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What exactly did Obama accomplish with the Digital Service? It's an honest question, seems like he's more known for literally every single agency getting hacked

by 65827 10y ago

What exactly did Obama accomplish with the Digital Service? It's an honest question, seems like he's more known for literally every single agency getting hacked and their inability to launch a healthcare website, what have been the accomplishments that weren't reported as much?

dj-wonk 10y ago
When I hear questions such as "what did person P accomplish with X?" I like to reframe them. To assess the value of intervention X, one may want to compare the actual effect (E1) with some estimates of what would have happened (E2) if X did not happen. If one does not use a comparison of this manner, one probably is not distinguishing between luck and causation.
- dj-wonk 10y ago
  To answer my own question, without the Digital Service, I would estimate that: * Existing agencies would struggle to assemble a talented, motivated critical mass of software developers. Why? Attracting these kinds of developers requires cultural shifts and 'economies of people' (to riff on the term 'economies of scale'.) It also requires a concerted effort on hiring and knowing how to slot skilled technologists in government pay scales. Not all (few?) agencies have figured out to make this happen. * Existing agencies would likely continue to procure work as before; e.g. through a maze of procurement and perhaps through some (limited, if any) internal development resources. I would welcome a continuation of this line of thinking from those who have worked closely with and/or observed the USDS.
  - sjg007 10y ago
    Well there have always been contractors but the ACA health exchanges had to work.. the first attempt did not, why because they were contractors and as one could surmise not actually effective at scale. So bring in the digital service who did things as they should have been done... This can be as simple as code to spec vs take ownership and go above and beyond. And it worked. It had to. In the next administration Palantir is going to clean up.. why b/c of Thiel and because of current contractor ineffectiveness. The Digital 18F will survive but it's not clear that the agencies they serve will.
cyberferret 10y ago
This TEDx talk by Heather van Dyck [0] will explain how they rebuilt the VA benefits sites to reduce the processing time from an average of 150+ days and over 1000 different website pages to a single site that could process claims in a few days. [0] - https://www.ted.com/talks/haley_van_dyck_how_a_start_up_in_the_white_house_is_changing_business_as_usual/transcript?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/haley_van_dyck_how_a_start_up_in_t...
sjg007 10y ago
The ones that haven't been hacked are those that are still on ancient air gapped technologies (msdos/vax). This is likely a major benefit in retrospect.
linkregister 10y ago
U.S. government networks have been exploited since they were interconnected with outside nodes; [1][2][3] this should not be linked with any U.S. president's tenure. The USDS's major accomplishment appears to be modernizing the White House's IT infrastructure [4], which was embarrassingly obsolete. According to its website, the Digital Service has been automating internal government processes, most notably Veterans Affairs and U.S. Customs and Immigration Services. [5] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo's_Egg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo's_Egg [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_Maze https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_Maze [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Rain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Rain [4] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/04/us/politics/technology-upgrades-get-white-house-out-of-the-20th-century.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/04/us/politics/technology-up... [5] https://www.usds.gov/ https://www.usds.gov/

by 65827 10y ago

dj-wonk 10y ago

When I hear questions such as "what did person P accomplish with X?" I like to reframe them. To assess the value of intervention X, one may want to compare the actual effect (E1) with some estimates of what would have happened (E2) if X did not happen. If one does not use a comparison of this manner, one probably is not distinguishing between luck and causation.

dj-wonk 10y ago
To answer my own question, without the Digital Service, I would estimate that: * Existing agencies would struggle to assemble a talented, motivated critical mass of software developers. Why? Attracting these kinds of developers requires cultural shifts and 'economies of people' (to riff on the term 'economies of scale'.) It also requires a concerted effort on hiring and knowing how to slot skilled technologists in government pay scales. Not all (few?) agencies have figured out to make this happen. * Existing agencies would likely continue to procure work as before; e.g. through a maze of procurement and perhaps through some (limited, if any) internal development resources. I would welcome a continuation of this line of thinking from those who have worked closely with and/or observed the USDS.
- sjg007 10y ago
  Well there have always been contractors but the ACA health exchanges had to work.. the first attempt did not, why because they were contractors and as one could surmise not actually effective at scale. So bring in the digital service who did things as they should have been done... This can be as simple as code to spec vs take ownership and go above and beyond. And it worked. It had to. In the next administration Palantir is going to clean up.. why b/c of Thiel and because of current contractor ineffectiveness. The Digital 18F will survive but it's not clear that the agencies they serve will.

cyberferret 10y ago

This TEDx talk by Heather van Dyck [0] will explain how they rebuilt the VA benefits sites to reduce the processing time from an average of 150+ days and over 1000 different website pages to a single site that could process claims in a few days. [0] - https://www.ted.com/talks/haley_van_dyck_how_a_start_up_in_the_white_house_is_changing_business_as_usual/transcript?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/haley_van_dyck_how_a_start_up_in_t...

sjg007 10y ago

The ones that haven't been hacked are those that are still on ancient air gapped technologies (msdos/vax). This is likely a major benefit in retrospect.

linkregister 10y ago

U.S. government networks have been exploited since they were interconnected with outside nodes; [1][2][3] this should not be linked with any U.S. president's tenure. The USDS's major accomplishment appears to be modernizing the White House's IT infrastructure [4], which was embarrassingly obsolete. According to its website, the Digital Service has been automating internal government processes, most notably Veterans Affairs and U.S. Customs and Immigration Services. [5] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo's_Egg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo's_Egg [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_Maze https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_Maze [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Rain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Rain [4] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/04/us/politics/technology-upgrades-get-white-house-out-of-the-20th-century.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/04/us/politics/technology-up... [5] https://www.usds.gov/ https://www.usds.gov/