How 18F Transformed Government Technology − And Why Its Elimination Matters

Failures

from the 18f-mattered,-and-now-it's-gone dept

Healthcare.gov, the government health insurance marketplace website, launched in October 2013 only to buckle under the weight of just 2,000 simultaneous users. As millions of Americans stared at error messages and frozen screens, a political crisis unfolded, but so did a new era of government technology.

The result was 18F, an in-house digital services consulting agency that brought Silicon Valley expertise to government, challenging decades of outdated procurement practices and introducing a radical new approach to building digital public services.

Founded on March 19, 2014, by Presidential Innovation Fellows, 18F was housed within the Technology Transformation Services department of the General Services Administration, or GSA. The name 18F was derived from the address of GSA headquarters: 1800 F Street. On March 1, 2025, just a few weeks shy of 18F’s 11th anniversary, the Trump administration eliminated the agency and laid off its staff.

As a researcher who studies public administration and technology, I have observed the transformational role 18F played in government digital services. The unit’s elimination raises the question of what the future of those services will look like.

Impact of 18F

18F served a unique role as an in-house digital consultancy for the U.S. government, drawing on innovative strategies to improve public service through technology. Within 18F, teams consisting of designers, software engineers, strategists and product managers worked together with federal, state and local agencies to not only fix technical problems but to build, buy and share technology that helped to modernize and improve the public’s experience with government services.

Over nearly 11 years, 18F built an impressive portfolio of successful digital projects that transformed how people interact with the U.S. government. Even if the average person is unfamiliar with 18F, the odds are quite high that they have at least encountered one of its many products or services.18F staff describe the group’s mission and work.

For example, 18F supported the Internal Revenue Service in creating IRS Direct File, a free online tax filing tool that provides taxpayers with a simplified filing process. As of today, IRS Direct File is available in 25 states and is expected to serve 30 million eligible taxpayers during the 2025 tax filing season.

18F has been pivotal in modernizing and securing digital systems to help create more streamlined and secure user experiences for the public. For instance, Login.gov is a secure single sign-on platform that simplifies access to multiple government services for users.

Perhaps the most notable of 18F’s modernization efforts that touches nearly every aspect of government today is the U.S. Web Design System. The comprehensive design system was developed in collaboration with the U.S. Digital Service in 2015. It helps support dozens of agencies and makes nearly 200 websites more accessible and responsive to user needs.

How 18F worked

What set 18F apart was its approach. Rather than spending years on giant information technology contracts that often failed to deliver, 18F championed agile development. Agile and lean methodologies have been popular in Silicon Valley startups and software companies for decades due to their flexibility and focus on rapid iteration.

By applying agile development principles, 18F focused on breaking down large projects into manageable pieces with incremental improvements based on frequent user feedback. This approach allowed continuous adaptation spurred by user feedback and changing requirements while reducing risk.

Another cornerstone of 18F’s innovative approach was its focus on user-centered design. By focusing on the needs of the people who actually used government services, 18F was able to go beyond merely satisfying technical requirements to design digital products that were more accessible and user-friendly. The idea was to understand the end users and the problems they encountered in order to effectively design products and solutions that addressed their needs. It also aimed to provide a consistent user experience and earn the users’ trust in the services.

By prioritizing open-source development and collaboration, 18F also helped to make government IT more affordable. Making project code transparent meant that agencies could reuse the code and reduce the cost of duplicate development efforts across agencies and levels of government.

18F also had a hand in helping agencies develop their own technology capacity, whether by teaching them how to build software using open-source development and agile methodologies or by teaching agencies how to hire and oversee technology vendors themselves. This model was especially beneficial for state and local agencies following 18F’s expansion in 2016 to provide services to state and local government agencies that receive federal funding.

End of an era

The elimination of 18F marks the end of an era, raising concerns about both current and future technology projects. As of now, there does not appear to be a succession plan, leaving many federal agencies without ongoing support for their digital transformation efforts. Critics also argue that the loss of 18F means the loss of significant technical expertise within the government.

These changes come at a time when agencies are experiencing substantial personnel shifts, rendering digital services potentially even more critical. As agencies brace for more personnel cuts, the public may need to rely more on digital services to fill the gap amid growing staffing shortages.

Since the news was announced, current and former 18F team members as well as advocates of the unit have taken to social media platforms, including X (formerly Twitter), Bluesky, and LinkedIn, to share stories of its successes, honor its legacy and share 18F resources.

Kayla Schwoerer is an Assistant Professor of Public Administration & Policy at the University at Albany, State University of New York

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Filed Under: 18f, doge, efficiency, government

Amid The Measles Outbreak, HHS Cuts 1/8th Of Workforce

Failures

from the perfect-timing dept

The measles outbreak that began in Texas continues at a brisk pace. RFK Jr. and his Department of Health and Human Services, as we’ve discussed, continues to make the outbreak worse through a combination of public opining on alternative treatments that are making some even sicker, garbled messaging that seeks to downplay the severity of the outbreak, and the Secretary’s inability to simply tell people to get the MMR vaccine so we can be done with all of this. There have been 22 new cases in Texas in the last five days alone, a number that is almost certainly underreported. Health experts are getting worried, particularly as the measles has an unhappy side effect of causing immune amnesia, which can severely disrupt a person’s immunity from infection via prior infection or vaccine for a wide variety of other diseases. A sort of gateway virus that can then expose the victim to many other diseases they should be protected against.

Honestly, if anyone would be keen on preventing an epidemic or pandemic in 2025, you would think it would be Donald Trump, given how the COVID-19 pandemic played a heavy role in his losing his reelection bid in 2020.

So what is HHS under RFK Jr. doing while all of that is going on? Slashing 1/8th of HHS’ workforce, of course. And, as is typical for him and the department under his leadership, he’s dribbling the communications around those cuts down his leg, as well.

Kennedy’s silence is prompting questions from Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike, with a bipartisan request for President Donald Trump’s health secretary to appear before a Senate committee next week to explain the cuts.

As many as 10,000 notices were sent to scientists, senior leaders, doctors, inspectors and others across the department in an effort to cut a quarter of its workforce. The agency itself has offered no specifics on which jobs have been eliminated, with the information instead coming largely from employees who have been dismissed.

RFK Jr. has said he would come before Congress quarterly to answer their questions. The bipartisan request to appear in a congressional hearing call that out. And, yet, RFK Jr. has not agreed to appear at the time of this writing. There is already reporting that the White House is furious with Kennedy and the department, particularly as the White House has had to invest more time in communications for the department than any other in the Executive Branch.

Since the measles debacle, the White House communications team has handled more press relations on behalf of HHS than any other department, and often has acted as a contact between reporters and the agency.

“This shouldn’t be the White House’s job, but here we are,” a White House adviser said.

These cuts, part of an effort to shave roughly 0.1% of the HHS budget, will have an impact on public health. And not just on the current measles outbreak, but on all kinds of things.

In every corner of the FDA, and at sister health agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, thousands of workers, specialists, and scientists were slapped with Department of Government Efficiency pink slips Tuesday morning.

A top scientist on the FDA’s bird flu response team – gone. 

The leader of Makary’s tobacco unit – gone. 

To borrow part of a phrase, slashing employees that power American healthcare at the tail end of a pandemic and perhaps at the starting line of a new epidemic is exactly the wrong thing to do… but, here we are. A vaccine skeptic with all kinds of crackpot health theories has been put in charge of American healthcare because he said nice things about Donald Trump. If measles does indeed become an epidemic, or worse, any blood from it will be squarely on the hands of Kennedy and Trump.

Frightening though it may be to think it, one move to watch out for is the administration ceasing to report the number of infections from measles, the bird flu, or any other disease that might rear in the near future. Either a purposeful refusal to report those numbers or, more likely, a byproduct of staff reductions could result in all of us being far less informed, and far less safe, than we are today.

Filed Under: donald trump, health and human services, hhs, measles, pandemic, rfk jr.

Daily Deal: The Complete Cisco Training Bundle

Deals

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

The Complete Cisco Training Bundle has 6 courses to help you get ready to become certified. Courses cover al you need to know as a CCNA, CCEA, and more. It’s on sale for $40.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

Trump’s DOJ Civil Rights Division Finally Finds A Civil Right Worth Protecting

Legal Issues

from the sun's-out-guns-out dept

Trump has always considered cops to be better people than regular people. Unless they’re defending a federal building under attack by Trump’s people. Then they’re no better than anyone else.

Trump’s first term came coupled with an announcement that cops would be elevated above the people they’re supposed to serve and that the general public should just welcome the cool touch of swiftly-stomping boot heels to the face for the next four years. His unexpected second term came with similar expectations. Just like he did in his first term, Trump pretty much shut down the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, which has historically been the only government agency attempting to hold local cops accountable for their rights violations.

The rest of our civil rights are continually being undermined by Trump and, subsequently, are no longer of concern to the eviscerated DOJ Civil Rights Division. We thought we’d never hear anything from this entity for the next four years, but apparently it still has some work to do. There are rights allegedly being infringed on and it’s up to the DOJ to ride to the rescue.

It’s not the First Amendment. Nor is it the Fourteenth Amendment and its Equal Protection Clause. That much was made clear by the DOJ in this late March press release:

Attorney General Pamela Bondi Launches Compliance Review Investigation into Admissions Policies at Stanford University and Several University of California Schools, Advancing President Trump’s Mandate to End Illegal DEI Policies

There will be no more diversity, inclusion, or equal protection under Trump and AG Pam Bondi. Instead, there will be government-enforced segregation and bigotry, as AG Bondi explains:

“President Trump and I are dedicated to ending illegal discrimination and restoring merit-based opportunity across the country,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “Every student in America deserves to be judged solely based on their hard work, intellect, and character, not the color of their skin.”

LOL. “Merit-based.” That’s pretty rich coming from a man who only became the person he is because of constant cash infusions from his father and the generous contributions of taxpayers to several Trump business bankruptcies. And it’s no doubt backed by Trump’s diversity hires, AG Pam Bondi (a woman!) and Elon Musk (an immigrant!).

That takes civil rights off the table. What’s left for the DOJ? Well, it definitely won’t be the Fourth or Fifth Amendment. Those are rights that only protect the guilty, amirite?! This DOJ definitely won’t be wasting its time on that.

Here’s the only right the DOJ Civil Rights Division cares about these days… at least, so far. And it cares about it so much, it’s willing to investigate other law enforcement agencies.

As part of a broader review of restrictive firearms-related laws in California and other States, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division today announced an investigation into the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to determine whether it is engaging in a pattern or practice of depriving ordinary, law-abiding Californians of their Second Amendment rights. A recent federal court decision found that “the law and facts [we]re clearly in … favor” of two private plaintiffs who challenged the lengthy eighteen-month delays that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department had imposed when processing their concealed handgun license applications. And the Civil Rights Division has reason to believe that those two plaintiffs are not the only residents of Los Angeles County experiencing similarly long delays that are unduly burdening, or effectively denying, the Second Amendment rights of the people of Los Angeles.

Yeah, of all the problems the LASD has — the gangs it houses, the omnipresent disregard for the Fourth Amendment, the vindictive prosecution of its critics, the jailhouse brutality, the obstruction of FBI investigations into its jailhouse snitch program — this is the thing this administration is going to get all hot and bothered about: the alleged slow-walking of concealed carry permits.

No doubt this investigation will end with a loud speech about the Democratic Republic of California and its stifling of this solitary constitutional right. And as loud and as long as the speech is (and the speech will still happen whether or not the DOJ discovers any wrongdoing), it will refuse to acknowledge this “pattern and practice” of violating civil rights includes the LASD violating rights the Trump Administration doesn’t actually care about, which would be every constitutional amendment but the Second.

Filed Under: 2nd amendment, doj, doj investigation, donald trump, lasd, los angeles county sheriff's department, pam bondi

Trevor Milton Lists All Of The Cozy Relationships With Trump That Definitely Didn’t Lead To His Pardon

Politics

from the let-me-count-the-ways dept

We chronicled the implosion of the company Nikola and the fall from grace of its CEO, Trevor Milton, for years. If you don’t recall the story, Nikola was built to develop over the road trucks with a hydrogen propulsion system. In 2020, in a bid to gain more investment and boost confidence of current investors, Nikola showed off footage of what it called a working prototype moving down a lonely highway road. The problem is that it wasn’t a working prototype for the purposes of the footage. Instead, the truck was towed towards a descending hill and then allowed to roll down it with that momentum, with the filming camera tilted to make it appear as though it were on level ground. A sort of Adam West in Batman approach, in other words.

From there Nikola lost contracts, attempted to silence criticism via copyright, ended up in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and Milton was convicted of fraud and sentenced to 4 years in prison for his role in this fiasco. Justice, it appeared, was done.

But last week Donald Trump pardoned Milton, who will now see no jail time, as he’d been out on bond as he appealed the case. Conmen of a feather flock together, it seems.

“It is no wonder why trust and confidence in the Justice Department has eroded to nothing. I wish judges would stop believing whatever the prosecutors feed them so Americans could trust the justice system again,” Milton said in a statement.

Milton was convicted by a jury. He was represented in that trial by Brad Bondi, a partner at law firm Paul Hastings and the brother of current U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Now a free man, Milton has said he plans to release a documentary that he believes will tell his side of the Nikola story.

Milton apparently did not note whether that documentary would feature a permanently tilted camera in order to keep things consistent.

But as you can tell, there is no remorse here. Far from any contrite admission of guilt, Milton is pitching his pardon as a validation that he was innocent all along, the victim of the Biden administration, rather than a valid conviction handed down from a jury. If there were accusations to be made of political fuckery in any of this, they should have been made at trial, not as part of a post-pardon media commentary.

Now, if you’re concerned that Milton’s cozy relationship between his attorney and the U.S. Attorney General, or that the millions his family donated to the Trump campaign had anything to do with his getting pardoned, rest easy. Milton is here to tell you that these conflicts had nothing to do with it, one by one.

Milton said donations he and his wife made to the Trump campaign in October played no role in the pardon.

“I wouldn’t even know how to do that,” he said. “It would be illegal to do that.”

Milton also said that Trump-appointed Attorney General Pamela Bondi, the sister of one of his attorneys, also had no role in the pardon. Milton on Monday repeatedly said he was a political victim under the Biden administration, adding the pardon says, “Trevor is innocent.”

I like to imagine that he made these comments with a shit-eating grin on his face and punctuated them with an exaggerated wink. A pardon of course does not confer innocence onto the convicted. But it’s not crazy to suspect that donations and familial relationships at play here factored into his pardon. Just watching how Trump operates over the last few years should at least raise suspicions.

But again, there is no responsibility being taken by Milton for any of this.

Milton, who confirmed he sold more than $300 million in company shares in 2021, said he would not repay any of the investors. But he would be open to helping those people in future ventures.

“So, I’m not heartless,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I feel for these people probably more than most.”

One wonders if there is a hill steep enough to prevent those investors from running up them in response.

Filed Under: brad bondi, donald trump, donations, fraud, pam bondi, pardon, soft corruption, trevor milton
Companies: nikola

Anchorage Police Department: AI-Generated Police Reports Don’t Save Time

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the the-time-saving-tech-that-isn't dept

The Anchorage Police Department (APD) has concluded its three-month trial of Axon’s Draft One, an AI system that uses audio from body-worn cameras to write narrative police reports for officers—and has decided not to retain the technology. Axon touts this technology as “force multiplying,” claiming it cuts in half the amount of time officers usually spend writing reports—but APD disagrees.

The APD deputy chief told Alaska Public Media, “We were hoping that it would be providing significant time savings for our officers, but we did not find that to be the case.” The deputy chief flagged that the time it took officers to review reports cut into the time savings from generating the report.  The software translates the audio into narrative, and officers are expected to read through the report carefully to edit it, add details, and verify it for authenticity. Moreover, because the technology relies on audio from body-worn cameras, it often misses visual components of the story that the officer then has to add themselves. “So if they saw something but didn’t say it, of course, the body cam isn’t going to know that,” the deputy chief continued.

The Anchorage Police Department is not alone in claiming that Draft One is not a time saving device for officers. A new study into police using AI to write police reports, which specifically tested Axon’s Draft One, found that AI-assisted report-writing offered no real time-savings advantage.

This news comes on the heels of policymakers and prosecutors casting doubt on the utility or accuracy of AI-created police reports. In Utah, a pending state bill seeks to make it mandatory for departments to disclose when reports have been written by AI. In King County, Washington, the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office has directed officers not to use any AI tools to write narrative reports.

In an era where companies that sell technology to police departments profit handsomely and have marketing teams to match, it can seem like there is an endless stream of press releases and local news stories about police acquiring some new and supposedly revolutionary piece of tech. But what we don’t usually get to see is how many times departments decide that technology is costly, flawed, or lacks utility. As the future of AI-generated police reports rightly remains hotly contested, it’s important to pierce the veil of corporate propaganda and see when and if police departments actually find these costly bits of tech useless or impractical.

Originally posted to the EFF Deeplinks blog.

Filed Under: ai, anchorage, anchorage pd, draft one, paperwork, police
Companies: axon

Massive Expansion Of Italy’s Piracy Shield Underway Despite Growing Criticism Of Its Flaws

Copyright

from the doubling-down-on-a-failure dept

Walled Culture has been following closely Italy’s poorly designed Piracy Shield system. Back in December we reported how copyright companies used their access to the Piracy Shield system to order Italian Internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to all of Google Drive for the entire country, and how malicious actors could similarly use that unchecked power to shut down critical national infrastructure. Since then, the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), an international, not-for-profit association representing computer, communications, and Internet industry firms, has added its voice to the chorus of disapproval. In a letter to the European Commission, it warned about the dangers of the Piracy Shield system to the EU economy:

The 30-minute window [to block a site] leaves extremely limited time for careful verification by ISPs that the submitted destination is indeed being used for piracy purposes. Additionally, in the case of shared IP addresses, a block can very easily (and often will) restrict access to lawful websites – harming legitimate businesses and thus creating barriers to the EU single market. This lack of oversight poses risks not only to users’ freedom to access information, but also to the wider economy. Because blocking vital digital tools can disrupt countless individuals and businesses who rely on them for everyday operations. As other industry associations have also underlined, such blocking regimes present a significant and growing trade barrier within the EU.

It also raised an important new issue: the fact that Italy brought in this extreme legislation without notifying the European Commission under the so-called “TRIS” procedure, which allows others to comment on possible problems:

The (EU) 2015/1535 procedure aims to prevent creating barriers in the internal market before they materialize. Member States notify their legislative projects regarding products and Information Society services to the Commission which analyses these projects in the light of EU legislation. Member States participate on the equal foot with the Commission in this procedure and they can also issue their opinions on the notified drafts.

As well as Italy’s failure to notify the Commission about its new legislation in advance, the CCIA believes that:

this anti-piracy mechanism is in breach of several other EU laws. That includes the Open Internet Regulation which prohibits ISPs to block or slow internet traffic unless required by a legal order. The block subsequent to the Piracy Shield also contradicts the Digital Services Act (DSA) in several aspects, notably Article 9 requiring certain elements to be included in the orders to act against illegal content. More broadly, the Piracy Shield is not aligned with the Charter of Fundamental Rights nor the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU – as it hinders freedom of expression, freedom to provide internet services, the principle of proportionality, and the right to an effective remedy and a fair trial.

Far from taking these criticisms to heart, or acknowledging that Piracy Shield has failed to convert people to paying subscribers, the Italian government has decided to double down, and to make Piracy Shield even worse. Massimiliano Capitanio, Commissioner at AGCOM, the Italian Authority for Communications Guarantees, explained on LinkedIn how Piracy Shield was being extended in far-reaching ways (translation by Google Translate, original in Italian). In future, it will add:

30-minute blackout orders not only for pirate sports events, but also for other live content;

the extension of blackout orders to VPNs and public DNS providers;

the obligation for search engines to de-index pirate sites;

the procedures for unblocking domain names and IP addresses obscured by Piracy Shield that are no longer used to spread pirate content;

the new procedure to combat piracy on the #linear and “on demand” television, for example to protect the #film and #serietv.

That is, Piracy Shield will apply to live content far beyond sports events, its original justification, and to streaming services. Even DNS and VPN providers will be required to block sites, a serious technical interference in the way the Internet operates, and a threat to people’s privacy. Search engines, too, will be forced to de-index material. The only minor concession to ISPs is to unblock domain names and IP addresses that are no longer allegedly being used to disseminate unauthorized material. There are, of course, no concessions to ordinary Internet users affected by Piracy Shield blunders.

An AGCOM board member, Elisa Giomi, who was mentioned previously on Walled Culture as a lone voice within AGCOM exposing its failures, also took to LinkedIn to express her concerns with these extensions of Piracy Shield (original in Italian):

The changes made unfortunately do not resolve #critical issues such as the fact that private #reporters, i.e. the holders of the rights to #football matches and other live #audiovisual content, have a disproportionate role in determining the blocking of #domains and #IP addresses that transmit in violation of #copyright.

Moreover:

The providers of #network and #computer security services such as #VPNs, #DNSs and #ISPs, who are called upon to bear high #costs for the implementation of the monitoring and blocking system, cannot count on compensation or financing mechanisms, suffering a significant imbalance, since despite not having any active role in #copyright violations, they invest economic resources to combat illegal activities to the exclusive advantage of the rights holders.

The fact that the Italian government is ignoring the problems with Piracy Shield and extending its application as if everything were fine, is bad enough. But the move might have even worse knock-on consequences. An EU parliamentary question about the broadcast rights to audiovisual works and sporting competitions asked:

Can the Commission provide precise information on the effectiveness of measures to block pirate sites by means of identification and neutralisation technologies?

To which the European Commission replied:

In order to address the issues linked to the unauthorised retransmissions of live events, the Commission adopted, in May 2023 the recommendation on combating online piracy of sport and other live events.

By 17 November 2025, the Commission will assess the effects of the recommendation taking into account the results from the monitoring exercise.

It’s likely that copyright companies will be lauding Piracy Shield as an example of how things should be done across the whole of the EU, conveniently ignoring all the problems that have arisen. Significantly, a new “Study on the Effectiveness and the Legal and Technical Means of Implementing Website-Blocking Orders” from the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) does precisely that in its Conclusion:

A well-functioning site-blocking system that involves cooperation between relevant stakeholders (such as Codes of Conduct and voluntary agreements among rights holders and ISPs) and/or automated processes, such as Italy’s Piracy Shield platform, further increases the efficiency and effectiveness of a site-blocking regime.

As the facts show abundantly, Piracy Shield is the antithesis of a “well-functioning site-blocking system”. But when have copyright maximalists and their tame politicians ever let facts get in the way of their plans?

Follow me @glynmoody on Mastodon and on Bluesky. Originally published to Walled Culture.

Filed Under: agcom, copyright, dns, eu, eu commission, italy, piracy shield, site blocking, vpns, wipo