7 ms·

Why I’m staying at 18F

124 points by rch 10y ago

tmaly 10y ago
the title threw me off. I thought it was going to be about someone saying they would not change their a/s/l on chat.
- coldpie 10y ago
  Here I was thinking it was an awfully cold office temperature.
  - noobermin 10y ago
    18 F is -8°C
- tmaly 10y ago
  why the down vote for use of humor?
  - justusthane 10y ago
    I didn't downvote you, but probably because it didn't contribute anything to the discussion.
  - Blackthorn 10y ago
    This isn't Reddit or Slashdot, it's not enough to cause a mild chuckle. Also your humor isn't very funny.
  - dwaltrip 10y ago
    These days, the only jokes that I've noticed not being downvoted are those that are a certain brand of witty and intellectual. Or they at least give the appearance of contributing to the discussion, even it doesn't survive detailed scrutiny. This cultural dynamic seems to work out alright, given the other characteristics of HN. It would be hard to do better I think. Overall, I'm personally pretty happy with the level of discourse on HN. I'm surprised that you are surprised, being a member for 6+ years. Was it different before?
untog 10y ago
This is the optimistic view. But it isn't difficult to imagine a Republican congress drastically cutting the funding available to teams like 18F. Of course, time will tell, and I agree that it's too early to judge yet.
- andrefrancisco 10y ago
  Fortunately, 18F isn't funded by Congress. Agencies pay us for our services out of their own budgets. As long as we keep delivering good work, our funding is secure. *I'm an 18F employee.
  - wyldfire 10y ago
    Do the agencies themselves realize the subtle benefits of UI/UX changes to websites, TLS, etc? I don't know exactly what all 18F does but it seems like those are among the features I see changing (and appreciate).
    - andrefrancisco 10y ago
      Certainly. Lots of agencies have to process forms submitted by the public, and when people have trouble filling out forms it makes processing them much more difficult. We've been able to show that better UX leads to better quality information. Like with our work with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/09/08/reimagining-the-immigration-process/ https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/09/08/reimagining-the-immigration-p...
    - monknomo 10y ago
      Certainly line offices do, although in my experience HQ is in the process of transitioning away from the mindset that IT means MS Word installs and security management. I've been watching a transition from line office hosted CMS to an HQ hosted CMS and it has been informative how off the mark their assessment of what the agency actually does has been.
      - wyldfire 10y ago
jakozaur 10y ago
True, a lot of work you do in any government has very little do to with any political agenda. In fact many officials rarely pursue things that make the headlines.
petercooper 10y ago
Sounds reasonable. I don't know about US politics, but in the UK the civil service is (meant to be) independent of party politics and civil servants are meant to impartial and work with whoever the government happens to be (indeed, it's even a half-joke that the civil service actually controls the politicians who are merely public figureheads).
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- ep103 10y ago
  I was taught in high school, that its basically the same here. Though with every election, the incoming politicians make a big deal of replacing various department heads. Its the main reason that government jobs are intended to be unioned and tenured, ie, to protect them from political whimsy. But expect that to come under fire in the next 6 months, unfortunately.
  - andrefrancisco 10y ago
    It’s less about unions and more about classifications of employees. Most federal employees are either “career” or “political” positions. Political positions are typically replaced by each new administration, while career employees stay, regardless of union status. *I’m a federal employee.
- huac 10y ago
  The UK parliamentary system makes alliances necessary and difficult for any particular party to seize total control of power. Hence, the work that civil servants perform is unlikely to change between Prime Ministers. In America, well, Jeff Sessions is about to be the Attorney General.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > The UK parliamentary system makes alliances necessary and difficult for any particular party to seize total control of power. The Parliamentary system means that there is no separation of powers, so "total control of power" just means a parliamentary majority, and most governments have been one-party majority governments (there have been a few coalition governments, such as the LibDem-Tory coalition that Cameron started with, but they are the exception, not the rule.) Now, if the UK had proportional representation, even with a parliamentary system, that might make one party acheiving total control more difficult than in the US, and enough parliamentary systems are also PR that people sometimes conflate the effects of the two features.
geofft 10y ago
> Politicians may (and will) disagree passionately on what government should do. But they all say that for whatever the government does, we should do it well. I'm not sure how far that can hold. That works if you believe that the government, regardless of which politicians are in power, is doing good work in good faith. I might think that (for instance) universal healthcare is more important than airport security and we'd be fine with pre-9/11 airport security standards, but given that that's not happening, I still support making airport security more effective and more painless. But if you fundamentally disagree about whether the government should do a thing—like, say, whether we should move towards amnesty or deportation for people who have illegally immigrated here—it doesn't follow that you should say "Fine, if we're deporting people, at least we should deport them well." Or if you think it's immoral for government to fund abortions, you wouldn't conclude "Well okay, at least we should do a top-notch job of funding abortions." Would it not be better for government to do its job poorly? 18F in particular seems like it is prone to the same danger always present in private-sector tech: technology helps social changes happen faster and more effectively, but it has nothing to say about whether the social changes are good or not. Technology enables us everything from unbreakable encryption to trivial government surveillance; it has no opinion on whether unbreakable encryption or trivial government surveillance should exist. If you're worried about that, you either need to move out of pure technology development, or you need to impede the production of dangerous technology (which is guaranteed to be a losing battle).
- webmaven 10y ago
  > which is guaranteed to be a losing battle Not necessarily. You aren't always trying to stop a particular tech development, just slow it enough to make sure that defending remains easier/cheaper than attacking (in some ways, this is the underlying dynamic of civilization), even though the targets are always moving.
- schreiaj 10y ago
  I think there's a world of difference in how the statement was intended and your examples. Personally I read it more as "If this is going to happen anyway we should make it as efficient and pleasant as possible to those impacted" Yeah, getting deported would suck but there are things in the process that could make the experience a lot less dehumanizing and cruel. Things as simple as making sure the person understands the proper pathway to legally immigrating. And even more important would be making sure that the proper pathway is properly documented and easily understandable. I do agree with you that technology (and some tech people) don't seem to care if the change they are enabling is positive or not.
Animats 10y ago
The real question is whether the incoming administration wants the government to work well. That's what 18F is about. There are many Republicans in Congress who don't want Government services to work effectively. Mr. Trump, though, may not think that way. He does like to fire people who underperform.
- locopati 10y ago
  Weird that he didn't fire himself a long time ago then.
simooooo 10y ago
Who is this guy? Why does anyone care?

124 points by rch 10y ago

tmaly 10y ago

the title threw me off. I thought it was going to be about someone saying they would not change their a/s/l on chat.

coldpie 10y ago
Here I was thinking it was an awfully cold office temperature.
- noobermin 10y ago
  18 F is -8°C
tmaly 10y ago
why the down vote for use of humor?
- justusthane 10y ago
  I didn't downvote you, but probably because it didn't contribute anything to the discussion.
- Blackthorn 10y ago
  This isn't Reddit or Slashdot, it's not enough to cause a mild chuckle. Also your humor isn't very funny.
- dwaltrip 10y ago
  These days, the only jokes that I've noticed not being downvoted are those that are a certain brand of witty and intellectual. Or they at least give the appearance of contributing to the discussion, even it doesn't survive detailed scrutiny. This cultural dynamic seems to work out alright, given the other characteristics of HN. It would be hard to do better I think. Overall, I'm personally pretty happy with the level of discourse on HN. I'm surprised that you are surprised, being a member for 6+ years. Was it different before?

untog 10y ago

This is the optimistic view. But it isn't difficult to imagine a Republican congress drastically cutting the funding available to teams like 18F. Of course, time will tell, and I agree that it's too early to judge yet.

andrefrancisco 10y ago
Fortunately, 18F isn't funded by Congress. Agencies pay us for our services out of their own budgets. As long as we keep delivering good work, our funding is secure. *I'm an 18F employee.
- wyldfire 10y ago
  Do the agencies themselves realize the subtle benefits of UI/UX changes to websites, TLS, etc? I don't know exactly what all 18F does but it seems like those are among the features I see changing (and appreciate).
  - andrefrancisco 10y ago
    Certainly. Lots of agencies have to process forms submitted by the public, and when people have trouble filling out forms it makes processing them much more difficult. We've been able to show that better UX leads to better quality information. Like with our work with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/09/08/reimagining-the-immigration-process/ https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/09/08/reimagining-the-immigration-p...
  - monknomo 10y ago
    Certainly line offices do, although in my experience HQ is in the process of transitioning away from the mindset that IT means MS Word installs and security management. I've been watching a transition from line office hosted CMS to an HQ hosted CMS and it has been informative how off the mark their assessment of what the agency actually does has been.
    - wyldfire 10y ago

jakozaur 10y ago

True, a lot of work you do in any government has very little do to with any political agenda. In fact many officials rarely pursue things that make the headlines.

petercooper 10y ago

Sounds reasonable. I don't know about US politics, but in the UK the civil service is (meant to be) independent of party politics and civil servants are meant to impartial and work with whoever the government happens to be (indeed, it's even a half-joke that the civil service actually controls the politicians who are merely public figureheads).

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
ep103 10y ago
I was taught in high school, that its basically the same here. Though with every election, the incoming politicians make a big deal of replacing various department heads. Its the main reason that government jobs are intended to be unioned and tenured, ie, to protect them from political whimsy. But expect that to come under fire in the next 6 months, unfortunately.
- andrefrancisco 10y ago
  It’s less about unions and more about classifications of employees. Most federal employees are either “career” or “political” positions. Political positions are typically replaced by each new administration, while career employees stay, regardless of union status. *I’m a federal employee.
huac 10y ago
The UK parliamentary system makes alliances necessary and difficult for any particular party to seize total control of power. Hence, the work that civil servants perform is unlikely to change between Prime Ministers. In America, well, Jeff Sessions is about to be the Attorney General.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > The UK parliamentary system makes alliances necessary and difficult for any particular party to seize total control of power. The Parliamentary system means that there is no separation of powers, so "total control of power" just means a parliamentary majority, and most governments have been one-party majority governments (there have been a few coalition governments, such as the LibDem-Tory coalition that Cameron started with, but they are the exception, not the rule.) Now, if the UK had proportional representation, even with a parliamentary system, that might make one party acheiving total control more difficult than in the US, and enough parliamentary systems are also PR that people sometimes conflate the effects of the two features.

geofft 10y ago

> Politicians may (and will) disagree passionately on what government should do. But they all say that for whatever the government does, we should do it well. I'm not sure how far that can hold. That works if you believe that the government, regardless of which politicians are in power, is doing good work in good faith. I might think that (for instance) universal healthcare is more important than airport security and we'd be fine with pre-9/11 airport security standards, but given that that's not happening, I still support making airport security more effective and more painless. But if you fundamentally disagree about whether the government should do a thing—like, say, whether we should move towards amnesty or deportation for people who have illegally immigrated here—it doesn't follow that you should say "Fine, if we're deporting people, at least we should deport them well." Or if you think it's immoral for government to fund abortions, you wouldn't conclude "Well okay, at least we should do a top-notch job of funding abortions." Would it not be better for government to do its job poorly? 18F in particular seems like it is prone to the same danger always present in private-sector tech: technology helps social changes happen faster and more effectively, but it has nothing to say about whether the social changes are good or not. Technology enables us everything from unbreakable encryption to trivial government surveillance; it has no opinion on whether unbreakable encryption or trivial government surveillance should exist. If you're worried about that, you either need to move out of pure technology development, or you need to impede the production of dangerous technology (which is guaranteed to be a losing battle).

webmaven 10y ago
> which is guaranteed to be a losing battle Not necessarily. You aren't always trying to stop a particular tech development, just slow it enough to make sure that defending remains easier/cheaper than attacking (in some ways, this is the underlying dynamic of civilization), even though the targets are always moving.
schreiaj 10y ago
I think there's a world of difference in how the statement was intended and your examples. Personally I read it more as "If this is going to happen anyway we should make it as efficient and pleasant as possible to those impacted" Yeah, getting deported would suck but there are things in the process that could make the experience a lot less dehumanizing and cruel. Things as simple as making sure the person understands the proper pathway to legally immigrating. And even more important would be making sure that the proper pathway is properly documented and easily understandable. I do agree with you that technology (and some tech people) don't seem to care if the change they are enabling is positive or not.

Animats 10y ago

The real question is whether the incoming administration wants the government to work well. That's what 18F is about. There are many Republicans in Congress who don't want Government services to work effectively. Mr. Trump, though, may not think that way. He does like to fire people who underperform.

locopati 10y ago
Weird that he didn't fire himself a long time ago then.

simooooo 10y ago

Who is this guy? Why does anyone care?