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Inside the Obama Tech Surge as It Hacks the Pentagon and VA

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Re: Inside the Obama Tech Surge as It Hacks the Pentagon and VA

#21

Post by liyanchang »

GVIrish wrote: post #12

It's heartening to see some new approaches government IT actually getting high level support to make a positive impact. Funnily enough I see someone I used to work with in one of the pictures. Hopefully this will lead to more substantive change to how government IT is done. It's great to have teams that can drop into problem areas with a clear mandate to get things moving, but the whole system needs some serious refo…

Disclosure: I'm an engineer at USDS and these are my own opinions.

You make a great point - USDS is just one part of the solution. In fact, in almost all of the USDS projects, we work very closely with agency employees and contractors (many of which are just as talented and have chosen to serve their country). Most of the times, I spend very little time hands-on-keyboard and helping empower the existing team.

As for the longer term solution, there is a less publicized version of what folks are doing. USDS has a number of contracting officers who are helping teach others in government how to be savvy customers of technology. 18F and GSA have been doing a lot on this front as well to help bring in really good contractors and writing agile purchasing agreements. The Office of Federal CIO is rewriting and simplifying tech policy and the Office of Federal Procurement Policy has been working on the procurement side. These are the long term changes that I'm personally excited about.

Re: Inside the Obama Tech Surge as It Hacks the Pentagon and VA

#22

Post by impostervt »

"U.S. Digital Service salaries are set in accordance with the General Schedule Pay Scale, which is capped at $160,300."

That's not bad, but not great for really high talent employees. I wonder how many people get that rate though.

https://www.usds.gov/join#compensation

Re: Inside the Obama Tech Surge as It Hacks the Pentagon and VA

#23

Post by vonmoltke »

impostervt wrote: post #22

"U.S. Digital Service salaries are set in accordance with the General Schedule Pay Scale, which is capped at $160,300." That's not bad, but not great for really high talent employees. I wonder how many people get that rate though. https://www.usds.gov/join#compensation

I'm not sure that's much of an issue, since it is pretty good money (even in DC) for the 99% of us who aren't "really high talent employees".

Re: Inside the Obama Tech Surge as It Hacks the Pentagon and VA

#24

Post by pjc50 »

GVIrish wrote: post #12

It's heartening to see some new approaches government IT actually getting high level support to make a positive impact. Funnily enough I see someone I used to work with in one of the pictures. Hopefully this will lead to more substantive change to how government IT is done. It's great to have teams that can drop into problem areas with a clear mandate to get things moving, but the whole system needs some serious refo…

The contractors are hamstrung by being contractors. Because the contracting process is adversarial, and geared around a fixed objective against which fixed lowest bids can be made, the kind of iterative development which produces great results is ruled out.

Re: Inside the Obama Tech Surge as It Hacks the Pentagon and VA

#25

Post by cs702 »

liyanchang wrote: post #13
cs702 wrote: post #7

The federal government hires a team of young, talented, motivated engineers and managers, puts them in charge of failed software projects, gives them the resources and authority they require to turns things around, and -- surprise! -- it turns out they do a GREAT job. In hindsight, this shouldn't be too surprising. What might be surprising is that the same logic should apply to ALL government functions, not just soft…

Disclosure: I'm an engineer at USDS and these are my own opinions. So in my admittedly short time in the government [0], I've witnessed how all of these problems are due to good intentions. That's what makes this all really tough because everything you think is bonkers actually has a reason. The 1400 page travel regulations is a result of trying to prevent fraud - every single issue that comes up results in a new rul…

Thank you for posting here.

The same logic applies to all those regulations that seem bonkers.

If you think of all those regulations as a type of source code (which dictates what government employees and citizens can and cannot do, when, and under what conditions), it's clear that a lot of regulatory code needs major refactoring.

To use your example with travel regulations, those 1400 pages designed to prevent fraud likely consist primarily of thousands upon thousands of assertions and if-then statements. I wonder if it would be possible to reduce them to, say, a few dozen pages -- by refactoring all that 'regulatory code' to use different, higher-level abstractions.

Re: Inside the Obama Tech Surge as It Hacks the Pentagon and VA

#26

Post by whybroke »

cs702 wrote: post #7

The federal government hires a team of young, talented, motivated engineers and managers, puts them in charge of failed software projects, gives them the resources and authority they require to turns things around, and -- surprise! -- it turns out they do a GREAT job. In hindsight, this shouldn't be too surprising. What might be surprising is that the same logic should apply to ALL government functions, not just soft…

>...young...

This the first and presumably most important requirement in you opinion? Interesting.

May I ask, how did you extrpolate it was a property of the team at all let alone responsible for its success let alone the first component of that success?

Re: Inside the Obama Tech Surge as It Hacks the Pentagon and VA

#27

Post by sbov »

impostervt wrote: post #22

"U.S. Digital Service salaries are set in accordance with the General Schedule Pay Scale, which is capped at $160,300." That's not bad, but not great for really high talent employees. I wonder how many people get that rate though. https://www.usds.gov/join#compensation

Even if I made more than that in the private sector, I would be willing to take a minor pay cut for this sort of position. If you think about it, you're helping put taxpayer dollars to more efficient use, which includes your own.

Re: Inside the Obama Tech Surge as It Hacks the Pentagon and VA

#29

Post by impostervt »

vonmoltke wrote: post #23
impostervt wrote: post #22

"U.S. Digital Service salaries are set in accordance with the General Schedule Pay Scale, which is capped at $160,300." That's not bad, but not great for really high talent employees. I wonder how many people get that rate though. https://www.usds.gov/join#compensation

I'm not sure that's much of an issue, since it is pretty good money (even in DC) for the 99% of us who aren't "really high talent employees".

True, but I wonder what the "normal" rate is. As in, do they really get that much, or by stating that rate on their website are they really just trying to say "if you make a lot more than this and care a lot about money, don't bother".

Re: Inside the Obama Tech Surge as It Hacks the Pentagon and VA

#30

Post by GVIrish »

liyanchang wrote: post #21
GVIrish wrote: post #12

It's heartening to see some new approaches government IT actually getting high level support to make a positive impact. Funnily enough I see someone I used to work with in one of the pictures. Hopefully this will lead to more substantive change to how government IT is done. It's great to have teams that can drop into problem areas with a clear mandate to get things moving, but the whole system needs some serious refo…

Disclosure: I'm an engineer at USDS and these are my own opinions. You make a great point - USDS is just one part of the solution. In fact, in almost all of the USDS projects, we work very closely with agency employees and contractors (many of which are just as talented and have chosen to serve their country). Most of the times, I spend very little time hands-on-keyboard and helping empower the existing team. As for…

That is great news, I think engaging and training COR's across government could yield some real improvements to how these projects go.

I'm personally seeing some 18F projects come down the pipe that are truly innovative and hopefully will encourage organizations to think differently about IT procurement. Still a lot of silly stuff out there but at least the ship is starting to change heading.

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