[HN Gopher] USDS Digital Services Playbook
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USDS Digital Services Playbook
Author : tomrod
Score : 61 points
Date : 2020-12-31 18:59 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (playbook.cio.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (playbook.cio.gov)
| [deleted]
| kqr wrote:
| As an outsider, I hold the USDS in great regard. Probably too
| much because of Marianne Belotti's writings from her time there,
| but also from what I would like to think are more nuanced
| perspectives.
|
| My country does not have anything like it, but what countries do?
| edgefield0 wrote:
| USDS is headed up by Matt Cutts, former senior engineer from
| Google.
| jzwinck wrote:
| Singapore: https://www.tech.gov.sg/
|
| Australia: https://www.dta.gov.au/
| wikibob wrote:
| USDS is modeled after Britain's GDS.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Canada has a similar group:
|
| https://digital.canada.ca/
| ajcp wrote:
| While this is all well and good it feels like a slick "thought
| leadership" campaign that provides little in the way of actual
| solutions to the issues USG orgs face when building/providing
| digital services. The challenge is not the "approach", but rather
| a system that constrains the ability to even begin that approach.
|
| I find #7 especially hollow:
|
| > We need talented people working in government who have
| experience creating modern digital services.
|
| Sure, no one would argue against that, but the solution to this
| can't come from the team implementing or providing the digital
| service. Rather the whole of USG's incredibly obtuse, opaque, and
| inflexible centralized hiring system needs to be addressed. This
| is no better than telling a USA Special Forces team commander
| that in order for his operators to be more effective he needs the
| Army to recruit better soldiers.
| dan-0 wrote:
| > I find #7 especially hollow
|
| I think there's some confusion here on what and how the USDS
| works.
|
| They embed into government organizations to improve services
| and systems, bringing expertise that doesn't normally exist in
| government, while not working directly for the organization
| they're embedded in.
|
| USDS doesn't follow normal hiring practices either. They
| recruit directly for limited employment terms, max of 4 years.
| This helps offset the entrenched beaurocratic mindset that
| exists in a lot of USG organisations, and allows them to
| recruit current experts in a particular field.
|
| From the Special Operations analogy this would be equivalent of
| the Military giving them direct hiring/recruitment ability from
| both the Armed Services and direct from civilian
|
| #7 "Bring in experienced teams" isn't hollow, it's their core
| mission.
| ajcp wrote:
| I think the confusion is not in what the USDS does, but
| rather who their Play Book is intended for. Is it
| prescriptive or descriptive? If it's the former (as I took
| it) then we're not talking about the USDS itself, but the
| USG. If it's the latter then I defer to you, but still don't
| think it solves the structural problems that makes the USDS
| relevant in the first place.
|
| Going back to our US Special Forces team, the US Army
| actually did (attempt)to solve for this by simplifying the
| pipeline with the 18X "X-Ray" Program.
| kelnos wrote:
| A big problem with hiring is just USG pay scales. Even the top
| pay grades come in at less than what an average (or even less
| than average) developer can make in industry. _Much_ less if
| you also consider equity comp.
|
| Sure, there are some people who will see working for USDS or
| 18F as a call to serve their country, and will accept a pay cut
| in order to do that, but I imagine that's a pretty small slice
| of the pie.
|
| Beyond that, it's the bureaucracy. I would honestly consider
| said pay cut in order to help make dealing with government
| computing systems better, but what I will not deal with is
| layers upon layers upon layers of bureaucracy. I've watched the
| 50-person startup I started at 9 years ago evolve into a
| 3500-person public company, and even here I find the
| bureaucracy and hierarchy stifling at times. At a government
| job I imagine it'll be orders of magnitude worse. I wouldn't
| even last half a year in that environment.
|
| Yes, Play #4 in their list in theory suggests that they'll try
| to cut through all that, but I don't believe for a second that
| will go well.
| brdd wrote:
| I disagree -- as a direct result of play #7 in this playbook,
| multiple large-scale initiatives were launched; most notably
| 18F, which is like a "startup" within the federal government:
|
| https://18f.gsa.gov/
|
| Another one that comes to mind is Coding It Forward, which has
| the express mission of creating government tech internships
| that rival FB/Google internships in terms of pay, experience,
| and mentorship:
|
| https://www.codingitforward.com/
| heyitsguay wrote:
| Thanks for sharing! This is all good to know, I'll be
| reaching out to see if there's any possibility of these
| groups helping to address some of the issues within our
| institute at the NIH. Right now it's unclear to what extent
| that can assist an intramural research program.
| ajcp wrote:
| 18F is definitely a good start. I would also try Code for
| America[1], although they might only work at more of a
| local level.
|
| 1. https://www.codeforamerica.org/
| ajcp wrote:
| 18F pre-dates the U.S. Digital Service by 6 months.
|
| Coding It Forward is a civil society initiative, not a
| government one, and is analogous to thinking that a weak
| diplomatic corps can be fixed by sponsoring more high school
| Model U.N. chapters. There is no lack of viable and willing
| candidates _outside_ of the system, the issue is getting them
| _inside_ and letting them inform it.
| heyitsguay wrote:
| Yeah this meshes with my experiences working at the NIH. Lots
| of interest in big data, AI, etc. etc., and even financial
| incentives for new hires in those areas, but absolutely no
| coordinated approach to recruitment, retention, or project
| management. A few labs or support groups end up with great
| teams, but mostly tech knowledge is redundantly siloed in small
| mediocre groups across dozens of teams institutes-wide. And
| that's not even touching on IT issues...
| random5634 wrote:
| The first point would be gamechanging.
|
| Also used to do govt work. I'm sure everyone has stories.
|
| My takeaways.
|
| 1) Understand what people need -> AND LET THEM DO IT.
|
| 2) DO NOT ADD A SINGLE NEW THING with the IT / automation. If the
| old system doesn't have it DO NOT ADD IT. No 20 extra fields for
| demographics if you didn't track that before. That can be added
| later IF it's a MUST.
|
| If they would take away all various fifedoms and hassle - people
| actually would bring a lot more tech into gov. Let the local
| business / division people make a decision. The only requirement
| be that they go through a 1 hr training and be exposed to 3
| packages in their space (ie, do demos no powerpoint).
|
| Take away all other requirements. Be OK with smaller failures.
| Govt is so scared of just letting folks try stuff out that
| everything turns into a 100M project that goes totally of the
| rails in terms of scope etc (ie, what people need / want is long
| forgotten, it's what MANAGERS want that gets emphasized).
|
| Result - even if successful (rarely) for downline workers the
| software brings TONS of extra (not less) work.
|
| ----
|
| My own examples. The IT folks say that passwords have to change
| every 90 days. Google for example does not default to this
| (stupid) rule - they push two factor without SMS (which is
| better). Bam - you are out or have to pay for a "security"
| solution on top of whatever standard platform you are using with
| admin rights that can force rotate passwords (and is a MASSIVE
| backdoor itself vs self-serve password mgmt).
|
| Then purchasing. We need an ipad to edit some videos. OH, Apple
| is not supported. This is 10K employees but you can't get an
| apple product to use unless the city atty will sign off on a
| variance (no chance).
| stevesycombacct wrote:
| I have a lot of heartburn reading something like this. I spent a
| decade in government consulting trying to implement anything
| resembling "data science" or "DevOps" and got repeatedly shut
| down by higher ups or by random bureaucrats that saw any modern
| practices, including any technology, as a threat.
|
| Excel macros working one day, then prohibited the next by new IT
| policies.
|
| Directors demanding that service line bosses meet with me to
| discuss "data-driven decision-making", followed by a solid week
| of said chiefs telling me that my job is a joke.
|
| Actual honest-to-God employees trying to make a difference in
| financial openness having their coworkers walk by their desks and
| loudly shout they "ain't doing that shit" and walking away.
|
| Two years hunting for a database to store 2 GB of data, and only
| finding one when a new contractor onboarded and knew a guy in the
| next office over who would let them have a partition of SQL
| Server.
|
| I wish I was making any of this up. The federal government has
| massive, massive employee culture issues. This list is... a nice
| dream.
| bladegash wrote:
| Have certainly seen and experienced what you did, so I hear
| you. However, there are improvements slowly being made to be
| optimistic about. DevOps (or DevSecOps as they like to refer to
| it now...) is definitely becoming a more ingrained practice. If
| you're interested, take a look at initiatives such as Cloud
| One, or some of the work being done by GSA (especially 18F) and
| USCIS (of all places).
|
| Interestingly, the 21st Century IDEA Act mandates compliance
| with the USWDS now (at least for publicly facing sites) and
| there is a maturity model built around it. We'll see whether or
| not agencies comply, but it's a step in the right direction.
| catillac wrote:
| The USDS doesn't hire people through normal channels or for
| permanent hire, but hires people who have experience in the
| private sector and want to change the government. While it's
| true that they hire significantly more junior people than
| before the trump admin (if you compare things like years of
| experience pre USDS then and now, or pre USDS salaries then and
| now), it's still often experienced people who want to make a
| difference for a short period of time before leaving
| government.
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| I wonder how much the government paid consultants to write this.
| shanear wrote:
| I was a member of the USDS for 4 years. Every member of the
| USDS is a government employee with a fully transparent
| government salary, most of whom are taking a massive pay cut to
| serve their country and its citizens.
| jolux wrote:
| I think the biggest problem any US government agency has (federal
| or state) in producing services that leverage modern technology
| is that they cannot afford to pay people market rates. We have a
| mentality in the US that government cannot do anything right, but
| it seems of late (last 40 years or so) that we are kneecapping
| government's ability to execute and then complaining about it
| when it can't and making pronouncements about how only the
| private sector can understand tech.
|
| Government technology workforces are thus composed largely of
| either people who are below average in competence or above
| average and willing to take a pay cut because they care about the
| cause, but we shouldn't expect people to do that, and there
| aren't very many of them. We should give government a fighting
| chance.
| zippy5 wrote:
| It's one thing to pay a highly competent person 6 figures. It's
| an entirely different thing if you can't fire them. I'm not
| saying that the government doesn't need more competent people
| but it's not going to work if there's a bigger carrot and no
| stick.
| ryanianian wrote:
| Another conclusion based on the same facts is that the
| government has no business doing its own technology and should
| do what they do for weapons and roads: contract it out.
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