boris-ning-usds

We'll live on in people's memories and hearts. Thank you.

USDS certainly does not. The guiding principle at the time from what I remembered is to try to set "some standard" for all federal government websites to strive to because there were none.

We also helped with design and infrastructure support for ssa.gov (launched earlier this year) with a contractor team to try to boil down 60,000 pages to ~30 pages that people tend to use.

// opinions of a former USDS, no longer with the team

It's a tough job. USDS can often be in a unique position to take the technical lead in a fire situation such that it doesn't happen again, and that can steer enormous positive outcomes for both the public servant, the contractors, and the general public.

As for non-sustainable lifestyle, it differs from person to person. It's an appointed position of 2 years, with one chance of renewal for that reason. It's an unique opportunity to see the government from a position of power, so it's expected for USDSers to try to make it count.

It's not always the case USDS will create further technical debt for contractors to develop sites. During cutovers, consider creating playbooks and provide context in those non-stop meetings to the contractors, and best of all, provide a phone number and an email for emergency.

And some of those people from USDS never left the government. ;)

Interesting to see this popped up here. I used to submit a bunch of tools through the internal Technical Reference Model (TRM) portal where there's 40 or so questions to answer.

draw.io should be available too.

Back in 2018 when I joined, VA laptops were still running on hard disk drives and the laptops were 6.5lbs. Procurement cycles for it were likely once per decade, and VA was just going through their last batch of shitty laptops; and I wrote all my bash scripts on that running on cygwin.

We absolutely can update this consumer facing portal, and I believe there is a Treasury team actively working to modernize this portal.

Personally, I didn't even know of this portal's existence until I signed up for an account and and went through the same process the author went through. I noted the same security theater and passed it over to my USDS team to see if there's anything we can do.

At first glance, simply replacing the front end is a solution, but there are bigger problems here that the author did not try. If one tries to change your bank account number, having typed in it wrong, they'll have to mail in a physical form to have it changed. As the author noted, going over $10k per year will also trigger unintended consequences that can span 8-10 weeks before the money is returned.

There are problems here that goes beyond just replacing the "front end".

I agree with the sentiment that there are cultural issues with the federal space, and it requires continuous diligence of dedicated people to change the landscape and move the needle. Devops take a long time to grow organically - and it's longer in the federal government due to silos, compliance, finance, regulations.

The list is a nice dream, and it is with the will of those in the federal work force who can break down those silos and bring about a common understanding with urgency that'll make it happen for their project.

Yep, I'm with USDS. It's not a problem, I'm glad to help if I can and civil engineering is a bit out of my depth.

Are there anything specific about the formats I should be asking for? I'm assuming there are hundred of different file formats (input and output alike). If I knew more about the file formats, that may make the conversation with the team easier.