I hope you are right, but from my experience with government IT I feel its highly unlikely that a top down approach by a bunch of smart people is going to break

I hope you are right, but from my experience with government IT I feel its highly unlikely that a top down approach by a bunch of smart people is going to break through all the horseshit IT fiefdoms in the US government. Billions of dollars are spent every year on government IT stuff, and all those vendors aren't just going to sit quietly while you try to replace their garbage, overpriced BS software that they are charging an arm and a leg for. Maybe if the President has his personal eye on a project something could get done. But the President isn't going to put his personal eye on the USPTO back-end for example. Or the FAA exemptions submission page. Or any of a thousand other points of contact between the public and government.