#US Digital Service

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Don Moynihan at Can We Still Govern?:

For those who don’t know much about government, the idea of Elon Musk as a serious tech guy who could shake up how the public sector work was appealing. Even people who do know a lot about government were hopeful.

Such hopes now look naive. Musk is not just ignorant about what government does, he chooses to celebrate and make decisions based on that ignorance, defaulting to accusations of fraud to explain things he does not want to understand. He is not interested in fixing government, but in destroying key parts of government, and that takes no great skill. This is not just a point about competing political philosophies, but about state capacity, and specifically tech skills in government. Musk is not just destroying core government functions, he is also destroying the actual tech capacity of government. Because there are, in fact, skilled technologists who work in government. They are not enough of them, and they lacked power to make big changes. They worked mostly in the US Digital Service and 18F, both created in 2014 after the failure of healthcare.gov. And now they are mostly gone. All 18F employees were fired as part of the ongoing Reductions in Force. The US Digital Service no longer exists. It is now the US DOGE Service. It also has seen about 40 people laid off, and 21 employees resigned last week, leaving around 40 experienced employees left.

Here is a thumbnail sketch of the two units: USDS offered support and guidance to agencies, but could not dictate a governmentwide approach on most issues. In times of crisis, or when a President prioritized a policy outcome dependent on digital innovations, it could play a more prominent role, serving as a de facto firefighter for digital governance. The General Services Administration set up its own digital consultancy team, 18F in 2014. This team’s mission is to work with agencies to “[transform] the way the federal government builds and buys digital services.” 18F was a cost recoverable office, meaning that they charge partner agencies for their work rather than being funded directly through a congressional appropriation. Both organizations use similar managerial technologies, which includes agile, iterative design, a user-centric approach, a reliance on data-driven decision making, directly managing relationships with vendors, favoring open-source solutions, the prioritization of platform models, and a flatter organizational culture. USDS and 18F represented a hopeful trend for American government: embedding serious tech skills inside the bureaucracy, rather than relying on private vendors. They care about public services, and represented the most visible public sector manifestation of “civic tech” in government. [...]

DOGE is a step backwards for government tech talent

Musk’s team saw USDS as an an existing shell they could occupy that seemed nominally aligned with goal of modernizing government. A former USDS official, Amy Gleason, had worked for one of the DOGE team, Brad Smith in the private sector, and returned to USDS on the understanding she was helping the Trump transition team. Gleason became the official DOGE administrator last week, though of course no-one believes this to be the reality. She also tried to get the USDS to hire some of the staff who had already signed on to work for DOGE. None made the cut. They did not advertise their connection with Musk, and so their rejections were not clouded by political bias. Their applications failed because they were not qualified. [...] The point is that Musk isn’t bringing in incredible 10X coders to replace bureaucrats. The best evidence we have is that they would not have been hired into a tech role under normal circumstances. The people who could not make it at USDS were hired at DOGE staff because of their personal and professional connections to Musk, and their ideological commitment for downsizing government. This was a poor fit with the existing employees at 18F and the US Digital Service, who believed that technology could be used to make government work better, not to cut its core tasks. [...] The Trump administration does not care about the loss of this talent. Katie Miller, the DOGE spokesperson, posted this about the resignation of USDS officials. Miller does not explain how fully remote workers posted “trans flags” (or rainbow flags for the rest of us). But she herself is representative of DOGE. She has no tech skills, which is fine for a PR person. Her husband, Stephen Miller, has been described as the “Prime Minister” aiding Musk. Musk had previously given Miller’s political groups $50 million dollars. These are the people running tech in government now. (One more fun fact about Katie Miller: According to Wikipedia, she destroyed “hundreds of copies of the school's newspaper, after it endorsed an opposing student government candidate.”)

DOGE’s cuts have harmed skilled technology needed to run government functions.

[mara-and-politics]

Story by Bobby Allyn and updated on 2/25/25 for NPR. This excerpt explains where some of these DOGE employees came from initially and it sounds like this wasn't a voluntary move on their part. But, they swore an oath to the Constitution and are standing by it by resigning.

A group of 21 civil servants whose team was folded into Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency resigned on Tuesday, writing in a joint letter posted publicly that they refuse to use their skills to put Americans' data at risk and "dismantle critical public services." The federal workers, mostly software engineers and product managers, were once part of the U.S. Digital Service, which was renamed DOGE when Musk launched his initiative from within the White House. The Musk-led unit has laid off thousands of workers and moved to dismantle entire agencies in a slash-and-burn campaign to reduce the size of government. In the letter addressed to White House Chief of Staff Susan Wiles, the government employees wrote that they swore an oath to the Constitution to serve the American people but that "it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments at the United States DOGE Service." White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to the 21 DOGE workers resigning en masse, in a statement: "Don't let the door kick you on the way out," she said.

[dandelion-network]

If you don't use your library's Libby and Hoopla collections, you run the risk of losing that access. Your library will see the low numbers and think "no one is using this service and we need to save money so let's get rid of it". I am saying this because at the library I work at, the collections team reduced the number of books you can check out each month for Hoopla. They reduced the amount by more than half - 25 to 10 - all because people weren't using it at the same capacity they were during lockdown.

Digital collections are expensive yes but when libraries are able to show the library board or city that their services are highly sought after and used in large numbers, that aids in arguing for increasing the budget - or at least keeping the budget where it's at.

Whatever your opinion on pirating is, you are doing not a single person favors by not using library resources just because you have a misunderstanding in how it actually works.

[autumngracy]

By DC's anarchist cartoonist, Mike Flugennock 2017

[paper-birdies]

I've been reading a Gravity Falls fanfic called "The Therapist" by @bapple117, where you - The reader- are Bill Cipher's Therapist in the Theraprism. I was on Bapple's Discord server and came across a conversation asking "What if Bill had a secret collection of art he made of the therapist and got super flustered when the therapist finds them."

Posted that and then someone mentioned that in a panic, Bill would probably try to eat the art and tries to eat the pages.

Anyways, I freakin' love this fic and this funky lil' guy.

[tired-demonspawn]

im tryin' a lil somethin

[energeticpoltergeist]

he wasn't invited (happy 20th anniversary Path of Radiance!)

[sleepyskydraws]

DRAWTOBER 1 - Witch + Familiar

Heres the list im using this year! Relatively small mostly bc I want to have time to draw personal stuff too. Credits to MaryViolin on BlueSky

[charrchan]

making him into a nitotan style mini figure :)

[couldtheybekira]

alright, what about this.

having people i kill write “suicide notes” in a language that’s not common in my home country/a language i don’t speak, so it’ll draw attention to the country/region that primarily speaks that language.

(preferably targeting region that’s a good distance away from my whereabouts)

[teffiebell]

How cool is this: a great directory of digital products with European alternatives to American ones. It is organized by categories and you can also search by keyword.

Shared by @superwillyfoc@masto.es

Translated and edited by teffie@paquita.masto.host / teffie@bsky.social

[bitchslapblastoids]

tinhat theory they’re testing the dumb announcement service bc they’re going to announce more tour dates soon ?¿?

[sparrowww0428]

[bunny-snot]

i went into dungeon meshi thinking it was about sapphic monsters and elves but came out of it obsessed with Senshi.

also i love Laois and i think if he could eat his freinds without harming them he probably would and that cool, we could always use more cannibals

[blackmetalsnake]

Korbin for @powerovernothing!!

Btw, I'm also on Twitter now!