I believe the idea is less that "the government can become some kind of silicon valley startup" and more that "the government can get tech projects done without

I believe the idea is less that "the government can become some kind of silicon valley startup" and more that "the government can get tech projects done without involving outside contractors who deliver shit product and charge absurdly high consulting fees" The big consulting firms have zero interest in encouraging good quality development. They will happily sell you another SAP/whatever system that has a few features that match whatever some set of inexperienced managers say they want, and then spend the next five years customising it for every request. They get paid on the number of hours, and the number of hours goes up the more complicated something is, so they have zero problem with the number of stakeholders and meetings and revisions going up, because they bill all of that back. A department like 18F can potentially have a leadership role and say that things should be developed in certain ways (like API standards) and using modern tooling that works across a wider range of devices/browsers/etc.