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.
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.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/innovationfellows
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Science_and_Technolog...
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Office_of_the_Preside...
[4] https://www.whitehouse.gov/digital/united-states-digital-ser...