Hello! Happy to answer any questions you have about 18F. The basics: we're an office of federal employees inside the General Services Administration that helps other federal agencies improve how they build, buy, and share technology. Other agencies have to pay us for our work, so we operate in a similar way to a private business. You can see a summary of the types of things we ship (with examples) here https://18f.gsa.gov/what-we-deliver/. More info about the micro-purchase platform here https://18f.gsa.gov/tags/micro-purchase-platforms/
*I'm an 18F employee.