The White House has announced that it will begin piloting a new U.S. Digital Service modeled on the largely private sector team assembled to fix HealthCare.gov last year.It said the team would be comprised of the country’s best digital experts (it is to be lead by former Google engineer Mikey Dickerson who was involved in turning around HealthCare.gov) who would collaborate with federal agencies to make websites more consumer friendly, to identify and fix problems, and to help upgrade the government’s technology infrastructure.
According to the White House, the team will work to establish standards to bring the government’s digital services in line with the best private sector services; Identify common technology patterns that will help scale services effectively; Collaborate with agencies to identify and address gaps in their capacity to design, develop, deploy and operate excellent citizen-facing services; and, Provide accountability to ensure agencies see results.
