From this article, it remains unclear to me what 18f is doing and how it's doing it differently from any other IT shop of any other governmental body. I mean, I get that they do it in agile, modular and user-friendly fashion (did you ever see anybody declare otherwise - that they're going to develop in monolithic, lazy and user-hostile fashion? everybody knows the buzzwords) - but what specifically they do and why it is so important to keep doing whatever they do?

Also, it looks like the leadership issues come from the fact that the leader(s), despite declaring themselves to be apolitical, were very much political (they just expected their policy to win so they can pose as apolitical while doing exactly what they wanted), got triggered by Trump being elected and rage-quit the job. Which is entirely within their rights, nobody is obligated to work for Trump or the govt, especially if they hate the guy, but it's not exactly a sign of problems within 18F as such.