18F
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18F Wants to Change the Rules, Not Break Them, Leader Says
The tech group 18F took some heat Tuesday when a General Administration Services inspector general audit found it skirting compliance rules and security procedures, but the department’s leader says the Obama-era tech unit is still committed to hacking bureaucracy. “Our job is transforming technology in government, and our job is to push against policies and regulations that are in the way of government being effective and delivering good services,” Technology Transformation Service Commissioner Rob Cook told Nextgov Wednesday...
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3 Big Lessons From The Top Techies Rebooting The Government
"We usually think of instigators as people who causes trouble," Patil says. And in some ways, this is exactly what the band of tech outsiders rebooting the government is doing. They've boldly entered the world's largest bureaucracy with the goal of shaking things up, making services run more efficiently for the American people and introducing fresh new ways of doing things. In many ways, their work threatens the status quo. But Patil believes that instigators have a valuable role to play...
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As Open Source Goes Mainstream, Institutions Collaborate Differently
18F has quietly become the bleeding edge of the US federal government's adoption of open source software. Read about the benefits and challenges of open source going mainstream...
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Delivering a Customer-Focused Government Through Smarter IT
A core part of the President’s Management Agenda is improving the value we deliver to citizens through Federal IT. That’s why, today, the Administration is formally launching the U.S. Digital Service. The Digital Service will be a small team made up of our country’s brightest digital talent that will work with agencies to remove barriers to exceptional service delivery and help remake the digital experience that people and businesses have with their government. Read More »
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GSA Envisions 18F Will Be The New Hub Of Digital Innovation
The Presidential Innovations Fellows have a new home, and the General Services Administration is building on federal Chief Technology Officer Todd Park's vision for the government to act as a lean start-up.
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GSA’s Open Source First Approach Gives More Software Options, Better Savings
The General Services Administration last week announced a new policy requiring open source software be given priority consideration for all new IT projects developed by the agency. And while some may question whether open source software will be as effective as its conventional, proprietary counterpart, Sonny Hashmi, GSA’s chief information officer, is confident this new IT model will put the agency in the best position to procure and develop software in the most cost-effective manner. Read More »
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Inside Obama's Stealth Startup
The new hub of Washington’s tech insurgency is something known as the U.S. Digital Service, which is headquartered in a stately brick townhouse half a block from the White House. USDS -employees tend to congregate with their laptops at a long table at the back half of the parlor floor. If there’s no room, they retreat downstairs to a low-ceilinged basement, sprawling on cushioned chairs. Apart from an air-hockey table, there aren’t many physical reminders of West Coast startup culture—a lot of the new techies are issued BlackBerrys, which seems to cause them near-physical pain...
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Microsoft Helping Government Embrace Open Source Programming
If we had to name one place where an open and trusted computing platform was most needed, it would be inside government. As part of that, the Obama administration last year signed an executive order requiring government information be open and machine readable...
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New Report: Top Challenges Facing HHS Includes Harnessing Data
In November 2019 the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) released a new report, Top Management and Performance Challenges Facing HHS. Divided into six major sections, this report reviews the OIG's observations with respect to financial integrity of HHS programs, value and quality, protecting the health and safety of beneficiaries as well as the public at large, harnessing data to achieve these goals, and working across government. The fifth challenge, "Harnessing Data To Improve Health and Well-Being of Individuals," is particularly foundational. Read More »
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New US Digital Service Looks to Avoid IT Catastrophes
The second initiative went live on Monday, when the White House formally launched a United States Digital Service (USDS) and published an open source Digital Services Playbook and a “TechFAR,” a part of the guide that “highlights the flexibilities in the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) that can help agencies implement ‘plays’ from the Digital Services Playbook.” Read More »
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OMB Turns To The People-Solution To Fix Troubled IT Programs
...Steve VanRoekel, the federal chief information officer, detailed two specific initiatives under the agenda's smarter IT delivery area to address the technical expertise of federal employees. One is around flexible hiring, and a second is trying another employee exchange program...
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Three Innovative Tools You Didn’t Think The U.S. Government Could Build
After the botched launch of Healthcare.gov in October 2013, it felt like the bugs, headaches, and negative headlines would never stop piling up. But the White House learned its lesson and from the ashes of that blunder, the Obama administration has begun rewiring how government approaches tech. It’s been just over a year since the launch of the U.S. Digital Service (USDS) and the government digital services agency 18F, but the lessons—and poached talent—from Silicon Valley is already infiltrating the federal government and yielding results...
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U.S. Digital Services and Playbook: "Default to Open"
About this time last year, I laid out some trends I saw for the coming year in government take up of open source software. Looking back now, it appears those trends are not only here to stay, they are accelerating and are more important than ever. In particular, I wrote that "open source will continue to be the 'go to' approach for governments around the world" and that "increasingly, governments are wrestling with the 'how tos' of open source choices; not whether to use it."... Read More »
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US Digital Service Turns 2
The U.S. Digital Service, the White House tech wing launched by the Obama administration after the botched HealthCare.gov rollout, has become a federal mainstay in two years, positively affecting a number of critical services citizens and the government depend on. In a blog post Tuesday, the White House made use of USDS’ second birthday to highlight its most significant work...
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VanRoekel Bullish On OMB Digital Service's Potential
As attention turned to the Office of Management and Budget with President Barack Obama announcing the nomination of Shaun Donovan as director of OMB, the office of the federal CIO at OMB was making a splash for a different reason.
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