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Comment by _fat_santa | Hacker News Reader

Put Mark Cuban to the side for a bit, I think the general idea of 18f going private is a good one and was my first reaction when I heard they were getting dissolved.

EDIT: I think it's a good idea in the context of them getting dissolved. I would much prefer if they continued to exist within the govt, but if the choice is between going private and ceasing to exist, I would prefer they go private and I think it's a good idea in terms of salvaging what they had already built as an org

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I think 18F going private is a terrible idea. The US government should directly employ the people that are responsible for building and owning its core infrastructure.

This is already untrue, leaving 18F aside - lots of core infrastructure is outsourced and the vast agencies are mostly operating or maintaining things. Plus where does that road end - they don’t build their own operating system after all. They have to outsource some of it.

I would argue that companies like Plantir show that it's actually quite viable to be in the private sector while simultaneously serving the public sector. Granted Plantir is primarily military and law enforcement but I would say the overall model could work well for other parts of the govt.

It's important to have some in house expertise to know what to buy from the private sector though.

18F was created by Obama because the way government was contracting private companies wasn't working.

Before 18F the government would pay $5 million to a private company for a basic website and they wouldn't even get it on time.

And it was ignored until Obama's most important legislation, health care, was threatened by a website, written by a private company for a lot of money, didn't work.

So Obama created 18F to fix it and then they expanded 18F mandate to do more fixing.

Clearly, the model of contracting private companies didn't work.

DOGE is literally the same thing. 18F was part of government agency that got renamed with executive order and had their mandate expanded to looking for wasteful government spending.

They just fired a small number of programmers aligned with previous democratic admin (18F) and hired small number of programmers aligned with current republican admin.

Could share why privatization of 18f is good in your eyes? When I heard about the creation of 18f and USDS all those years ago, I remember thinking, finally! It was embarrassing and frankly disheartening to have such crucial public websites and services be so behind the times. Especially when Silicon Valley, the cradle of technical innovation, lied within our borders. Then comes along 18f and all the good work they did too bring a consistent design structure and modernize these crucial public resources with a passion and focus for security and accessibility. Blog articles written by folks who work at 18F work very clearly written by passionate people who care deeply about their work and are more than competent. They had a positive and notable impact on millions of Americans' interactions with digital services.

So why is getting rid of them and going private a good thing?

I guess I should clarify my stance: I think that 18f going private is a good thing _given_ they are being dissolved. I of course would prefer if they stayed inside the govt but if it's between continuing to exist as private entity vs not existing at all, I'll take the former.

Gotcha thank you for the response

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