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Comment by geofft | Hacker News Reader

I'm worried about 18F/USDS/etc. because of the freeze on federal hiring. Partly I have friends there, but mostly, those organizations need to exist if government is going to be effective. They're getting things done, and they're also taking business away from government contractors who don't get things done (i.e., saving significant taxpayer money).

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USDS, in its current form, is probably toast. It was a special initiative of Obama and is housed directly within his executive office. To my knowledge it exists solely at the President's discretion. Trump is not a digital guy, and not likely to want to hold over Obama folks (and vice versa).

18F is housed within GSA and so is somewhat isolated from political interference. That said, private contractors don't like it and will seek to label it as a wasteful project (already started--there was an attack article on HN last week).

The U.S. federal government under Obama had started to take some small steps toward modern digital competency. My expectation for a Trump administration is a complete reversal of that. Who's going to champion technology? Trump?? Mike Pence? Giuliani? And how many young talented developers are going to want to take a pay cut to eat bureaucratic shit in DC for Donald Trump? The allure for USDS was Obama himself.

I disagree on USDS. My understanding is that the money to fund USDS is already appropriated through the end of 2017, and there is bipartisan support to extend that money. A bill was introduced to do just that, actually (though nothing has been done with it since it was referred to committee). Lots of people like USDS on both sides of the aisle because it actually does make things more efficient.

Not saying it will survive an entire Trump presidency, but I think it's not on the chopping block immediately. I do worry that they won't be able to expand as planned though to have mini-USDS people in each Agency because of the hiring freeze.

Mikey Dickerson, the head of USDS, spoke at Velocity Conf in NYC this Sept and he was hinting that the organization was done for after this administration comes to a close. It will be a shame if this is true, as his group is a shining example of great work being done for the people and something to be proud of and continued.

Here is his presentation: https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/two-years-of-the-us-digital-se...

From my understanding, a lot of the USDS effectiveness has been made possible because of the implicit mandate from the president. Everyone knows that Obama wants USDS to succeed, so they listen up when the USDS folks speak.

Without that sort of personal investment from the president (or someone else very high up), I don't know how effective the USDS can be, even if it is funded. In my experience the main ingredient in organizational change is will, not technological know-how.

And again, the question is who in technology wants to be associated with a Trump administration. Even the tech-savvy Republicans I know cannot stand Trump. Maybe that will change as the reality sinks in.

A popular approach from many is to make government ineffective. Not joking. It's at the crux of Republican proposals for 8-12 years.

Then, add to that the fact that these people are ensuring the big pigs don't get to eat at the trough? Yeah, not looking good.

I think I would be looking for a private gig right now if I were in 18F/USDS.

They're fucked. They likely won't lose their jobs, but they won't be able to expand or replace attrition. We've seen this movie before, during the downturn, and evidence points to 4 years (or more) of this crap.

Trump has expressed a preference for private industry to do things for the government, because they do it better. Accenture, Deloitte and KPMG are prolly the federal IT of the future

That's not awful, btw. The one upside of a large consulting firm is you can retain decent talent for boring projects by bouncing them around between assignments.... but you still have a single entity to hold accountable afterwards.

Plus a certain percentage of these people take the diverse base of experience and go start something useful. Teaching a bunch of smart, ambitious people about how the process actually works and then letting them go start their own operation seems like a recipe for job creation.... (and finding better ways to replace the status quo)

The trouble is that the government systems that are created are typically something only the government can/wants to do. Like "a system for issuing a permit" or "a system for quantifying the impact of permits issued". I think there is a more limited chance at job creation than you might think.

Also, in practice, contractors build a thing as fast as they can, then leave and never come back. Agencies that lean heavily on contractors generally don't have a deep bench of technical talent, so they get stuck with a maintenance nightmare that they didn't build and have a hard time understanding.

My feeling is that contractors tend to build differently than people who will have to support the system for however long the law it is enacting exists...

This happened during the Reagan administration. The money doesn't disappear, it just moves elsewhere.

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