18F & USDS Can Divide and Conquer (Or Co-opt) their Critics
All government IT vendors are not created equal. But their lobbyists are coming after President Obama’s signature tech teams. Here are 5 steps to take to separate the good from the bad, squash “big tech” opposition and deliver better, faster and cheaper federal digital services.
The irresistible headline blares, baiting into a click those who believe the only path to better federal digital services is the one being paved by President Obama’s signature tech teams.
In its July 1 story, “IT Showdown: Tech Giants Face Off Against 18F,” GovTech rehashes testimony from a June 10, 2016 House Oversight Subcommittee hearing. At that hearing — previewed here, posted here in full, and recapped here — the top taxpayer watchdog committee in Congress heard sworn testimony from, among others:
…lobbyists from the IT Alliance for Public Sector (ITAPS) and the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) [who] alleged that 18F is hindering profits by acting as both a procurement policymaker and as a tech competitor inside the General Services Administration (GSA). The two groups assert a conflict of interest, and in testimony, have submitted a list of grievances and recommendations intended to curtail 18F’s authority.
Of course K Street stuck back. That’s what lobbyists do. If I were in their loafers, I’d be listing grievances and raising “troubling questions” until the cows come home. The federal government spends an estimated $80 billion each year on IT according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The vast majority of those billions goes to big, entrenched, and proprietary private-sector companies. Up to $60 billion of that goes to maintain what are politely called “legacy systems.” Many of the profit-driven players labeled as “tech giants” are responsible for those legacy systems. So it should come as no surprise that tech vendors pay into trade associations like SIIA and ITAPS to have them lobby and influence and provide testimony that protects and expands their slice of the pie. That is the way the Washington world works, like it or not, for any big business with big business before the federal government.
It is how one assesses and responds to this reality that matters. Unfettered umbrage isn’t the best look. Neither is dredging up in an obviously friendly outlet one side of weeks-old Congressional testimony. It just isn’t the smartest response strategy, and it misreads the writing on the wall. For outrage and histrionics are gospel to the influence industry. They know this playbook chapter and verse. They wrote the playbook. Believe me, they welcome each and every hot take. And they play the Washington whisper game better than Lord Varys does the Game of Thrones.
Instead of buying into the lobbyists’ game with a hot reactionary response, lets step back to more cooly assess the situation. Four encouraging facts emerge, as does another side of the story told by industry at that fateful Oversight Committee hearing. Together, these point to a better strategy for supporters of 18F and USDS to consider.
Step 1: Consider 4 Cold, Hard…and Helpful…Facts
- If the June 10 Oversight IT Subcommittee hearing proved anything, it is that 18F and the US Digital Service (USDS) occupy a lot of real estate inside the heads of those lobbying for traditional federal IT vendors.
- “Tech giants” aren’t going anywhere soon. See: the $80 billion federal IT honey pot.
- Not all IT vendors are created equal. Yes, many are all about the Benjamins, caring only for their own bottom lines. But many provide great products and services at good prices. They see the boatload of business benefits to be harvested from small, agile and open-source approaches like those employed by 18F and USDS. They love their country and deeply believe that their companies contribute to a stronger United States of America.
- There is exploitable distance between tech vendor leadership and their hired Washington guns. Remember: the top dogs at many of these “tech giants” have long supported President Obama, his agenda and his campaigns with their votes, their talents and their checkbooks.
Step 2: Listen More Closely to What Federal IT Vendors are Actually Saying
In addition to those four facts, the knee-jerk “18F-as-victim” narrative ignores much of the industry lobbyists’ sworn testimony.
“We are supportive of the goals of 18F, you know, and their approach to, as they say, hack the bureaucracy. You know, that’s necessary in many areas, and we want to see more innovation, and we want to see more startups brought in.” — David LeDuc, SIAA’s Senior Director of Public Policy, June 10, 2016 House Oversight IT Subcommittee Hearing
And this:
“Well, [18F and USDS] are already serving as disrupters, as we just discussed, around the cultural change that is necessary. We actually had to change the thought process of the bureaucracies and how they look at technology, and then that translates into how they buy it. And they are a leading edge on many of the elements of those different equations that have to be changed before we can fully incorporate technologies.” — A.R. “Trey” Hodgkins, ITAPS’ Senior Vice President, Public Sector, June 10, 2016 House Oversight IT Subcommittee Hearing
This survey of the scene suggests a better response than anger, outrage and transparent hit jobs from friendlies in the press.
Step 3: Form a Smarter Strategic Response — Public-Private Partnerships
Now a tremendously attractive opportunity presents itself for 18F and USDS to solve three of their biggest problems with one savvy strategy — strike smartly-select public-private partnerships between themselves and big federal IT vendors. Real-deal public-private partnerships on real IT projects would:
- Buttress the nascent tech teams within the federal bureaucracy…before a new boss comes to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue;
- Divide the monolithic vendor community and its traditional allies; and
- Increase the reach and impact of the 18F/USDS agile, innovative approaches to delivering federal digital services.
While I cannot promise an impossibly smooth ride to success with this strategy, I can testify to the fact that public-private partnerships like this do work incredibly well. For example, at The OpenGov Foundation — for which I serve as Executive Director — we have struck many incredibly productive and engaging partnerships with local governments and their legal service providers and codification companies. The “AmLegal Decoder” is but one example, developed in tandem with the City of San Francisco, Father of The State Decoded Waldo Jaquith, and the private-sector codification company American Legal Publishing. We are teaching the companies and the city councils about open source software, open legal data, and the possibilities unleashed by embracing both. They are teaching us about the market for codification services, how the legal services industry works, and what the local legislative customer needs and wants. It’s a win-win-win across the board.
Public-private partnerships are arrangements between public and private entities to get something done for the public over an extended period of time, with both entities sharing the risks and rewards. — Definition from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on February 22, 2016
Within the Executive Branch — very much including on President Obama’s watch— there have been too many public-private partnerships to count. This is a favored tool in the Administration’s arsenal. Some examples:
- Overhauling America’s aging transportation infrastructure;
- Upgrading and improving domestic U.S. manufacturing;
- Providing summer employment and education opportunities to underserved young people;
- Preventing health care fraud;
- Increasing affordable housing options for low-income Americans;
On top of that sampling of individual programs, one can easily argue that at the heart of President Obama’s signature policy achievements — the stimulus, the rescue of Wall Street and the domestic auto industry, and the Affordable Care Act, to name just a few — you will find public-private partnerships that deeply involve both the federal government and for-profit companies.
Step 4: Partner to Solve the Biggest Problems Facing 18F & USDS
When small, public-sector tech teams — like ours at The OpenGov Foundation—offer goodwill, openness and cooperation to those who believe themselves to be enemies — large, established, for-profit companies pushing proprietary IT solutions — it can throw a heretofore harmonious sector of industry into disarray, flipping the balance of power while making it radically easier for everyone to distinguish the good actors from the bad.
- Partnering to Quell Transparency Concerns — A valid question raised by the SIAA and ITAPS witnesses is that they, and the big IT companies they represent, do not know how 18F and USDS do business. If it’s true for them, it is most likely true for the public, too. Unaddressed, this question will grow from an annoying bug in a new system to a potentially fatal flaw. The industry charge of “opacity” came up again and again during the June 10 Oversight Subcommittee hearing, as did the acknowledgement by government witnesses that 18F and USDS need to do a better job of sharing their stories, their goals and their raison d’etre. Public-private partnerships would go far towards assuaging these private-sector concerns about transparency, since the companies would be side-by-side with 18F and/or USDS, and would therefore witness for themselves — instead of through DC lobbyist filters — how these tech teams really operate. The cherry on top is that the Administration would also be enlisting new evangelists, perhaps even new recruits, for their new approach to delivering digital services. There’s no substitute for tasting the magic oneself.
- Partnering to Separate the Good Federal IT Vendors from the Not-So-Good — Going further, engaging in pilot partnership projects with companies like those in SIIA and ITAPS would force a potentially uncomfortable decision on each individual business. Since the Executive Branch would dictate the structure and guidelines of such a partnership, it would get to set the terms of engagement and shape the outcomes right off the bat. It is true that many, if not the majority of, private-sector vendors who feel threatened by 18F and USDS would choose not to take up the offer, simultaneously exposing to the public — and to federal government IT contracting officers, internal Executive Branch “tech giant” allies, and the United States Congress— their true positions while belying all their nice-sounding platitudes. On the other hand, those firms choosing to engage in public-private partnerships would earn significant praise and positive press coverage, gain instant Capitol Hill credibility and new Executive Branch allies, while getting a leg up on their fellow private-sector competition when it comes to doing future business with the federal government. Why not take industry at its word? Why not once and for all determine — on terms defined by 18F and USDS — who really wants to play the innovation game, and who only cares about cashing a big procurement paycheck? [Emphasis mine throughout.] As the SIAA witness testified under oath, “We’re very supportive of the different thought process that 18F brings and their goal bringing in innovative IT companies, small IT businesses, and integrating that into agency solutions, working alongside of agencies to help them in designing their procurements and deciding what types of technology they need.”
- Partnering to Increase the Impact of USDS and 18F — The old saying goes, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” The same very much applies to the Obama Administration’s top tech teams and the traditional federal IT community. If the transformational magic of 18F and USDS resides as much in how they do what they do as in what they do, and if the vendor community today is far larger and has a greater reach than their public-sector counterparts, doesn’t it follow that teaching IT vendors how to improve their own approaches would be a force multiplier? While the leaders of 18F and USDS may not view such an outcome as within their mission, at a time of tightening belts and shrinking budgets, it stands to reason that teaching private-sector counterparts how to better deliver digital services would generate a lot more bang for the taxpayer buck.
Isn’t that what the industry lobbyists were themselves inviting, under oath, at the June 10 Oversight Committee hearing?
“Our members are frustrated because they feel that the government‑unique acquisition process has tamped down their ability to deliver that innovation rapidly in agile ways…[W]e have to figure out how to take the good work that [18F and USDS] are doing in bringing in those capabilities and then translate that into that scale we need.” — ITAPS’ Hodgkins
Plus, who wouldn’t want to see the likes of Oracle or Lockheed Martin grapple with agile software development, open source licensing and project timelines measured in months and millions, instead of years and billions? You could sell tickets to watch that. I’ll make the popcorn.
Step 5: Forge a Brighter Future for the Delivery of Federal Digital Services
We are in the midst of a watershed transitional period for government digital services. From local efforts like Code for America and ours at The OpenGov Foundation to federal government innovations like 18F and USDS, no one has a crystal-clear picture of what shape civic technology will take in 18 months, let alone in five or ten years. Everyone is searching and seeking and coming to grips with disruptive forces of one kind or another. But three things are clear. One, President Obama’s signature tech teams are onto something, making certain progress with each successful project. Two, American taxpayers are still footing an enormous $80 billion bill for less-than-acceptable digital services provided, in large part, by big private-sector vendors. And three, neither these innovative new approaches to public-sector IT nor those “legacy tech giants” are going anywhere soon. Each has an critical role to play in building the future of federal government technology.
I believe the best defense for 18F and USDS will continue to be some savvy combination of doing what they’re already doing — shipping better, cheaper and faster digital services — and steadfastly refusing to engage legacy “tech giants” on grounds their lobbyists choose. Those in federal IT who have for so long ridden the taxpayer gravy train without much accountability, public scrutiny or competition will assuredly do what they can to protect their bottom lines. They will continue whisper campaigning, influence peddling, and employing the age-old strategy alternating between “raising serious concerns” and hammering away in the press and in Congressional hearings every time a whiff of said concerns wafts into Washington, D.C.
When the long lobbyist knives come out, the natural human response is to draw your blade and duel. That plays right into their hands. Sure, sniping and pot-shotting may feel good, but anger doesn’t ship good code. Collaboration and innovation does. Strategic public-private partnerships, struck by 18F and USDS with private-sector IT vendors large and small, could just be the fastest way to secure the brighter federal IT future everyone wants, and America needs.
Both sides of this debate must decide the way forward for themselves. Public-private partnerships are but one tool in the toolbox. But I pray 18F, USDS and “tech giants” choose wisely. We all — taxpayers, Congress and everyone working to deliver government digital services — have at least 80 billion reasons for wanting all those working in federal IT to make the right decision.
