Learning out Loud in Milwaukee, WI

Leaving 18F

Today was my last day at 18F, the startup-like agency inside the U.S General Services Administration I joined back in September 2014. When I joined I wrote: “Working with a team of talented individuals to create a more open, transparent, and accessible government is a cause close to my heart.” That’s still true. It’s also true that, four years in, nobody has used their political clout or tenure to shut it down as was foretold to me by a former colleague.

It might be easy to see my leaving as politically driven by the administration change. It is not. While there are more politically appointed individuals overseeing 18F and TTS’s work than when I started, any notion that the organization was taken over by the White House, or that they are now expected to be White House loyalists, is overblown. We took an oath to protect and uphold the Constitution and that includes the 14th Amendment which promises equal protection under the law. No American should see their government services degraded just because the people who deliver it happen to disagree with the people setting the policy. There’s a broader academic argument but it’s not for this post.

I’m leaving because my term is almost up and when I look back on it, it’s kind of staggering how much I’ve gotten to work on over the last 3 years, 4 months, and 9 days at 18F.

I was part of the team that figured out what the 18F website needed to do for people and rebuilt it basically from scratch to better serve the agencies trying to work with us. I didn’t do much (any?) of the building, but my team knocked it out of the park.

The homepage of 18f.gsa.gov
The 18F website

One of the first projects I helped with was our work supporting the US Extractives Industries Transparency Initiative (now Natural Resource Revenues Data). I helped the team write and plan their communications and in the process learned everything I wanted to know about natural resources revenues from federal lands but was too ashamed to ask. I also got to watch a team think deeply about who needed this information, why, and how they wanted to access it.

The revenuedata.doi.gov homepage
NRRD, formerly EITI

I helped the team that implemented the United States’ first open data law write about how they got every federal agency in the government to report spending data in the same way. It’s called the DATA Act, and it was a massive undertaking. See their work: https://beta.usaspending.gov/#/ and learn more about it: https://18f.gsa.gov/tags/data-act/

The homepage of beta.usaspending.gov
The DATA Act website

More recently I worked with the cloud.gov team build a Platform as a Service designed to comply with federal policy. It’s the first fully open source product to be authorized by FedRAMP. For the layperson reading this, it’s a big damn deal. FedRAMP is the federal cloud services equivalent to a boundary waters outfitter telling you to go with the WeNoNah canoe. You still need to decide if it’s right for you but it’s a strong endorsement.

The newly redesigned cloud.gov homepage
cloud.gov

I learned a lot about how government contracting works, enough to know that I’ll never come close to knowing everything. I scratched the surface working with the team behind CALC, a market research tool that helps contracting officers determine a fair market price for professional services.

The CALC homepage
CALC: On the surface it’s an acronym for Contract-Awarded Labor Category

And then there’s all the things that happened while I was at 18F. Even if I didn’t get to help build or write about them, it was inspiring to be on the same team as those folks.

One of our teams built the first web design system for federal teams.

The homepage for standards.usa.gov
The US Web Design Standards

I learned so much about SSL working on one of the teams that was in the room for the federal government’s HTTPS Everywhere policies. That team also put together a dashboard showing the fed’s compliance with those policies.

The pulse.cio.gov homepage
How the government is doing with it’s HTTPS commitments

Another team in the TTS umbrella organization manages the Digital Analytics Program, a standardized way for government agencies to run Google Analytics. That team created a data visualization of governmentwide analytics data. You can see not only how many people are accessing what pages, you can see what browsers they’re using and where the traffic is coming from.

The analytics.usa.gov homepage as captured on January 15, 2018
Public results of the digital analytics program

OMB published a governmentwide open source policy shaped by voices from across the government and the country. The Department of Education to created the College Scorecard, a tool my own cousin used in her college search. The FBI released the Crime Data Explorer, making otherwise hard to find data accessible and open. We worked with Code for America and the State of California to help the California Child Welfare system deliver better services to their constituents. And then we helped Mississippi do the same.

I could really go on and on.

The federal government employs some of the most talented individuals I’ve ever worked with. They’re motivated by honest and passionate service to the American public. That was what I signed onto when I joined in 2014 and, though many of the faces behind it have changed, that spirit remains.

As for me, I’m off to Automattic where I’ll continue working for a passionate, open source team helping WordPress.com customers have a great experience with a product I’m passionate about. WordPress helps people around the world tell their story, whether it’s an individual food blogger or a major newspaper.