From US Digital Service to US Doge Service

Same Difference?

Just under 10 years ago - back in 2015 - I flew to Washington DC in order to interview some movers and shakers in US government - specifically the US Digital Service (USDS). More specifically the team called 18F - the innovation team.

The US Digital Service recently became the US DOGE Service. And, according to Elon Musk, 18F was ‘deleted’ when DOGE took over.

Back in 2015 I was writing about how there was a desire within government circles to make technology more appropriate for the needs of the citizen (in terms of basic transactions). There was, apparently, an awareness that government needed to do technology better. In the United Kingdom the government had formed the Government Digital Service (GDS) in 2011 - inspired by tech trailblazers like Martha Lane Fox, co-founder of Lastminute.com. David Cameron was Prime Minister in 2011 and GDS fell under the stewardship of Mike Bracken. The organisation was formally launched in December 2011.

By 2015, GDS was focusing its attention on a number of initiatives - including inspiring its cousins across the Atlantic to create USDS. Mike Bracken, however, had decided to move on - not long after he had floated the idea of ‘Government as a Platform’. After his leaving Bracken received a letter from President Barak Obama in which the President stated, “I want to thank you for the support you showed my Administration as we launched the United States Digital Service”.

However, GDS’s main focus in 2015 was on launching a service called Gov.UK Verify - “GOV.UK Verify was a secure way to prove who you are online. Once you had proved your identity to access a service once, you could use your identity account to access certain other services”.

As evidenced by the ‘was’ from the quote above (from the Gov.UK website) the Verify service was a flop. Several private sector ‘partners’ were appointed to provide ‘verification’ services. They weren’t very good at it. And it all felt a bit like Digital ID by stealth. Verify was launched quietly and eventually scrapped.

GDS fell from grace and prominence within government after Cameron’s resignation - after losing the Brexit referendum (he - as Conservative leader - and the Labour Party leadership campaigned to remain in the EU while the public voted to leave in 2016).

But this centrist vision for government service - on both sides of the Atlantic - has continued. GDS and USDS share a common view that government is something that needs to be at the centre of citizens’ digital lives - lives even. A GDS staffer wrote in 2015:

“GOV.UK is a mature operation, a trusted brand, and an important part of our national infrastructure. Around 12 million visitors use GOV.UK every week to access services and information which can affect their homes, businesses, jobs, families - even lives. Our job could not be more important: to make sure those 12 million users can rely on GOV.UK being available, clear, accurate, fast and secure at all times”.

A similar mind-set was evident in the USDS staffers. Most had joined the organisation on relatively short term contracts from private sector technology firms like Google or Twitter. They wanted to shine, to get things done and to introduce a private sector ethos into the heart of the Federal Government. To get a sense of this you can listen to my interview with Noah Kunin of USDS here (the interview was conducted back in 2015 in the General Services Administration building in Washington DC).

It’s interesting, of course, that DOGE has essentially sequestered the name and role of the USDS. If, as many suspect, Elon Musk wants to impose a digital control grid for US citizens and install his buddies from organisations like Palantir into the heart of government, the USDS is the most obvious place to start. However, it may well be that the USDS in shaking off its wokeness may be very much the same organisation - but with a new mission. And it will, no doubt, share many ambitions with its GDS collaborators in Whitehall.