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Join the U.S. Digital Service

whitehouse.gov

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Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#101

Post by frabcus »

anarchitect wrote: post #91

Would anyone from the Government Digital Service [1] in the UK care to comment on this? GDS is a world-class operation which has many smart people using modern technology to solve real problems for UK citizens. Much (all?) of the work is open source [2]. [1] https://gds.blog.gov.uk/about/ [2] https://github.com/alphagov

I'm not from GDS - however they're one of our customers at ScraperWiki, and I know lots of the people there (via the digital civics NGO mySociety which we started over 10 years ago).

There's been lots of interest in GDS from the US over the years, people over there saying "why haven't we copied it yet?". As far as I can tell the US Digital Service and 18F are that copying in a good way - taking lots of the lessons from GDS and applying to the US situation.

As an example of the kind of thing, see the UK's Service Design Manual https://www.gov.uk/service-manual - there are sections for developers, designers and so on.

So basically, if you're good at tech, and want better Government websites (who doesn't!), go help them :)

Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#102

Post by sjtrny »

fuzzix wrote: post #95
beerbajay wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Sweden you receive a fully-filled-in tax declaration from the Tax Office. For 99% of people with normal jobs, all you have to do is confirm the declaration on their website OR by sending an SMS OR by calling a telephone number OR by using their app.

Ireland has a Pay As You Earn system which is usually administered by your employer. Mostly, you do nothing and the money is paid. Every 5 years, file a P21 to check you're not due any refunds. If you're self-employed, it's a bloody nightmare.

5 years seems like a long time to wait for a tax refund. Especially tax refunds totalling $2500+ are quite common here in Australia. We have a PAYG system too.

Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#103

Post by trhway »

wpietri wrote: post #6

I have met some of the 18F folks here in San Francisco, and I have gradually become convinced that there is a lot of substance to this effort. People, apparently including people at the highest levels, recognize that information technology has made enormous leaps in the private sector, and they are serious about helping government catch up. One of the most interesting bits to me was something said by Todd Park, a for…

>suspicious that Washington's culture could really accept a lot of the Agile and Lean notions that are commonplace in the high-tech world.

given my experience with thorough, to the letter, under supervision of no-expenses-spared-top-notch experts implementation of Agile/Lean/Scrum - 2 years non-stop across pretty much the whole company, only very-super-important-critical-projects got exception - the government would love it - a lot of planing, reporting, meetings and other crap boggling down everything with actual product development slowing down to the crawl as a result.

Btw, the original healthcare.gov - the one that failed and required that emergency super-team fixing - was developed using Scrum, and as result it had all the characteristics of a Scrum project, chief among them - bad, to the point of straight failure, integration between components.

Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#104

Post by growupkids »

sloanesturz wrote: post #77

I would love to see a program like ROTC -- the government pays for you to get a CS degree and then you work for the Digital Service to start your career. You end up being 26 with a great education and a solid work experience under your belt. Seems like a win-win!

Most ROTC cadets do not have scholarships, and for their first two years they recieve no money. Of those students, only during their 3rd and 4th years do they recieve any funding at all, which is a stipend of approx. $300-500 a month and only once they have signed a contract to commission.

Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#105

Post by joelanman »

I work for the UK Government Digital Service - my views don't necessarily represent my employer.

There are lots of comments here around the idea of whether you would work for a government if you disagreed with their political views.

What I love about working on GDS projects is the potential to improve so many people's lives. People often don't have a choice when it comes to interacting with government - it's often a legal requirement, and there's only one way to do it.

So, even if sometimes I may disagree with aspects of policy, the reality is there is going to be a digital service based on it. And I can help a lot of people by being part of making it as simple as possible.

Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#106

Post by Spearchucker »

anarchitect wrote: post #91

Would anyone from the Government Digital Service [1] in the UK care to comment on this? GDS is a world-class operation which has many smart people using modern technology to solve real problems for UK citizens. Much (all?) of the work is open source [2]. [1] https://gds.blog.gov.uk/about/ [2] https://github.com/alphagov

GDS in the UK is staffed by a lot of ex-Guardian people, and that is telling. They're amazingly good at building web sites, and shockingly bad at enterprise.There's also a lot of ego in the senior technical staff (technical architects).

GDS is very good, but GDS faces some challenges. Introspection takes humility.

Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#107

Post by cjrp »

joelanman wrote: post #105

I work for the UK Government Digital Service - my views don't necessarily represent my employer. There are lots of comments here around the idea of whether you would work for a government if you disagreed with their political views. What I love about working on GDS projects is the potential to improve so many people's lives. People often don't have a choice when it comes to interacting with government - it's often a…

Slightly off-topic, but I'm a big fan of the design and UX improvements that the GDS is bringing to gov't services. Please keep it up!

Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#108

Post by spinchange »

nitrogen wrote: post #94
beerbajay wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Sweden you receive a fully-filled-in tax declaration from the Tax Office. For 99% of people with normal jobs, all you have to do is confirm the declaration on their website OR by sending an SMS OR by calling a telephone number OR by using their app.

I'm guessing the US IRS wants to avoid giving tax frauds an implied list of everything they don't know. They may be worried that anybody with income not listed on their pre-filled declaration will not report it.

Tax frauds already know 'cash' income (sans withholrding) is often not reported so they're already an honor system anyway (Everyone is really -- even 'cash' is often reported on the 1099 too).

People using tax avoidance schemes through itemization or 'loopholes' wouldn't simply use a standard pre-filled form 1040 either, or rather, they wouldn't stop at that. Same goes for corp returns, dividend and interest income, etc.

With U.S. employers already transmitting wage and withholding data to the federal government, there's simply no good excuse not to 'autofill' it and/or just make the reconciliation & acknowledgement of those values easier other than an entire industry is vested in it being a complicated process most people would rather pay them (or use their products and services) to take care of.

Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#109

Post by tfgg »

joelanman wrote: post #105

I work for the UK Government Digital Service - my views don't necessarily represent my employer. There are lots of comments here around the idea of whether you would work for a government if you disagreed with their political views. What I love about working on GDS projects is the potential to improve so many people's lives. People often don't have a choice when it comes to interacting with government - it's often a…

There's also the possibility that, with an established Digital Service, feedback can be given to policy makers to improve the creation of new laws and make them more efficiently implementable. This might mean the difference between a law/policy that can be easily implemented using existing software, or something that has to be done by hand, costing billions - and those policy makers might not realise this.

Relevant XKCD, imagine this with lawmakers: http://xkcd.com/1425/

Re: Join the U.S. Digital Service

#110

Post by domoarevil »

mattste wrote: post #38
epberry wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

If I have the chance to work with talented industry veterans, I'd absolutely love to do a tour of duty after I graduate.

This not a jaunt to Korea or Vietnam, holy moly.
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