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The U.S. Digital Services Playbook

67 points by ondrae 12y ago

projectileboy 12y ago
This seems well done. And although it probably sounds pedestrian to most of us, this seems like an awfully big step coming from the U.S. government. Now the question is whether or not any agencies will actually follow any of this sage advice. As a snarky aside, it would be nice if the Obama administration would themselves follow rule #13, and "default to open".
- PantaloonFlames 12y ago
  The key thing is, there are 3 bazillion developers and techies sprinkled all throughout the US Govt. This playbook provides all of them a common base form which to start. For that reason, it's really valuable.
tanjk 12y ago
Most of the actions in this list are not achievable because of Departmental CIO policies.
- acdha 12y ago
  That's why this is actually important: when the President of the United States announces a major push to improve government IT and publishes a policy guide like this, it creates a shelter for all of the people working on the inside who want to do things differently. Nothing is going to improve until the environment changes so that departmental CIO has to justify sticking with waterfall, overpaying for servers, delaying projects rather than using a different approach, etc.
  - tanjk 12y ago
    It does make more sense as instructions from the US CIO to Departmental and Agency CIOs, because those are the people preventing anyone from operating on anything as modern as they describe. My agency's Washington Office fixers have us on IE8 for the foreseeable and I'm not allowed to use ssl without a tech approval. "Be sure and have a Budget Officer at your meeting!"
    - acdha 12y ago
      Oh, believe me, I can relate. The difference is that now I can see the waterfail faction starting to realize they need to change. Once you get a few data points for comparison, it becomes hard to maintain that the status quo is maintainable. The trick is really to turn it into an economic argument. Figure out how to get the budget officer to start asking why project Y requires servers + staff at an order of magnitude greater than project X and the pressure starts shifting.
calpaterson 12y ago
It's interesting to compare http://playbook.cio.gov/ http://playbook.cio.gov/ to https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/digital-by-default https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/digital-by-default
imatworkyo 12y ago
This is also kind of scary. Imagine what kind of havoc the government could cause if it was actually efficient at what it does.
8ig8 12y ago
Committer is looking forward to getting committed... https://github.com/WhiteHouse/playbook/blob/gh-pages/assets/sass/styles.css.scss#L523-527 https://github.com/WhiteHouse/playbook/blob/gh-pages/assets/...
- aptwebapps 12y ago
  Thought that you were saying they were going to be institutionalized ...

67 points by ondrae 12y ago

This seems well done. And although it probably sounds pedestrian to most of us, this seems like an awfully big step coming from the U.S. government. Now the question is whether or not any agencies will actually follow any of this sage advice. As a snarky aside, it would be nice if the Obama administration would themselves follow rule #13, and "default to open".

PantaloonFlames 12y ago
The key thing is, there are 3 bazillion developers and techies sprinkled all throughout the US Govt. This playbook provides all of them a common base form which to start. For that reason, it's really valuable.

tanjk 12y ago

Most of the actions in this list are not achievable because of Departmental CIO policies.

acdha 12y ago
That's why this is actually important: when the President of the United States announces a major push to improve government IT and publishes a policy guide like this, it creates a shelter for all of the people working on the inside who want to do things differently. Nothing is going to improve until the environment changes so that departmental CIO has to justify sticking with waterfall, overpaying for servers, delaying projects rather than using a different approach, etc.
- tanjk 12y ago
  It does make more sense as instructions from the US CIO to Departmental and Agency CIOs, because those are the people preventing anyone from operating on anything as modern as they describe. My agency's Washington Office fixers have us on IE8 for the foreseeable and I'm not allowed to use ssl without a tech approval. "Be sure and have a Budget Officer at your meeting!"
  - acdha 12y ago
    Oh, believe me, I can relate. The difference is that now I can see the waterfail faction starting to realize they need to change. Once you get a few data points for comparison, it becomes hard to maintain that the status quo is maintainable. The trick is really to turn it into an economic argument. Figure out how to get the budget officer to start asking why project Y requires servers + staff at an order of magnitude greater than project X and the pressure starts shifting.

calpaterson 12y ago

It's interesting to compare http://playbook.cio.gov/ http://playbook.cio.gov/ to https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/digital-by-default https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/digital-by-default

imatworkyo 12y ago

This is also kind of scary. Imagine what kind of havoc the government could cause if it was actually efficient at what it does.

8ig8 12y ago

Committer is looking forward to getting committed... https://github.com/WhiteHouse/playbook/blob/gh-pages/assets/sass/styles.css.scss#L523-527 https://github.com/WhiteHouse/playbook/blob/gh-pages/assets/...

aptwebapps 12y ago
Thought that you were saying they were going to be institutionalized ...