Jason Becker
A few weeks ago, someone asked what DOGE was doing to the reputation of USDS and 18F among folks who work in tech. I replied, and then posted this:
One small way 18F and USDS are no longer a place of aspiration. It’s no longer an exciting place to improve basic government functioning that’s earned independence through success.
Ethan Marcotte’s now widely read post about resigning from 18F is just heartbreaking. I especially appreciated this succinct description of what government actually does:
In government, that infrastructure is built by laws, policies, and regulations. But regulations alone do not infrastructure make. Regulations require workers to become infrastructure: those workers who labor to understand new policies, how best to enact them, and then work to make them legible and understandable to the American public — and, yes, to enforce them. Without those federal workers, and their labor, these systems fall apart. And the architects of this assault on the federal workforce are keenly aware of that fact.
The administration is not working on efficiency or effectiveness of government. They are working on crushing it.