equity comp.
Sure, there are some people who will see working for USDS or 18F as a call to serve their country, and will accept a pay cut in order to do that, but I imagine that's a pretty small slice of the pie.
Beyond that, it's the bureaucracy. I would honestly consider said pay cut in order to help make dealing with government computing systems better, but what I will not deal with is layers upon layers upon layers of bureaucracy. I've watched the 50-person startup I started at 9 years ago evolve into a 3500-person public company, and even here I find the bureaucracy and hierarchy stifling at times. At a government job I imagine it'll be orders of magnitude worse. I wouldn't even last half a year in that environment.
Yes, Play #4 in their list in theory suggests that they'll try to cut through all that, but I don't believe for a second that will go well.
What would be nice is if these government jobs had training. The military can take someone from the street and make them a specialist in something. If USDS could take someone and make them into what they needed, the lower salary might be better justified.
I could not agree more. If the USG wants to provide competent digital services to it's customer/shareholder then it might make more sense to get rid of the Digital Service in the WH and rather expand and go all in on 18F, where it provides a whole career progression from basic training on up through SES.
I feel the absence of job training upon hiring is also why there is no concept of "company men" after the Boomer Generation; companies stopped investing in the employees they wanted and started treating them like pre-packaged commodity.
I didn’t realize 18F has a training program. That’s awesome.
I agree with your frustrations about training in general too. I wish companies provided that _and_ provided real career progression goals. Instead it’s learn the tech for your job after work and some vague one page sheet from HR about what the next level is, which really comes down to a manager’s opinion more than anything really measurable.
Are you sure 18F offers whole career progression? I looked at their website and they only seem to be hiring GS15. I don’t see any mention about training.
I disagree — as a direct result of play #7 in this playbook, multiple large-scale initiatives were launched; most notably 18F, which is like a "startup" within the federal government:
Another one that comes to mind is Coding It Forward, which has the express mission of creating government tech internships that rival FB/Google internships in terms of pay, experience, and mentorship:
18F pre-dates the U.S. Digital Service by 6 months.
Coding It Forward is a civil society initiative, not a government one, and is analogous to thinking that a weak diplomatic corps can be fixed by sponsoring more high school Model U.N. chapters. There is no lack of viable and willing candidates _outside_ of the system, the issue is getting them _inside_ and letting them inform it.
Thanks for sharing! This is all good to know, I'll be reaching out to see if there's any possibility of these groups helping to address some of the issues within our institute at the NIH. Right now it's unclear to what extent that can assist an intramural research program.
There are digital groups of various sorts already operating at NIH. If the folks working on it are federal employees, there are groups that can help - but there has to be buy-in from decision makers.
Bureaucracies have infinite ways to stop something if you don't get cover from certain people.
Yeah this meshes with my experiences working at the NIH. Lots of interest in big data, AI, etc. etc., and even financial incentives for new hires in those areas, but absolutely no coordinated approach to recruitment, retention, or project management. A few labs or support groups end up with great teams, but mostly tech knowledge is redundantly siloed in small mediocre groups across dozens of teams institutes-wide. And that's not even touching on IT issues...
This is hard for practical reasons. The civil service needs to be a place where everyone can get a job without knowing someone inside, so a lot of best practices in the private sector (referral-based hiring) don't easily translate.
It's akin to the Postal Service visiting everyone's mailbox each day - not efficient, but important.
THAT SAID, there are massive improvements that can happen in hiring - if agencies have incentives to pursue them!
I agree, this is a really tough nut to crack without completely overhauling the hiring system and making some hard decisions. USAJobs was a really good-faith effort, but it's not it.
There's also always a trade off between usability & user friction with high security systems. Although improvements in security software usability have eliminated some of those barriers. And systems security is like physical safes/locks: It should be rated in terms of how much effort it would take to bypass it, and implemented in proportion to the value/risk of exposure of the secure objects/data. Clearly this is an idealized model though: SolarWinds has show that approaches to securing high-value assets are.... lacking.
I was a member of the USDS for 4 years. Every member of the USDS is a government employee with a fully transparent government salary, most of whom are taking a massive pay cut to serve their country and its citizens.
Excel macros working one day, then prohibited the next by new IT policies.
Directors demanding that service line bosses meet with me to discuss "data-driven decision-making", followed by a solid week of said chiefs telling me that my job is a joke.
Actual honest-to-God employees trying to make a difference in financial openness having their coworkers walk by their desks and loudly shout they "ain't doing that shit" and walking away.
Two years hunting for a database to store 2 GB of data, and only finding one when a new contractor onboarded and knew a guy in the next office over who would let them have a partition of SQL Server.
I wish I was making any of this up. The federal government has massive, massive employee culture issues. This list is... a nice dream.