An oral history of the US Digital Service

Suffice to say that things in the US have been chaotic over the last six months. One result of said chaos was the dissolution of 18F and the takeover of the US digital service, both at the hands of DOGE. (Technically the US digital service was renamed the US DOGE service, but that is just too moronic to lend any credibility to.) As an american, this act of national self-harm has made me incredibly sad.

One small ray of light: two of the people involved in the formation of the USDS (Kathy Pham and Emily Tavoulareas) have set up an oral history of the organisation. They had been working on this for a number of years and now that the USDS is no more, they’ve published it. The site that Pham and Tavoulareas have compiled is quite something. The texts go so far beyond describing the organisation itself, layering in stories of individuals and their path to public service. From their intro letter:

While there’s certainly a need to think strategically about the future, it is also critical that we understand and learn from the past, because hard-won lessons shouldn’t be overshadowed by controversy or politics.

I think it is important to tell the stories of how public sector organisations have adapted to the digital technology and ways of working. Given the propensity for UK ministries and departments to refactor themselves every few years, there is a danger that the organisation forgets how it achieved past successes, leaving the people still working there with the task of figuring it all out again. That has some resonance for me, now, given the changes coming to the NHS. I’d like to think the merger with the Department for Health and Social Care will be less chainsaw and more, I dunno, well-thought-out-org-design, but we’ll see. Certainly there are plenty of people devoting huge amounts of energy to this work. My fingers are crossed for them and us.