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Join the U.S. Digital Service

whitehouse.gov

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Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#11

Post by tdicola »

ekianjo wrote: post #5

> XXX NAME > Engineer, Healthcare.gov Not sure you actually want to put that on record with your own picture there. Knowing what a massive mess the whole thing is.

Actually the team that fixed healthcare.gov got quite a bit of rockstar treatment (deservedly so) and were even on the cover of TIME magazine (sadly the article is behind a paywall now I think: http://time.com/10228/obamas-trauma-team/).

I think the guy that lead them is now the director of the US Digital Services too: http://www.wired.com/2014/08/the-white-house-dickerson/

Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#12

Post by GabrielF00 »

jinushaun wrote: post #2

I'd imagine that this is a hard sell given the govts track record. They want to recruit us, but they still don't get it. Why would we want to work for the bad guys? Why would we want to be second class citizens to clueless politicians that dictate directives from above instead of working in an industry that respects us and views us as leaders?

When I was younger, I spent a year in VISTA (often described as the domestic peace corps, essentially a federal program that places people with non-profit organizations working on issues related to poverty for a very small salary). I worked on a project that offered free wireless Internet for low-income housing. (I now work for a leading tech company). Of course, a non-profit housing organization is not going to have the technological sophistication of a tech company, but if you have a set of skills that the organization doesn't have and needs, then you're not going to be treated as a second class citizen. I had the opportunity to work with and get to know people who I otherwise would not have met, and to understand issues that are completely remote to the tech industry, but that are incredibly important to people's lives. I had the opportunity to be of service to others.

The tech industry is great. At a consumer tech company you get to work on products that people love and are important to their lives. Working for a social service agency can also be great. You get to work on projects that help people that may have a lot of disadvantages.

Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#13

Post by wpietri »

orthecreedence wrote: post #4
jinushaun wrote: post #2

I'd imagine that this is a hard sell given the govts track record. They want to recruit us, but they still don't get it. Why would we want to work for the bad guys? Why would we want to be second class citizens to clueless politicians that dictate directives from above instead of working in an industry that respects us and views us as leaders?

This is kind of my initial reaction. "Bad guys" mentality aside, do I really want to put my skills to use battling some bureaucratic middle-man telling me how to do my job? I mean, hopefully the program is really effective and creates a very concrete high-level goal and lets the tech creators go wild and do their thing, but I really do imagine it being bogged down by nonsense.

I asked about this very thing, and the people I talked to definitely recognize there's a chicken-and-egg problem. To get good people, they need good environments. And to get good environments, they need good people. I know they're working on it. I don't know enough to say whether they'll make it, but I have a lot of hope.

Also, long ago I did a contract for a state government. There was definitely some nonsense. But honestly, I was surprised how many sincere public servants there were. Sure, there were people who seemed useless, and there were definitely perverse incentives at times. But our project managed to get something useful and exciting done (on time and within budget, even) mainly because there were people at all levels of the government who really believed in doing good things for the state and its citizens. It was a very positive experience, and I can imagine something similar happening here.

Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#15

Post by nyolfen »

chrissnell wrote: post #7
jinushaun wrote: post #2

I'd imagine that this is a hard sell given the govts track record. They want to recruit us, but they still don't get it. Why would we want to work for the bad guys? Why would we want to be second class citizens to clueless politicians that dictate directives from above instead of working in an industry that respects us and views us as leaders?

Why? "You can do a hell of a lot more damage in the system than out of it." - "Stevo", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oi2y9-Mxq-0 But seriously, government is what we make of it. We can sit here as sheep and accept the way that we're governed or we can take the leap and try to change it by joining it. I can't promise that it will ever get better if you sign up to help but I can promise that it won't if you don't.

engineers don't set policy

Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#16

Post by danso »

While I've been initially skeptical of the White House's digital efforts because of my assumption that tech development, especially when it comes to public information, will always be handicapped by bureaucracy and politics...the 18F group has been doing some great work, the kind that is not at all a bad standard for private startups to follow...certainly much better than the kind of things that were rolling out in 2009-2010 (such as the overhyped petitions.whitehouse.gov and the first CTO's pushing of Drupal)

The 18F Github contains a lot of interesting work, with reliance on contemporary frameworks and practices (Jekyll seems to be their choice for microsites) https://github.com/18f

I loved 18F's work with overhauling the Federal Register site (https://www.federalregister.gov/)...and even if you think the federal government's data efforts are paltry...then you haven't seen what existed before 2009...which is pretty much nothing. The wide array of data and information that has been machine-readable and public accessible via the Internet is pretty astonishing, and while I doubt that President Obama has made it a point to keep tabs on his IT, whoever has been whispering in his ear has been very effective.

Edit: a cool project I noticed on 18F's github: https://github.com/18f/mirage ...a Django/PostgreSQL project to assist procurement officers in surveying the market for vendors...another 18F repo contains the Chef recipe for its deployment.

Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#17

Post by sliverstorm »

tdaltonc wrote: post #14

It would be really great to fix the IRS's digital presence. Make TurboTax obsolete. I hate TurboTax.

Same goes for the DMV, as well as countless other citizen-facing government orgs. Math & administration is really the roots of computing.

Edit: I'm rather unclear what is objectionable here.

Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#20

Post by epberry »

inmygarage wrote: post #8

I saw Mikey Dickerson (in the video) speak to a group of ~200 people last summer about the work that he and his team did on healthcare.gov. He was at Google for nearly 8 years and left to run the recovery team for healthcare.gov. Their team is the real deal -- they saved the site in just a few months and now over 6 million people have signed up. Read the Time Magazine story for the full account. He does not seem like…

I agree. I wonder if they're willing to take people straight out of college. I'd be interested in doing a short "tour of duty".
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