Invasion of the Innovators
A Silicon Valley sensibility has overtaken Washington. But can it budge the behemoth federal bureaucracy?
In early June, former U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park appeared at the Health and Human Services Department’s annual techie conference in Washington, the wackily named Health Datapalooza. He was seeking new recruits for the White House U.S. Digital Service, an office he says combines the forward-looking ethos of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the altruistic mission of the Peace Corps with the targeted aggressiveness of Navy SEAL Team Six. The group’s mandate? To radically rethink the way the government buys, builds and delivers IT systems and citizen-facing services—with the necessary top cover from the administration to do so.
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