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.
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.
> I was part of the healthcare.gov "tech surge" and I can tell you firsthand that the government is willing to change.
So, you worked for a short while on an extremely high-profile project with the personal daily attention of the president. Yes, that does tend to smooth things over - but don't mistake that for a fundamental change in government priorities. There are 2.6 million federal employees, you don't re-jig politics and incentive structures that has been entrenched over decades overnight with a single successful project.
Sure, showing that it can be done is always a good first step, and I'm not saying that anyone actively wants to fail - but only just barely. More often than not it feels that a failure you can blame on someone else is better than a mediocre success (good luck running an election campaign on having reduced the number of screens in a system or migrating it to AWS).
Why don't you ask the people who work at USDS if they're having trouble getting interest from the agencies? That would be a way to test your hypothesis.
Actually, I was responding to the GP stating a hypothesis.
But my question would be this: Are your political sponsors (a number of rungs up) invested in your work? Are they willing to take flak for your team (ie. take personal career risk) when (yes, when) things go wrong and provide the cover to help you turn things around, or are they more likely to throw the cocky Google-kids under the bus and declare "experiment failed" the second things turn a bit sour, and return to business as usual?
Now, answer the same question again, but 18 months from now, on the hypothetical that the next president isn't going to have this much on the agenda. What happens when heading the USDS doesn't mean briefing the president in the oval, but rather briefing a junior staffer to an undersecretary of the treasury?
Getting positive answers to all those is what real change looks like.
From my perspective as a former federal government employee, it seems more realistic than cynical. I agree that your second question would be a way to test this perception against reality.
I hope you are right, but from my experience with government IT I feel its highly unlikely that a top down approach by a bunch of smart people is going to break through all the horseshit IT fiefdoms in the US government. Billions of dollars are spent every year on government IT stuff, and all those vendors aren't just going to sit quietly while you try to replace their garbage, overpriced BS software that they are charging an arm and a leg for.
Maybe if the President has his personal eye on a project something could get done. But the President isn't going to put his personal eye on the USPTO back-end for example. Or the FAA exemptions submission page. Or any of a thousand other points of contact between the public and government.
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/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.
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.
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.)
A large part of the current GOP (and to a lesser extent Dem) platform is built on the idea that government cannot under any circumstances (except defense, because magic) do anything successfully. How can there be successful reform when so many political careers are now based on this assumption? Success has become failure, I am not hopeful.
Here's the difference. I've talked to some folks in the digital service. They aren't career government. They have no risk in committing "political suicide" by suggesting something that everyone knows is the right thing to do. Basically, if someone doesn't like what they said, they can respond with, "well I can always got back to my old job". The government workers don't have that freedom.
Government IT contracts are much less insidious than it seems.
The reason you have the same companies has very little to do with "insider" status and much more to do with the fact that these companies have made it their business to be able to operate in the federal environment.
Bureaucracy, far from being a conscious, malevolent tool, is simply the accumulated barriers and obstacles erected over time for every instance there was an anomaly or problem. Accountability was demanded, and new guidelines put in place. These stack up over time, long after the original incidence has ceased to be a major issue. Unlike the private sector where companies and organizations can simply be wiped out and start with a clean slate, government doesn't (and for various reasons, can't) do that.
There's still money to be made however, for those who are familar with the process. Simply being eligable to bid for government work means getting approved on a contract vehicle, complying with various laws on accountability and record keeping, and ticking off various checkboxes for equal representation of genders and minority groups. These regulations are removed and unfeeling of special circumstances or facts on the ground; they are the accumulated "good intentions" of laws passed that now stack up like strata.
People who know this system well are intimidated by all of this, which is why you see many government and defense retirees move on to the private sector to steer these small companies into this kind of work. They know how it works, and just knowing that is a skillset in and of itself.
It's not evil. And there's far less cronyism than one might suspect. (I'm not claiming for a moment that it doesn't happen, but somewhat surprisingly, it's minimal.) Improvements are not consciously forbidden, and making things better is not discouraged. But like an enormous traffic jam, no single person has room to do much of anything. Coordinating a number of people to try and move in a better direction can improve things a little, until they are stopped by another group who has no room to move.
It's a mistake to think of government IT as insidious. It's a problem we have built over time that we have created ourselves. To fix it will require enormous bravery to do away with volumes of regulations that, by themselves, probably did some good. And it will require tolerance of practices done in private that would never have seen the light of day, but in government, has the spotlight of oversight shining on. It will be a challenge to solve.
You did not succeed in convincing me that the system you describe is not insidious. I think you probably describe it accurately, and it sounds quite insidious to me.
Yes, of course the companies that get government contracts need to be experts at getting government contracts -- the problem is that they do not need to be experts at what they actually _do_, what they're getting paid for. There's in fact very little room left to be experts at what they do, after all the expertise they need to develop (and resources spent on same) in getting and keeping contracts.
If you're a company and your motive is making a profit, then of course there's plenty of money to be made, exactly.
The system you describe sounds pretty insidious to me. "Insidious. adj. proceeding in a gradual, subtle way, but with harmful effects."
The harmful effects are exactly the privileging of expertise at government contracting over expertise at doing a good job. That's harmful only if you prioritize doing a good job, if you prioritize making a profit I suppose it's just fine.
> But like an enormous traffic jam, no single person has room to do much of anything. Coordinating a number of people to try and move in a better direction can improve things a little, until they are stopped by another group who has no room to move.
Yes, quite, that's quite insidious, exactly. It has some unique features to government, but also some commonalities with any large bureaucracy.
My misunderstanding of the word then. I assumed it meant something more akin to "evil, malicious" but your definition says it does not. I'd agree then that your word is correct.
You're right in that expertise in getting contracts often has a tendency to displace expertise in IT. This has been a persistent problem in hiring. Contractors need to fill billets that come with mandatory requirements dictated by the government. Skilled individuals are often bypassed because they lack a certain certification (often unrelated to their work) or a certain parameter. In defense, security clearances can be an enormous barrier by limiting only those who possess a clearance as eligible. (There's an "insidious" effect whereby you must be on or joining a project that requires a clearance to get a clearance, and you cannot join a cleared project without a clearance.) Pay is often much lower than compared to the private sector when compared to the industry as a whole, but since the layout of the federal government is separate than what drives the private IT industry, it creates opportunities for many where a grassroots IT industry wouldn't otherwise exist.
There are good people who enter the environment and make positive change, but they are few. There are many more who work at a perfectly capable level and do the best they can, but would be considered underqualified for their role. This is an area where the Digital Service seems to me trying to make a difference, as government IT rarely attracts the IT elite.
Your meaning is correct too: "treacherous; crafty" and synonyms include "stealthy, shifty, underhanded, sneaky." I think you did a fine job separating the machinery of bureacracy from the malice (or lack of).
"Improvements are not consciously forbidden, and making things better is not discouraged. But like an enormous traffic jam, no single person has room to do much of anything. Coordinating a number of people to try and move in a better direction can improve things a little, until they are stopped by another group who has no room to move."
That is a great metaphor. Anybody who's considering joining USDS, I think ckozlowski's comment gets the situation exactly right. You are unblocking a traffic jam.
To be fair, Andrew lives in DC and has for a while afaik. Not sure why this is being posed as Silicon Valley fixing government IT. It seems like a few smart people trying to make government better. Nothing is going to be perfect, but it's at least a step in the right direction. I respect Andrew taking this step, there's a lot of civic hacking in DC, this is just a step further and making it a full time gig from the look of it. At least he's doing something instead of simply whining.
Ehh. The UK's Government Digital Service successfully made http://gov.uk/ which was a massive improvement over what it replaced (DirectGov), making the UK Government's services easy to find and easy to use. Why can't the US Digital Service? It seems to be trying to do the same sort of thing.
"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."
I know -- very condescending, isn't it? Gee, it's a good thing these really smart folks are showing up. What would we have done without them? A broken system must obviously be full of incompetent people.
I wish these guys the best, but this is 90% bullshit and 10% reality.
Just to cite one, small (?) problem: in commercial IT, if you don't like the work somebody is producing? You fire them. In government IT, no such thing exists. Managers spend years shuffling around poor-performing employees in a desperate attempt just to keep the lights on.
I could go on, but it would all just wash over folks. This is a movement, dammit! We all feel so very excited! This time is different!
So I will help do whatever I can -- blog, comment, debug, whatever. But I will not become suddenly blind to the realities of the system that we are attempting to change. That doesn't do anybody any good. That ain't cynicism, that's reality. Hope is not a strategy, and you can't fix a system you can't honestly describe. (or understand how it got that way)
My own perspective: There are amazingly smart people working in government, and even working for many of the contractors commonly cited as examples of The Problem. Many of these individuals are not effective not because they're incompetent (and therefore need to be told what to do), but because they are not empowered, or they lack confidence or a team of people they can use to propel good solutions forward. Bureaucracy and internal politics are rampant. One way to look at what we're trying to do here is to act as a nucleus of tech expertise inside these agencies, to attract and empower those individuals to do the right thing while providing air cover from the White House when they're prevented from doing so.
That being said, there is a vanishingly small number of actual engineers working for the government. Normally this role belongs to the contracting companies. The incentives here frequently encourage overly large, excessively complex designs, and implementations that maximize the number of humans rather than good engineering practices. By improving technical literacy within government we improve the government's ability to identify bad contracts and methods to prevent these situations from happening in the future.
We are not blind to the fact that there have been other attempts before us. The key differences I see are (a) support from the top and (b) funding.
Please email me if there is any way I can help. Also, since I both teach team performance enhancement and have a lot of big org experience, I would be very interested in hearing how things go.
Sadly, part of the cause of this is due to the small government mantra preached by "conservatives". This results in many tasks being offloaded onto contractors who end up bloating the cost and using various other backchannels.
If a lot of these things were done in-house in the government itself, things would be a lot more efficient.
There is a greater possibility to reduce the cost and increase the efficiency. At the same time, I think chances are those savings will not be realized due to all the buracracy that can happen as people flex their power muscles. For example, needing JQuery to be reviewed in its entirety before being allowed due to security concerns and an official rule that all code used must either be developed in house, purchased (aka, having someone else to blame if something happens), or fully reviewed before use.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I, too, would happily consume any content about the USDS, how it's structured, what it's plans are, what its focus is, etc. Specifically, I'd like to learn what I can do now to start thinking about the problems of scale and procurement on a government level. It's an area I don't know much about, but the noises made by Mikey Dickerson and his team have gotten me sufficiently inspired to want to learn more and build out my skillset as to eventually help the initiative in any way I can.
I recently went to a recruiting event of theirs in SF, and here is my personal understanding, probably wrong in spots:
The broad notion is that private-sector IT culture has undergone major change in the last couple of decades. The failure of HealthCare.gov under the old model and its subsequent turnaround using the sort of modern methods common in Silicon Valley woke people up to the possibility of doing something new.
The question, then, is how to get government working like we do. (At least where it's beneficial; we solve a lot of our mistakes by shutting down companies, but government departments can't work like that.)
A number of things have been tried, starting with the Presidential Innovation Fellows. [1] The US Digital Service is the latest pass. The USDS HQ is under the US CTO, which I believe makes it part of the Office of Science and Technology Policy [2], which is part of the Executive Office of the President [3]. The agency teams are embedded in the agencies themselves, and so I'd assume those are legally under the appropriate cabinet secretaries. I get all this mainly from the USDS pages. [4]
Personally, I suspect that this is not a lot of money. It's mainly people, and they made clear that they will be paying industry salaries, not government salaries. And given that it is getting government to reduce waste and learn from the private sector, I expect it has bipartisan appeal.
Even if the next administration dissolves it all, though, I expect it will still have a fair bit of effect. As anybody in the industry knows, the switch from 18- to 36-month cycles to 1-4 week cycles is pretty much permanent because the culture has shifted. People just expect stuff sooner now.
But I hope the next administration continues the effort. At the meeting it was clear there were a lot of people in tech who really want to go serve their country by taking a couple years to make the government run better. It'd be foolish not to take advantage of that yearning for public service.
I would be extremely surprised -- and skeptical, actually -- if there is a USDS with its own budget, but the agency teams serving under the secretary. There would be two masters there, and that's just fertile breeding ground for major frustration. (This is also not how inter-unit embeds work in the military, which is what colors my perspective.)
Regarding pay, I dunno. Based on quotes from this[1] article, the pay scale seems to cap out at GS15 Step 10 which is ~132k. Now obviously this is still a lot of money but if I'm reading between the lines of his quotes right, this is the most an engineer can make w/ USDS without bumping up to SES (Senior Executive Service) levels. Not to say that's substantively less than industry salaries, but they definitely are paying government salaries (by definition).
As far as dissolution, I'm talking more from the perspective of attracting & retaining top talent. With a private sector startup, you trade job security for potentially out-sized payoff. But here... Anyway, point being I think the risks should be articulated well.
There's a strong possibility that many people that are recruited into USDS are actually contractors / consultants and are thus free to bill whatever rate the government can deem necessary and appropriate. This is how almost anyone I know has ever gotten beyond that kind of salary. Also, GS15 is usually reserved for people that have been with federal service for 15+ years and isn't exactly given out to newbies without considerable thought. However, that could certainly happen but there's not exactly much room to promote them up honestly.
And frankly, $132k in the DC area is about as pitiful in the Bay Area if you ask me. Defense contractors alone command $140k salaries for senior developers frequently (the contractors that still do have contracts that is). If you're in "cybersecurity" (whatever BS that actually means is beyond me when it comes to the technical definitions) you can get that with some pretty solid experience beforehand and reach into $200k as an engineer (not being management, which is usually where the caps on compensation tend to lift - see the ES pay scale compared to the GS).
Ok, but the point of the USDS is that these are federal employees, not contractors. In fact if you read that article I linked, contractors are concerned about the existence of the USDS.
Also, one of the big points about USDS is they are paying at or above market rate for developers which is something they have not done in the past. I think all the speculation in your comment is off the mark.
I talked to USDS before and after a couple interviews I got the impression that I'd be engaged in shorter engagements with customers primarily and that I would need to squeeze an engagement into a schedule that wouldn't work for anyone other than 1099 style contractors or those between jobs basically. That's a major part of where my speculation came from that many (or at least some) at USDS are being onboard as contractors because that's pretty much how consulting works classically. While that doesn't mean everyone works that way, it does seem contrary to the evidence that USDS is supposed to be exclusively (presumably, retained, FTE-ish, salaried) feds.
Regardless, I greatly welcome change to the federal service system in any way to promote better retention and progress for its tech workers. Federal service used to mean good and service a source of genuine pride. I went into federal service a long time ago with enthusiasm for change and left pretty damn disillusioned rather quickly.
We're pushing for short-term engagements for a variety of reasons, but the big one is that the people that we want to attract most are people that already have nice jobs at companies with great pay and perks. It's hard enticing them to leave all of that to come work for government, but it's easier to entice someone to take a leave of absence to do it for 3 or 6 months. Many of the people joining as engineers fall into this category.
The USDS is recruiting federal employees, not contractors. Base salaries can be competitive with typical engineering positions in Silicon Valley. The big difference is the inability of the government to pay anything equivalent to stock/options, bonuses, or perks like free food.
Historically the tradeoff between government jobs and private sector jobs is that the government jobs pay less, but have more security. Depends on what you want out of life.
Obviously you can't get stocks or options, but why wouldn't they be willing to pay bonuses for a job well done/performance or provide free food, if that gets the right kind of people into the door? I don't get it.
A typical software engineer with a degree in CS or engineering working as a federal employee starts out as a GS7 and would be lucky to make it to GS13 (90-100k) after 5-10 years if they are really really good. The fact that they are starting these people as 15's is pretty unusual.
Most engineers are GS-12 positions. GS-11 used to be the standard, and in some areas GS-13 is a standard engineer rate. It changes over time. Many use alternate pay bands, so it's hard to compare. Anything near GS-15 and above is pretty unusual, I agree.
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.
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.
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...
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. :(
Super sad to hear this story and we've circulated some of these comments internally within the USDS. We know the hiring process is backlogged and isn't very transparent.
Please keep in mind we're still operating like a startup that had an engineering mission it's executing on before it had a mission to scale up. We don't trust the existing government hiring process, which means we have to do it ourselves. This means guilting our existing engineers into finding time to review resumes and do interviews instead of fixing something that's on fire. We are trying to hire good people, not just anyone that shoots a resume our way. But we are still a small team. Please don't judge what we're trying to do solely on how well we can get through resumes and interviews. We're working on it, and we have some ideas and plans to do some work to both improve communication and work through the backlog, so don't give up on us yet.
That's cool, Brandon-- I'm super grateful for you helping me out in the first place. =) It wasn't a good experience, but that happens. Figured I'd toss out a data point, in case other folks run into the same.
I'm sorry about this miscommunication and it wasn't intentional--we absolutely consider the Digital Service team at the VA to be part of the USDS; we helped build it. Ellen Ratajak (new eng director at VA) is one of the examples listed on whitehouse.gov/us-digital-service
Hiring bright people isn't enough, we have to empower them by building critical mass on impactful projects with executive support. We were focused on creating a team at the VA when you applied (still are, if you finished stapling yourself), but there are other options now that didn't exist then.
"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?"
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.
On the bright side, it's probably a lateral move as far as government application security goes. And if they're migrating from, e.g. DotNetNuke, probably a net gain.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The fact that you are being down voted is a shame.
The US government tortures people and cares not for the rule of law, this is the entity people seem perfectly happy to support? Where do people draw the line? Is it at genocide?
The problem with statements like this is their total lack of balance.
What I mean is that because of Guantanamo you will have people like this going on the air at Russia TV claiming the US Government is a "criminal organization". Nevermind that you are hearing this from KGB sponsored Russia TV that will not discuss at any length things like genocide of over 1 milion chechens or murders ordered by Putin.
For me, it's a bit like someone in the 1930s going to a German Nazi sponsored radio saying how bad racism is in the USA while not thinking twice about anti-semitism of the Germany.
And then at the end of the day you really end up with people who think USA is horrible because of things like Guantanamo being totally prone to Russian propaganda. When Russia is so, so much worse.
The things aren't in perspective when you get rid of context.
>"The things aren't in perspective when you get rid of context."
Context is not necessary. Torture and murder are never okay. So no matter how much "worse" Russia is over America, we will not excuse either. And you can insert any two countries you like in that example above; it'll still apply.
>Genocide of 1 milion of your own citizens - this is what Putin did. You say American presidents are as bad? Really?!
So in comparison can I say that Sandusky was a pretty swell guy whose indiscrittions were completely blown out of porportion? Or what about Ariel Castro? He was a pretty upstanding citizen who was bullied into suicide by the media and a government giving his actions undue focus (in the grander scheme of things).
I'll agree that often our priorities are screwed up, but these individuals who have hurt tens of people are still very bad people. That their total victims is less than rounding error of the victim counts for worse individuals in no way defends what they have done.
>"So Hitler saying Roosevelt is horrible because of racism in the US is perfectly fine in your book?"
Yes. Additionally, it has no bearing on the bad/horrible things Hitler is/was doing at the time I asked the question. Obviously he can't get a free pass for his evil deeds by saying 'but look, Roosevelt is racist, so what I did is OK'.
>"I wish Americans were so ready to see issues in Russia, Iran, China as they are to see very small errors in the US policy.
Russians are banned to even watch CNN nowadays but you guys buy Russia-TV fed propaganda day and night."
I'm not American, so I can't comment on that part. But in general, I agree with you, people need to be more outraged about everything in general. Whether it's something horrible in Russia, or mildly horrible in America, it should spark outrage/action.
Though there is something to be said about going for the "low-hanging" fruit first. But, let's face it, most people couldn't be arsed to fix their mildly-bad implementation of democracy. What makes you think they'd be willing to try fix the horrible government in a different country/continent?
I will omit other comments you made as I might agree on them or not really care that much.
Here is an important (to me!) point that you made:
>I'm not American, so I can't comment on that part. But in general, I agree with you, people need to be more outraged about everything in general. Whether it's something horrible in Russia, or mildly horrible in America, it should spark outrage/action.
You say people need to be more outraged. I say they need to look into things in a balanced way. If you watch Russia TV only and nothing else, there is a very good chance you will be outraged about a few dozen Guantanamo prisoners being tortured not even knowing at all that they media outlet trying to make you angry about it, is at the same time sponsored by organization (KGB, Russian Government) that took part in a genocide of over 1 milion people. If you listen just to Geobbels and never turn on BBC, you are outraged about wrong stuff (you said that), or your opinions are out of balance (that's what I would say).
The more I consider your argument the worse it becomes.
How many times have we heard politicians complain a foreign country is blaming their problems on outside forces and rallying its people by saying they do what they must to protect themselves from the evil west or whoever?
How is your argument rhetorically different than any demogogue in history? Obama stands up and has the gall to drcry foreign extremism, meanwhile he stands silent on the torture occurring in front of him in his own yard.
War is not peace, despite how often you shout such nonsense.
Again, balance. Let me give you an extreme example to picture my way of thinking about it to you. Again, it is an extreme exaggaration.
We have 1938. The whole world is talking about Nazis. French, Russians, Brits, Argentinians. You name it. There will be a war, we have this maniac Hitler there, blah, blah, blah. Then - as a tourist I suppose let's say a tourist from France - you visit the US. No mention of Hitler in the US newspapers. It turns out that Americans give very little thought to Nazi Germany. Why? Because they are all horrified and talk all the time about this prison where criminals suspected of killing thousands of Americans are kept. Turns out they were tortured.
Here in Europe we have ISIS from the South. Putin from the East. It's not like China wastes their time too, especially when you look at their Navy and what it is doing on Vietnamese, and foremost Japanese territorial waters.
Fear not. Guantanamo. US Government is horrible. As bad as Russian Iranian, or Chinese. Without them we would have world peace. Jesus Christ just look at Guantanamo!!!
And then - being a tourist - you are obviously like: how this happened? Why they are like this? And you check their news outlets. Turns out they watch KGB-TV to get their news and trust it more than their Government.
When I see something like this, I'm like, dude you don't deserve democracy you have. You are too stupid for it. You will be a Jew proudly voting NSDAP. (sorry couldn't help myself)
Chechnya: if I'd need to compare to the US, it would be like the USA invading New Mexico and doing there a genocide to a tune of over 1 milion people (civilians).
So your argument is yeah we torture and murder people without cause but this other guy over there, he tortures and kills even more people so it's okay.
America is also recently responsible for hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties in Iraq and surrounding countries. We continue to support a military junta in Egypt -- anyone want to dredge up Obama's beautiful speech about freedom he made in Cairo?
No one has really responded to my question, how bad must your employer be, apparently torture isn't bad enough, before you refuse to work for him, or at least stop applauding people who sign up to go help out at the torture club.
The problem with people like you is that if we don't do anything inn Syria then you say people die. And if we do something you say because we did something people die.
Also, stop attributing arguments to me and that I'm not making here.
Judged by their actions, American policy makers have zero interest in improving the life's of ordinary civilians throughout the middle east. We ignored Bahrain, we are actively supporting the Egyptian junta, we arm random Syrian rebels, we indisrimately bomb the former remnants of Iraq.
But answer my original question, you seem to be fully willing to work for and defend n entity that tortures and murders without cause, would you also work for a mass genocidal killer? How is it controversial to express repugnance for those willing to abet torture?
"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.
Only _some_ aspects and activities of government are criminal.
We still need someone to build roads and make sure the water stays clean. Arguably, we also need an education system, an oversight of healthcare, a social safety net system and many other things. Working in these capacities helps society in general, and everyday citizens to have better lives.
There are way too many ineffective people in bloated bureaucratic stasis managing these things at the moment, and very much poor and overpriced execution which costs all of us in terms of services received and increased tax burden.
Helping to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of these socially important tasks is a very worthwhile use of work time and is not "working for criminals", as the recipients of this work are the citizens of the country.
>Only _some_ aspects and activities of government are criminal.
States do some "good" things like feeding hungry schoolchildren, but never without first committing some "bad". Typically this is extortion (taxation/"revenue"),but originally states are founded on other forms of aggression like military conquest.
Those who perform "good" tasks like being a teacher or web developer can be forgiven totally.
>We still need someone to build roads
This is the #1 laugher for us anarchist libertarians. Here's a lengthy book if you would like to see the case against road socialism.
Poke around that site and I'm sure you can find many more arguments for each of the things you mistakenly think a free society can't provide.
Please realize that the blind alley is in part thinking that government is a business. It isn't and will never be. It's similar to your local mafioso, just a widely accepted one.
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.
So you don't actually have the conviction to refuse to pay the criminals?
If you really believed what you are saying you would move to another country and give up your US citizenship. Until you take that kind of stand you are just a blowhard.
>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.
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?
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.
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:
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.
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?
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.
>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.
> 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.
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.
> 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 :)
>The Age of the Sturlungs is what Commonwealth devolved into in a relatively short period.
The Commonwealth lasted ~290 years. That's all that's relevant is that a polycentric legal order, one paradigmatically different than the statist one that dominates history has worked and could work again.
Your bloody Sturlunga is evidence of the aggressive nature of the statism you propose as "necessary".
>Ok, apparently you haven't yet read much about economics
Sure homie. Update me when you have read Human Action. To me markets are capitalism, but people equivocate on "capitalism" as also the current statist crony corporatism. Wittgenstein teaches us to be clear about what we mean. If you're not familiar with him it's a simple and important lesson.
Your summary of medieval Iceland displays your ignorance. Go read the article I linked and see Byock from UCLA if you will only crack open mainstream history. Byock supports the history just fails to recognize the polycentric and anarchist interpretation.
The point is that society functioned well and civil order, viz. not the chaos that "anarchy" is assumed, was maintained for longer than the US has existed. In the grand scale of history medieval Iceland succeeded almost 3x as long as the democracy you surely worship has been unquestioned as superior (just ~100 years now).
>Can you actually make a real case in teh real world that "government" in some for is not nesercery?
Let's gloss over that Lex Mercatoria why don't we. Yeah, I missed mentioning my #2 area of knowledge, Xeer customary law in Somalia. The quality of life there has improved vastly despite the UN insurgency (see proof in my past comments from CIA/World Bank stats).
Wait, I can just hear it now, "warlords". I'll spare myself the time responding to ignorant people like you and just drop one more link. Maybe one day I will be bestowed the honor to silence those who disagree and remain happy in my ignorance without reading.
I did read most of the Major Icelandic saga's at school the primary sources and not wikipedia.
and your seriously sugesting that a failed state like Somalia is a good model for civil society.
I used to work for the Uk office of a major Lebanese company and lets say I did not ask to many Q about how we got a kidnapped guy back from beruit - probably some one said well give him back or we have or mates in the phalange make your locality be the next shatilla massacre
Failed state? More like failed UN insurgency and failed propping up government the people don't want going on 20+ years. Anarchy reigns outside of the warzone. Past Galkayo there is quite a lot of peace relative to Mogadishu. Even before Barre's regime failed it is estimated that 80-90% of any state court orders were ignored in preference of Xeer customary law. You don't know the situation here if you can distill it to "failed state" and "warlords".
Who cares you read sagas or whatever about a Lebanese kidnapping?
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.