Let me know if folks have any questions, but I left Google on Dec. 31, 2016.
1: https://www.google.com/search?q=SF-86+breach+opm&ie=utf-8&oe...
Second question: What level of clearance do your direct reports require? Secret? TS?
There is a background check process as part of joining USDS, but we keep looking at ways to make signing up easier, e.g. trying to make the process faster.
Why is it good to make it easy to enlist in the military?
How do you weigh that against the risk of injury, death, or PTSD, as well as the civlian casualties of US wars?
To be specific - do you believe Iraq Body Count or the Lancet surveys, and how many civilians would have to have been killed in the second Iraq war for you to think it would be a net ethical negative to make it easier to enlist?
In the U.S., the decision to go to war is made by civilians: the President and (ideally) Congress. Below the President, the top military decision-maker/administrator -- Secretary of Defense -- is also a civilian. All the people in the country could sign up and join the military and yet have no authority to actually go to war.
But I'm not naive: the decision to go to war is made easier when the commander-in-chief has a capable and willing army to command. I teach a programming class and I like to talk about "real world" algorithms, such as the Vietnam War draft and lottery [0], a tragicomical example of how hard it is to generate random numbers. But the algorithmic thinking is not just the details of the lottery, but why the lottery was the needed algorithm in the first place. The answer: because not enough people want to volunteer for war. And random selection seems to be the only way to raise an army without angering the citizenry.
Now that we have a volunteer army, there are new algorithms in play. Such as where to focus recruitment efforts based on demographic makeup of people who currently volunteer. This is all to say that as bad as the draft was, a volunteer army doesn't make things hunky dory. And why should we settle for anything less than the quip, "What if they gave a war and nobody came"?
So yeah, I see the rationale for not making the military easy to join. OTOH, I still think that the prospect of war -- and the use of military force in matters of diplomacy -- is a reality we have to live in. Making the military more smoothly administered does not necessarily correlate with an increase in horrors of war. If the military attracts good people, then that means there is the chance of having good people in the chain of command.
To go off on a tangent, better military technology hasn't always resulted in more war. The atomic bomb was used to wreak horror; on the other hand, the prospect of nuclear war seems to have stifled the kind of "great" wars we've had since Hiroshima.
So to answer your question: I think it's too simplistic to think of a better military as being a net negative, if we accept the realities of the current world.
Certainly making enlistment harder will decrease the number of troops (absent a draft) which has a non-zero probability of decreasing military adventurism, yes?
Discouraging a single enlistment seems to me like it has the same order-of-magnitude impact as casting a single vote.
> If the military attracts good people, then that means there is the chance of having good people in the chain of command.
How does making enlistment easier increase the percentage of volunteers that are good people?
> I think it's too simplistic to think of a better military as being a net negative
Do you think more recruits means a "better" military?
Until then, you'd be tightening the freedom of the military to turn people away, which means lowered standards. There is a case to be made that you want the best possible people to join the military. Because you need a certain level of intelligence and moral integrity to, for example, refuse unlawful orders.
In fact, that mechanism used to be the top argument for the draft in my country (Germany). "Pacifists make the best soldiers" so-to-speak (although pacifists were in reality exempt from service).
I have no statistics, but I imagine the combat duty to total enlistment ratios make it a very calculated risk.
That seems like a problem in and of itself, and certainly a more pressing one.
I think a volunteer force is preferable to a conscripted force.
If there was a lottery, pushback from casualties would come from more people in upper classes that could cause real problems for politicians and generals. Could even be their own kids sent there. Switching to a "volunteer" military in an increasingly-shitty economy sweeps lots of their problems under the rug. ;)
Best of luck as your journey there continues.
Personally I've judged the quality of incoming political appointees, and I would chafe at working under leadership I could not respect.
In my worst imagination, I would be holding down a desk until it could be filled by the employees of well-connected contractors.
You describe it as "incredibly frustrating" now. How do you think you can keep that work "deeply important and inspiring"?
I think the mission of the US Digital Service is fundamentally non-partisan: we want to make government work better for the American people. When a veteran can apply for health benefits online, they have a better experience. But it also saves the money from them driving to see someone in person. There's so much work like that to do that everyone agrees will make the government better, more responsive, and more efficient.
I also think the USDS has built up some reputation and trust because of the good work that it's been able to do so far. I'm heartened when folks like Kevin McCarthy (majority leader in the House of Representatives) tweet things like this: https://twitter.com/gopleader/status/796823547343736837
At Google, I didn't always agree with what the CEO decided to do, like shutting down Google Reader. Sigh. But there was a ton of important work to do, and concentrating on the common ground made it possible to do really good things.
And there it is. One of many reasons I'll never work for the government again. The government is so PC-sensitive that dude can't even post on HN without a mildly disguised form of legalese. When I was in the Air Force, everything I said had to be prefaced with
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Air force, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
One might think this is a minor complaint but after years of death by 1,000 cuts, you just can't take it anymore.
I wonder, in retrospect, if causing that backlash would still not be seen as a mistake.
Sadly I don't think this is a non-partisan goal these days.
Couldn't most agencies claim the same?
While I've got you, are there 2-3 things that you would most like to see on vets.gov in the future?