A Digital Revolution

In this episode of GSA Does That!?, we spotlight 18F, the team transforming government technology with a focus on user-friendly, accessible design. Ann Lewis, Director of the Technology Transformation Services, shares 18F’s journey from its inception to its current impact, highlighting key partnerships, challenges, and lessons learned. Celebrating a decade of progress, Ann and her team at 18F are pushing digital government boundaries, proving that innovative, out of the box thinking can drive significant change in public services.

Want to know more?

Are you looking for more information about 18F? Check out the resource below!

• 18F Website
• Want to work with 18F? Send them an email: tts-info@gsa.gov 

"GSA Does That!?" is the U.S. General Services Administration's first agency-wide podcast, offering listeners an inside look into how GSA and its partners benefit the American people. Hosted by Rob Trubia, the podcast features interviews with GSA leaders, experts, partners, and customers, covering topics such as federal real estate, acquisitions, and technology. The title reflects many's surprise at the scope of GSA's impact. At the same time, the artwork pays homage to President Harry S. Truman, who established GSA in 1949 to improve government efficiency and save taxpayer money. Whether you're a policy wonk or just curious about government operations, you can join the listener community.

For more information about the show visit, gsa.gov/podcast.

Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;35;23
Rob Trubia
Well, welcome to GSA Does That!?, the podcast where we dive into the stories behind the federal agency that's all about delivering effective and efficient government. I'm Rob Trubia, your host. And today we're shining a light on 18F. A team that's been quietly revolutionizing how government tech works from their beginnings to now, they've made some major strides in making sure our digital government is user friendly and accessible for everyone.


00;00;35;26 - 00;00;57;21
Rob Trubia
We've got Ann Lewis with us today. She's a deputy commissioner within the Federal Acquisition Service and also the director of the Technology Transformation Services. We'll chat with her about how 18F got started, the progress they've made and the partnerships they've built, and all the lessons they've learned along the way. Before we dive in, a quick shout out to all our listeners.


00;00;57;23 - 00;01;11;00
Rob Trubia
Thank you for tuning in and subscribing. And please don't forget. You can always find more about GSA Does That!? at gsa.gov/podcast. All right. Let's jump in.


00;01;11;02 - 00;01;21;12
Rob Trubia
Hi Ann thank you for joining us. We are so glad to have you. Before we jump into 18F, would you mind sharing a little bit about yourself and maybe your path to GSA?


00;01;21;14 - 00;01;40;28
Ann Lewis
Hi Rob, it's great to be here. My name is Ann Lewis and I am the director of Technology Transformation Services here at GSA. I've been in the tech world for about 20 years, ten as a software engineer and ten in various leadership roles. And was previously a chief technology officer at a national nonprofit and also previously a senior advisor at the Small Business Administration.


00;01;41;01 - 00;01;54;23
Ann Lewis
But I'm just really happy to be here. I think this is my dream government job, and I lead an organization of almost 600 technologists who, in so many different ways are helping to, make the experience of government better for the public.


00;01;54;25 - 00;02;03;28
Rob Trubia
Well, thank you for sharing that. And we're here to discuss 18F. I wondered if you might just tell us a little bit about what is 18F and what's its mission.


00;02;04;00 - 00;02;30;07
Ann Lewis
Sure. 18F is a consulting organization within Technology Transformation Services, and it was formed in March of 2014. 18F is a group of technologists who, in different constellations of teams, work with federal, state and local agencies to design, build and buy technology to improve the user experience of government pl18Forms. So we do a lot of things for a lot of different programs and a lot of agencies, and we operate as a consulting organization.


00;02;30;14 - 00;02;36;05
Rob Trubia
Well, I've heard 18F described as a startup. Do you think that's accurate?


00;02;36;07 - 00;03;07;02
Ann Lewis
Well, in government terms, yes. 18F is a newer government office. It's only ten years old this year. 18F has over the years brought a lot of new tech talent into government to help agencies deliver more comprehensive, inclusive, intuitive and secure technology. 18F and TTS have done a lot of learning and growing over the past ten years about how to navigate evolving government needs, how to work effectively within the government context, how to scale up government projects, and how to handle some of the big challenges of modernization in government.


00;03;07;04 - 00;03;23;07
Ann Lewis
Today, 18F projects range from reimagining weather. gov's information architecture and front end design, to working with the IRS and United States Digital Service to deliver Direct File, which is a free tax filing product that anyone can use to file their taxes.


00;03;23;10 - 00;03;37;15
Rob Trubia
Ann it's clear 18F has an impressive track record of attracting, I think, some of the brightest tech talent out there. What is it about 18F that attracts individuals that probably haven't thought much about federal service before?


00;03;37;18 - 00;03;55;06
Ann Lewis
I think part of it is the culture and part of it is the mission. So you might think it would be hard to hire technologists into government, but actually when they start talking to each other and they start talking about, in particular the kind of impact you could have within government, then it becomes, easy to tell the story of how you can make a big difference.


00;03;55;08 - 00;04;11;29
Ann Lewis
Doing the same kind of tech work that you do in industry for small and large companies in the context of government. And a lot of people are really attracted to the mission. I was I spent about 15 years in the private sector before joining government, and there's a lot of really interesting work to do. For a company.


00;04;11;29 - 00;04;44;13
Ann Lewis
So you're usually the small, a small piece of a much larger puzzle. If you're working for a larger company or if you're working for a startup, there's a lot of, you know, uncertainty about whether or not the work you do is actually going to make it to the market and impact users. Here in government every line of code you write, every SQL query you write, every decision you make, every way in which you help enable other people to make decisions with technology, can affect millions and millions of people, sometimes billions of dollars, in ways that try to improve the social safety net of America, that try to improve the ability of Americans to


00;04;44;13 - 00;04;50;20
Ann Lewis
get their benefits. So I think that this is a really appealing kind of work for many technologists to do.


00;04;50;22 - 00;05;04;01
Rob Trubia
Ann I'm curious, you know, you mentioned that you oversee about 600 technologists, but this particular group, 18F. How is it unique compared to the other digital service teams inside government?


00;05;04;04 - 00;05;25;10
Ann Lewis
So I think both of these teams, 18F and also the United States Digital services team housed in the White House, both teams bring in technology leaders and deploy teams to help solve big problems. But I think one main difference is our funding. USDS teams can be deployed to agencies at no cost to these agencies. And 18F teams structure engagements as consulting agreements.


00;05;25;12 - 00;05;51;10
Ann Lewis
Typically agency partners come to 18F with their priorities, their funding. We can often find ways of working together. Sometimes USDS because they sit in the White House can be tip of the spear on crisis response related to administration policies and priorities. And then, 18F can work together to try and figure out how do we deploy shared services with planned funding in ways to help, take the solution or the problem that was discovered and carry it forward into the future.


00;05;51;12 - 00;06;26;03
Ann Lewis
And we often work together to try and translate implementation needs into long term plans that can account for both an initial, maybe diagnosis of a problem or an initial build into an actual product or service launch that is sustainable. 18F being a part of TTS and GSA can also suggest additional GSA shared services that could help with delivery from products like cloud.gov as a place to deploy software and login.gov as an identity service to working together with the Federal Acquisition Services teams and providing acquisition support and understanding different kinds of buying guides and options.


00;06;26;03 - 00;06;49;05
Ann Lewis
Working with groups like ITC in FAS. But aside from some of the differences and structure, funding and focus, I also want to note that both 18F and USDS are both tiny teams. When you compare with the size and scale of the federal enterprise. So these teams try to act as enabling forces in a broader and more complex ecosystem, with both private and public sector teams.


00;06;49;12 - 00;06;54;06
Ann Lewis
I think we're all stronger together. We're trying to figure out how to solve all these big problems.


00;06;54;08 - 00;07;17;24
Rob Trubia
Yeah, it sounds like 18F being a smaller division. It can be a bit more nimble, which I'm sure can lead to, solving issues quicker and really working with the client, making things happen faster for them. And maybe, you know, at a level where they couldn't get at some other parts of government. Can you tell us a little bit about maybe a project or two that might exemplify 18F’s mission?


00;07;17;27 - 00;07;50;20
Ann Lewis
Oh, there are so many. I just recently, I would like to call out, the work that 18F has done to modernize the Forest Services online permit and application process. 18F has also worked on streamlining the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division civil rights violation complaint submission process. While that might sound wonky and in the details, all of these projects are things that maybe took, you know, 15 steps but could have actually taken five steps to bring people into assess what what is needed and recommend how to simplify and streamline and center the users.


00;07;50;22 - 00;08;11;05
Ann Lewis
We, the 18F also recently supported a new case management system for the tax court, which makes it easier for many tax payers to submit online petitions. And 18F recently created and updated a de-risking guide to help both federal and state agencies avoid pitfalls and ultimately deliver successful custom technology projects.


00;08;11;07 - 00;08;21;20
Rob Trubia
I'm curious, what are some of the advantages of being a government enterprise versus hiring out to a contractor or a vendor? Being inside government? Are there advantages?


00;08;21;22 - 00;08;41;16
Ann Lewis
Yeah, it comes down to incentives. I mean, I think you're always going to need a combination of in-house tech folks and vendor implementation teams to get things done at government scale. But when you have folks that are in-house, you know that their priority is to deliver this project within the budget and regulatory constraints while centering user needs and not necessarily profit.


00;08;41;18 - 00;09;05;19
Ann Lewis
And so I think that can really help, government agencies and programs who they have a general sense of what they want to do, but they don't necessarily have the language to translate what success means or what done means into the technical language the vendor implementation team speak. So you need tech people in there who are holding to their hearts the incentives of trying to do right by the public and trying to do right by government and make government work better in the mix.


00;09;05;19 - 00;09;28;05
Ann Lewis
Working with the vendor teams so that everyone can understand. Here are the problems we're trying to solve according to who you're the users that we're solving problems for. We validate these assumptions, and we work iteratively so that we're always talking to users every step of the way. That combination can be magic. If you could get folks in government who understand technology to work together with vendor implementation teams.


00;09;28;07 - 00;09;45;22
Ann Lewis
And I think in general, government needs more tech talent of all stripes to be able to, be more effective when it comes to implementation management. Sometimes when these tech vendors come in to work on major projects, they're often left looking around for someone to sign off on their plan or sign off on what they think the technical version of the goals are.


00;09;45;24 - 00;10;10;03
Ann Lewis
And these folks are often missing. And so I would I would say to government agencies who notice patterns like this, vendors asking them to sign off on things they don't understand and not understanding within their government agency who should be doing this work, how to plug people in in the right ways. Maybe you're missing some, technical skill sets that would really help you understand whether you're projects on track or whether it's the right size or scope, or whether it's solving the right problems.


00;10;10;05 - 00;10;13;09
Ann Lewis
And that's a place where 18F can help.


00;10;13;11 - 00;10;26;07
Rob Trubia
That does sound like an advantage to me. You mentioned funding a little bit, but I'm curious if you can you talk a little bit more about it. How is 18F funded? And I'm curious how they prioritize requests, because I imagine there is a large demand for their services.


00;10;26;10 - 00;10;50;02
Ann Lewis
So 18F charges consulting rates for teams and projects. And typically we prioritize based on impact and also available skill sets. So sometimes we'll send a bigger team out on a bigger project that we believe has whole of government impact. Sometimes we'll put people on smaller teams. And in general, it really just depends on the time of year and the needs and how many people we think we can positively impact by doing the work.


00;10;50;05 - 00;11;11;13
Ann Lewis
We are a cost recoverable, which means we don't receive appropriated funds from Congress and must charge partner agencies for our work. And we use two authorities to cover to recover costs. So that's interesting. The Acquisition Services Fund Reimbursement Authority for work related to acquisitions and the Economy Act, reimburse and reimbursement authority for projects that can't use ASF Reimbursement Authority.


00;11;11;15 - 00;11;22;04
Ann Lewis
Typically, we structure these agreements as interagency agreements to set up the terms of our projects, and we bill partners through intergovernmental payment and collection. On a monthly basis.


00;11;22;06 - 00;11;31;21
Rob Trubia
We'll Ann does 18F ever see a user experience need and then approach the agency that they'd like to help. Or do they need to be asked, how does that work?


00;11;31;24 - 00;11;57;06
Ann Lewis
Yeah, we do reach out to new and existing customers to discuss our ideas. One advantage we have at working at GSA is we can see across agencies, we can see across government and see different needs that are common across agencies or some similar use cases. Often using a tactic called journey mapping to to try and understand what government web properties, systems and services does a user need to touch to be able to meet a particular goal.


00;11;57;09 - 00;12;03;13
Ann Lewis
So sometimes this gives us ideas on places where we can work with agencies to improve or streamline processes.


00;12;03;15 - 00;12;11;17
Rob Trubia
Does 18F ever, just come in as a consultant, whether it's their idea to consult or can they be hired just to consult?


00;12;11;20 - 00;12;38;25
Ann Lewis
18F is definitely one option for agencies looking to upscale their technological capabilities. And as a part of Technology Transformation S  ervices, we have a number of options for agencies from enterprise wide modernization through consulting with the Centers of Excellence to direct senior level tech support through our Presidential Innovation Fellowships, so they can hire 18F and they can also work with us to get a variety of other kinds of access to tech talent across our programs.


00;12;38;27 - 00;12;45;11
Ann Lewis
And it's just a matter of trying to understand what the agencies needs are and try and match what we have available to their needs.


00;12;45;14 - 00;13;03;26
Rob Trubia
Yeah. So it sounds like you guys come at it with a very flexible mindset. You can kind of soup to nuts or just kind of just consultancy. That's very cool to hear. I'm curious if you think that it's fair that government is often criticized for its online services.


00;13;03;29 - 00;13;31;02
Ann Lewis
Oh, absolutely. Have you ever used government online services? Yeah. I mean, it's a patchwork of websites, some of which work together, that don't necessarily have to do with you as a member of the public, your need and your your goals. And this happens not because anybody meant to mess anything up, but because I believe that the structure of how budget and decision making authority are distributed across government creates silos that, programs have to operate within.


00;13;31;04 - 00;13;48;07
Ann Lewis
And when you have an org chart structure that has lots of silos in it, for all of the good reasons, then the software that you create, the websites, the digital experiences tend to mimic the structure of the organizational structure. And so you see a lot of different what I think of as website surface area, a lot of touchpoints for users.


00;13;48;07 - 00;14;08;18
Ann Lewis
And it's not necessarily clear to users where to start or how to get from point A to point B, or what they need to participate in the process. And I think that this is exactly the reason why organizations like 18F exists, because they can make sense of all that complexity, makes sense of all those touch points, and break things down based into who are your users, what do they need?


00;14;08;18 - 00;14;27;26
Ann Lewis
What problems do they have? How can we solve them and then apply modern technology best practices to solving those problems. So I think it's less about should the government be criticized and more about let's get more tech folks in there to partner with, government program managers and individual contributors and figure out how to solve these problems together.


00;14;27;28 - 00;14;33;09
Ann Lewis
All these problems are solvable. There's just a lot of them. And so we need to prioritize and get to work.


00;14;33;11 - 00;14;54;11
Rob Trubia
Yeah. And the message is that it's cool to be a technologist in government. If you didn't think so. We're telling you now that it really is. And there's big problems to solve for sure. So Ann, we had Gundeep Ahluwalia, here from the Department of Labor on a few podcasts ago, a few episodes ago. And he's the Chief Information Officer for the Department of Labor.


00;14;54;18 - 00;15;14;12
Rob Trubia
And he said, you know, we've got employees coming to work. They look at their phone, they've just got their phone, and they can Uber into work. And then they get into work. They need three screens and six programs to do their job. And I think often citizens also say, look at all I can do so quickly in the world of digital services out there.


00;15;14;13 - 00;15;28;11
Rob Trubia
Like think about when you want to order something, how quickly you can get it. And then they get frustrated when they try to do the same type of thing. As a citizen, just as somebody trying to get something done. Do you think 18F is helping to solve that problem?


00;15;28;14 - 00;15;49;00
Ann Lewis
Oh, definitely. There are a million good reasons carried forward by good people trying to do a good job of why government works the way it does right now. And so sometimes what you need to do is bring in folks who can help everyone reimagine a different way of working or help show or guide or, you know, build together a different way of working that leads to different outcomes.


00;15;49;02 - 00;16;07;20
Ann Lewis
And sometimes it's just a matter of refocusing teams and programs on different outcomes. If you have a team of people who were told your job is to maintain and protect this one process, that's what they're going to do. You're not telling them, hey, I want you to reimagine this process and have it be as efficient and streamlined and easy as this comparable consumer process.


00;16;07;21 - 00;16;40;13
Ann Lewis
No one's telling them that. But leaders can define goals in that way. Chief information officers across government are doing a great job at helping empower teams to think differently in terms of embracing innovation, understanding what's possible, and trying to reach for those different, better outcomes. And sometimes it's just a matter of showing what's possible. In the case of the Direct File project, leadership across agencies worked hand-in-hand with the IRS, and then program leaders and individual contributors all worked hand-in-hand to work in a really iterative way, starting with prototypes showing every step of the way.


00;16;40;20 - 00;17;00;18
Ann Lewis
Here's how we're managing risk. That allowed that that program to be able to do something that was really big and complicated and hard and ambitious, in a way that that felt safe enough for all the executive decision makers along the way. A lot of times in government, leaders and especially senior leaders are strongly incentivized to minimize risk.


00;17;00;21 - 00;17;15;16
Ann Lewis
And if that's your primary goal, that is what you're going to do. But minimizing risk doesn't necessarily mean reaching for the stars when it comes to a consumer level user experience standards, those are different things. But you can marry those goals together and then get better results.


00;17;15;18 - 00;17;29;26
Rob Trubia
Yeah, and you're creating websites for the general public, which of course is a very diverse population. How does 18F balance between user friendly for all and cutting edge. That's got to be a challenge.


00;17;29;28 - 00;17;48;29
Ann Lewis
Well with every agency we work with, we try to help them evaluate their options to get actionable recommendations to achieve their goals. So it's less about how do you make a list of every single person's need, and more about how do you roll out agile practices that regularly ask everyone, who are the users who we're trying to serve right now?


00;17;49;02 - 00;18;04;16
Ann Lewis
How do we know what their needs are? And make sure that there's a not just a person doing that or a task once, but a capacity that's always doing that, and that helps a lot. And then we also try to do a lot of work to help agencies get more help to issue and manage procurement from RFI to award.


00;18;04;19 - 00;18;23;11
Ann Lewis
And then we try to work with them to reimagine the complete user's website experience and to start not just from, okay, we're going to take a bunch of money and and give it to a team and hopefully get something six months later, but rather to start with prototypes so that non-technical decision makers at all levels can understand and see and interact with.


00;18;23;11 - 00;18;55;04
Ann Lewis
Here's what we think we should build. Let's test those assumptions and let's iterate. And I think that this all kind of comes down to a core principle that we like to call stakeholder engagement. If we can engage stakeholders and users early and often, which is a core cultural principle of 18F, then we can create, what we call a minimum viable product early on and refine it over time so that we can give everyone, including users and stakeholders, visibility into what's getting built, control over the outcome, and make sure that we're all headed in the right direction together.


00;18;55;06 - 00;19;02;23
Rob Trubia
How do you think 18F is really helping to build a 21st century digital government? That's where we're going. That's where we're headed.


00;19;02;26 - 00;19;24;19
Ann Lewis
I mean, a big thing that 18F does is continue to attract senior technologists from many sectors and many industries and encourage them to try try the public sector, try out government service, see what you can do, see the impact that you have and bring those folks into government. Help them understand how to engage in what kinds of projects that we have and how to how to really deliver.


00;19;24;21 - 00;19;59;18
Ann Lewis
And that may end up becoming a hub for really smart people. And sometimes we're a pipeline of talent for other government agencies, and we think this is a good thing. We're not trying to get people and keep them forever. If they find a really cool project or an agency whose mission they really care about, that's fantastic. If they start out in 18F and then and move to another place. Many 18F alumni now serve in leadership positions at federal agencies, including the Office of Management and Budget, the Veterans Administration, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Department of Health and Human Services, as well as state level roles in California, Maryland, Pennsylvania.


00;19;59;19 - 00;20;03;05
Ann Lewis
List just goes on and on. Really, really proud of our alumni.


00;20;03;08 - 00;20;21;06
Rob Trubia
Ann I'm curious what technologist out in industry think technologists in the government do. I'm just guessing that they probably aren't aspiring to work for the government. Why not? What's the stereotypes out there?


00;20;21;08 - 00;20;40;04
Ann Lewis
You know, I'm not entirely sure. I think my stereotype, after 15 years in industry, just getting to know government, was that there were a lot of processes to follow, and you have to work within a lot of constraints. And I think I assumed before I joined government that there were way more government tech workers than there actually are.  


00;20;40;06 - 00;21;02;20
Ann Lewis
One big surprise that I had when I started was how much every single government worker is able to get done with the resources that they have, but also how resource constrained all of the technology people and teams actually are. And then even with resource resource constraints, you still see things like people cross-training themselves in enterprise architecture or product management skills.


00;21;02;20 - 00;21;25;20
Ann Lewis
So you might have to work for a few years in industry to be able to, you know, to get, and learning what they need to, to be able to get really know technical problems done. So sometimes, I'm really surprised and impressed to see how much people are able to get done with what they have. And I'm also constantly surprised and impressed and really appreciate the sheer scale of the work here.


00;21;25;22 - 00;21;50;10
Ann Lewis
I think in industry, teams tend to be smaller in scope and scale. I mean, there are more total tech workers. So like a, you know, a big tech company is going to have 100,000 or more tech workers, and a startup might have 20 or 30 and medium sized companies, maybe 500. And then the kind of work you do is typically to build and deliver software products that maybe a few thousand people will use.


00;21;50;10 - 00;22;09;14
Ann Lewis
If you're working in a really big company. You're one of a team of 1000 who delivers, a service that maybe a few million people use. In government, the scale is so large that you have to start from the perspective of thinking of yourself as like a CEO of a company. You have, you know, not a few thousand dollars in budget or a few hundreds of thousands of dollars.


00;22;09;14 - 00;22;29;07
Ann Lewis
You've got tens of millions of dollars in budget. So you start from, how do I do the resource planning I need to get a whole set of teams in to deliver a solution, and then put those pieces together into something that actually makes sense for users. And that sort of CEO level thinking, I think, is new for a lot of people in, in the private sector, because there just aren't as many roles that let you do that.


00;22;29;10 - 00;22;48;12
Ann Lewis
So the funding situation and the impact is usually different. So there are more smaller companies taking smaller lanes. So it's interesting to learn about things like the trillion dollar federal supply chain in government. You have to be aware of that to get things done at an executive level. I didn't think that that would be a skill set to learn about.


00;22;48;15 - 00;23;21;05
Ann Lewis
You have to think about things like, how do you effectively manage contracts that add up to hundreds of millions of dollars at, as a mid-level tech person in government, you just have to be generally aware of that level of scale. So, I think one thing that I'd like to tell tech workers who are considering roles in public service is not only does the work feel good and that you're waking up and you're every morning and doing something that you actually believe in and making government service work better for the public, but you get to operate at a scale that's a pretty unusual professional opportunity in industry.


00;23;21;08 - 00;23;37;28
Rob Trubia
Yeah, that is pretty fascinating. Just I imagine a lot of the satisfaction does come from the massive scale, whether it be the budget or the users, that will finally use your product or, you know, tap into your digital services at some point and hundreds of millions of people.


00;23;38;00 - 00;23;54;14
Ann Lewis
Yeah, we measure we measure user groups and government in terms of percentages of total Americans and in the private sector that would be fully saturating an entire national market. You're never usually talking in terms that large. Or maybe if you are, it's very pie in the sky.


00;23;54;17 - 00;24;04;10
Rob Trubia
Ann are you seeing a change in how technologists view government work? Is that happening or is that just something you and I are talking about?


00;24;04;13 - 00;24;31;22
Ann Lewis
I think so, I mean, I get I get outreach from the people I worked with in jobs 15, 20 years ago who were reaching out to me and wanting to know more about government, interested in public service, interested in opportunities way more than than I, you know, can have time to like, you know, talk to. So least in my network, I think that there's a lot of interest because, you know, you work for 20 years in the in the private sector and you maybe have an interesting, rewarding job and maybe you make a lot of money.


00;24;31;22 - 00;24;51;29
Ann Lewis
But at the end of the day, you're wondering, what was this for? What am I doing that I think is worthwhile? Sometimes it's harder to find that personal connection to mission or that why in the private sector? Because there are a lot of things you can get paid to do that matter to someone else. But in government, you are paid to do things that matter to you and that matter to the public, and that's a big deal.


00;24;52;01 - 00;25;10;12
Rob Trubia
You know, 18F we described it as a bit of a startup, I'm curious, have you seen 18F be replicated in government? Maybe beyond technology, just that whole idea of a startup inside government to solve problems. What else is out there that might look like 18F?


00;25;10;14 - 00;25;35;23
Ann Lewis
A lot of agencies have digital service teams now or service delivery teams. So the digital services teams, I think were created in the Obama administration era, and some agencies have invested in growing these teams in a significant way. I also think the customer Experience and service delivery executive order that was signed in 2021, I believe it was, has created a mandate that's allowed agencies to bootstrap or grow what they call service delivery teams.


00;25;35;26 - 00;25;47;27
Ann Lewis
And, you know, it depends on where they're located in the agency and what their mandate and focus are. But when these teams grew to a similar size, they can have a similar kind of impact within their agency.


00;25;47;29 - 00;26;04;26
Rob Trubia
There's been huge progress. I've noticed that just as an average citizen, when I go to government websites, I do notice some huge progress. And it's it's helpful, it is encouraging, and it's so nice when you have a site that you're trying to use and you're trying to get some services or you're trying to file something and it just works.


00;26;04;26 - 00;26;10;28
Rob Trubia
And I think that's all we say is we just want it to work. Ann where do you see 18F in 10 years?


00;26;11;01 - 00;26;34;22
Ann Lewis
I think we're going to continue to support agency projects to help deliver services and easier, faster, cheaper and more secure ways to the American public. We help agencies reduce costs, reduce risk, reduce time, reduce uncertainty. When you have a clear sense of what your goals are before implementation work starts and money is spent, then you can be sure every step of the way that you're solving the right problems.


00;26;34;22 - 00;26;54;28
Ann Lewis
You're solving them at the right order of magnitude, that you're improving processes along the way. You're making sure that you do things like system integration and consolidation that you're tracking user satisfaction and user impact as key metrics. All of these things are important, and I hope that we can continue to drive awareness of these best practices and use of these best practices throughout government.


00;26;55;01 - 00;27;13;12
Ann Lewis
Our biggest impact will mean that Americans can engage with the investments agencies make, aka all those millions of websites that sometimes we're not sure how they all work. We want to make them more seamless, more secure. We want to make it so that when you show up to a government website, it just works that you don't have to worry about it and it saves you time.


00;27;13;15 - 00;27;30;07
Ann Lewis
I think with ten more years of training and placement, the 18F alumni network will wield broad spectrum influence across federal, state and local governments and will help show what's possible and help work together with agencies to reimagine what a government experience can be.


00;27;30;09 - 00;27;38;12
Rob Trubia
Ann finally, if you're an agency out there and you're listening and you're like, I want to connect with 18F, how do they get the ball rolling?


00;27;38;14 - 00;27;46;10
Ann Lewis
Please reach out via tts-info@gsa.gov. We would love to hear from you.


00;27;46;13 - 00;28;01;08
Rob Trubia
And we'll put that in the show notes as well on our website. Well Ann, congratulations again on ten years, and thank you for taking the time to really help us understand and I think appreciate the innovative division 18F is. This has been very interesting. So thank you.


00;28;01;11 - 00;28;03;22
Ann Lewis
Oh, thanks so much. It's great to be here.


00;28;03;24 - 00;28;26;26
Rob Trubia
A sincere thanks to Ann for such a great conversation about 18F, and congrats to her and the entire team for a decade of awesome progress. It's been inspiring to hear how 18F is pushing the boundaries of digital government, and showing us all how innovative and out-of-the-box thinking can make all the difference. As always, thank you for listening to GSA Does That!?.


00;28;26;29 - 00;28;50;07
Rob Trubia
Be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode, and please consider sharing our podcast with a friend. Got a topic or guest you'd like us to feature? We'd love to hear from you! Shoot us an email at gsadoesthat@gsa.gov. I'm Rob Trubia, joined by our executive producer, Mr. Max Stempora. This episode was brought to you by the General Services Administration Office of Strategic Communication.


00;28;50;10 - 00;28;53;04
Rob Trubia
I hope you have a great rest of your day.