Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Much has been made of the Google guy in Washington running the US Digital Service. The USDS is not needed and won’t succeed.

There is a lot of splash in the regular media these days about the US Digital Service. Our government has recruited stars from Silicon Valley, brought them to the District of Columbia, and even let them go without wearing a tie. Wowee!

Okay, now it is time for a grouchy old man to pooh pooh all of this. The USDS (that’s the cool acronym people are using instead of saying the entire name) will wander about our Federal government and help agencies build cool websites really fast and really cheap. This will all be much better than that, well, hmmm, you know (whisper tones) health care dot gov (now return to regular tone) website.

As I have blogged before, that website would be an excellent teaching example for software developers, but because it is tied to health care, something all of us desire and something many of us argue concerning the details, it is not a good teaching example.Anyways, health care dot gov cost almost $1Billion. We need some Silicon Valley I-don’t-even-tuck-my-dirty-shirt-in-my-pants expertise, right? Wrong.

There are a few thousand software project managers in the Washington D.C. area who could have walked into the billion-dollar website project and spotted and described the problems in five minutes. Guess what—no one would have listened to them either.

One anecdote: I attended a project manager luncheon during the summer of 2013. Sitting next to me was a person who had been working on that billion-dollar website project. The person quit their job in a weak, high-unemployment economy because they couldn’t stand working on the project any longer. It was killing them mentally, emotionally, and physically. That billion-dollar website was what some of us old people call a death march project.

So now we have a USDS that will help all the agencies. How do you spell failure? I have 30 years experience in and around the US Federal government. Here is how the USDS will fail.

<Start of sad story.>

The USDS walks in the office of the CIO of an agency.

USDS: I am here to help you with your current website project.

Agency CIO: Says aloud, “Glad to meet you.” Thinks quietly, “Oh no, who let this person in?”

USDS: How are things going?

Agency CIO: Says aloud, “Things are fine here.” Thinks quietly, “This place is a disaster, but I am not going to tell this hotshot. The first thing he’ll do is tell people in the White House what a mess this is, and I will be blamed for everything. I did choose the people to do the work, and that was the worst decision of my life, but I’m not stupid. I know how things work here. My face will be on the front page of the Washington Post as I squirm and feign ignorance in front of a Congressional hearing.”

<End of sad story.>

Perhaps the USDS will do some good. The best case is for the USDS to walk into the office of an agency’s CIO where this CIO has just arrived and has noticed the disaster that the prior CIO made. The new CIO is guilt free if s/he:

• yells “disaster” very quickly
• calls the USDS immediately
• gives all credit to the White House for the USDS success

You see, this is the sad state of affairs in Federal IT and everything else the Federal government does. I know it sounds cynical, but I have lived it too long to not see it.