The Biden administration is making an important early commitment to Obama's government tech 'startup'
By Belle Lin
When the incoming Biden-Harris administration announced its agency review teams in mid-November, Washington-watchers noted an interesting and unprecedented addition: a review team dedicated to the United States Digital Service (USDS), a so-called "startup at the White House" created by President Obama in 2014.
Agency review teams oversee the transfer of power for the federal government's agencies and sub-agencies, and set the stage for how the agencies will function under the new administration. USDS, meanwhile, is a dedicated group of technologists, some of the most high-profile from Silicon Valley tech companies, tasked to bring their private sector expertise to the public sector.
Experts say the appointment of the review team — which consists of Matt Bailey and Andrew Nacin, who both previously served in USDS — is an early sign that the new Biden-Harris administration will continue investing in the group.
In turn, those experts say, this early commitment to USDS is a promising sign that the Biden administration is taking tech seriously from day one, promising both as a matter of policy and in terms of a much-needed IT modernization effort across the federal government.
Steve Kelman, a professor of public management at the Harvard Kennedy School and a former administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy in the Clinton administration, said USDS would likely get more "senior level support" in the Biden administration. More broadly, he said, "IT is becoming more and more central to actual governing as opposed to being something that IT wonks were working on, on their own, in different corners of government or outside of government."
As digital investment has grown steadily at the federal level over previous years, experts also predict that digital services and IT modernization will be a spending priority for Biden — which could also mean more federal contracts for Big Tech companies, who've been gearing up to compete for major contracts.
The need for working with tech talent has also been made more urgent by the coronavirus, which underscored the importance of updated digital services and technology modernization.
"The battle to give attention to IT, that's the battle that's been won," said Kelman. "The battle that still has to be won is doing a better job of implementing IT projects where there's still a very, very mixed record."
What is USDS?
USDS, which Obama once dubbed "a SWAT team" of world-class technologists, sits within the Executive Office of the President. It's been led since 2017 by Matt Cutts, an early Google employee and former head of its web spam team. Cutts has recruited for engineering and other tech talent for USDS from Big Tech companies, including his former employer.
First created to fix the troubled rollout of HealthCare.gov under President Obama, USDS, along with 18F — an office within the General Services Administration also created by Obama — has since continued working on digital services and IT modernization projects under the Trump administration for agencies such as the Defense Department, HHS, Veterans Affairs, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
"Most people thought that Trump would basically just ignore it or get rid of it," said Kelman, but credited Cutts with leading the group through the Trump administration and continuing the work it started in 2014.
USDS has worked on the federal government's response to the coronavirus, according to Cutts, who said that his group prepared data which helped allocate PPE and ventilators, supported a revamp of the CDC's website architecture, and contributed to the SBA's efforts to provide loans to small businesses.
Though many new people have joined USDS over the past four years, Kelman also predicted that more young people would "look to do stints in government" in the Biden administration than during Trump's.
At the same time, Big Tech companies have covertly pushed for major positions in government agencies, according to Reuters, and experts say companies are paying attention to not only the growth in digital services within government, but also looking to win major contracts and sway the administration's policies.
A good sign, but not the whole picture
The new USDS review team has a background in tech: Bailey was most recently digital freedom program director of PEN America, a literary and human rights nonprofit, and Nacin was a lead developer of WordPress, the open source project and web publishing site, and director of engineering for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
Though most of the hundreds of review team members are volunteers, many eventually accept full-time roles within their agencies and have a say in hiring. The Biden-Harris transition site says its review teams were selected to reflect its "values and priorities," and "the diversity of perspectives crucial for addressing America's most urgent and complex challenges."
Experts also noted that the relatively small size of USDS — about 180 people — makes it more noteworthy that it was assigned a review team at all.
Loren DeJonge Schulman, vice president of research and evaluation at the Partnership for Public Service and a former member of the transition team in the Defense Department during the Bush to Obama transition, told FedTech that the USDS review team was an "interesting tea leaf" because incoming administrations make specific choices about which review teams to create. This review team may be a signal that the Biden administration is interested in thinking about ways to "advance and innovate beyond USDS."
In fact, many former USDS staff are also serving on other agency review teams, which experts point to as a sign of the group's success in keeping private sector workers within the government fold.
Kelman also said that the creation of the review team was certainly a "good sign" for USDS, but doesn't paint the full picture of the agency's future.
"You wouldn't normally think of organizations as small and low profile as USDS would have its own review team," he said. "The only hard thing to know is what kind of signal does that send: Is it just one person who happens to be interested in USDS who just made it happen, or is it anywhere higher in the transition?"
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