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[00:00:12] Unknown:

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And visit the site at python podcast.com   to subscribe to the show, sign up for the newsletter, and read the show notes.   And to help other people find the show, please leave a review on iTunes and tell your friends and coworkers.   Your host as usual is Tobias Macy. And today, I'm interviewing David Holmes about his work at the US Digital Services Organization. So, David, could you start by introducing  

[00:02:33] Unknown:

Jess, I'm the director of engineering for the United States Digital Service. I've been with USCS since March of 2016.   I became director in December   2018,   and it's been an amazing   journey. And before that, I lived in New York City, and I worked at a bunch of different start up from AdTech to my most recent 1 before USCS was sports management.  

[00:02:53] Unknown:

And do you remember how you first got introduced to Python?  

[00:02:56] Unknown:

It's been so long. So when I was around 11, 12 years old, I was really into Linux. I guess, like, most 11, 12 years old.   And   and I went into this distro called man Mandrake Clinics, and my grandma made me work really, really hard. I had to wash cars around the neighborhood and   mow lawns for an entire month in the summer, and then I had to think she eventually gave me $20 to go buy the CDs.   And Mandrake, they use a lot of Python, so I ended up using Python to automate some things, and that's how I started learning how to code with Python. But I didn't start really using it until 5, 6 years ago when Node. Js was, like, really, really big. When I was using Node. Js, it was, like, callback hell and all those stuff. And this is before e s 6 before I got a lot better. So I wanted something really, really simple. And 1 of the things I like about Python is that it's a really, really simple language. So ever since then, I just worked in Python.  

[00:03:48] Unknown:

And so can you start a bit by explaining what the US Digital Services Agency is and how you got involved with it? So what USCS is is so we started under president Obama in 2014  

[00:03:59] Unknown:

after the health care, dot gov stuff. So most people don't remember health care dot gov.   It was a whole mess if you watched the news back then. And President Obama said, how come when we're campaigning, we can accept 1, 000, 000 and 1, 000, 000 dollars worth of donations, but when we wanna give millions and millions of people health care, it's a problem. And he said, mister president, the way we do things in private industry and government is different. Government's a little little bit more harder to get things done.   And president Obama said, well, how about we take people from the private industry and bring them into government for a short amount of time and see what they could do to fix the tough care dot gov   stuff. And as the story goes, after a couple of weeks, we was able to get healthcare dot gov back up and running, not a 100%, but better than it was before. And then over time, we got it better. And as the story goes, we was able to   give 20 +1000000 people health care,   and   president Obama said, this works so well. How about we put this into different agencies, And we try this model on different agencies, and that's how we created USCS. And we're about a 180 people strong, and we're mixed between engineers, product people, designers. And we have another category that we like to call call bureaucracy hacking, which is just people who's been in government for a long time because we all come from private industry. So I when I came from startups. I had no clue how government worked and how bureaucracy works. So we have people who can actually help you navigate,   that situation.  

6 some of the things we're proud of is 6 of, our leadership is women, and 25% of people in leadership are people of color. There's some things we're proud about, and we know we have a long way to go, but we make sure that we are conscious of diversity in USCS because 1 of our biggest things is we want to represent all of America as we do our projects.  

[00:05:33] Unknown:

Yeah. It's definitely a valuable thing to have, particularly when you're working with government and you're trying to   serve as sort of an inspiration for what's possible both in the government and in private industry. So   because of the fact that you're working as part of the White House, you want to make sure that you're providing a good sort of forward looking face and giving people of, you know, all the backgrounds, people across all of America,   a good motivation and a good, role model to be able to   aspire to and work towards and show that it is possible to be able to provide valuable services to people, particularly when you have this diverse background and these diverse groups of people contributing   to, you know, a worthwhile goal that helps everybody in America.  



[00:06:17] Unknown:

Agreed.   That is 1 big thing because we can't take especially if we use this all 1 specific group, then we can't figure out some problems that affect other groups of people. So 1 of the things I'm super proud about in USCS is how diverse we are.  

[00:06:31] Unknown:

And I know that another group that came about in somewhat of the similar time frame is 18 f, and I know that they've gone through a recent name change. So I'm wondering if you can just talk a bit about what the overall operational model is for USDS and maybe some compare and contrast with how 18 f works. Yeah. So 18 f is 1 of our sister agencies and,  

[00:06:51] Unknown:

good partners. And the difference between us and 18 f for the most part is 18 f is course recoverable, and we're not. And   that makes a little bit of a difference when we have when a problem happens. So a couple months ago, there was a problem in an agency, and we was able to go in the next day and help fix things. And we're 18 f because of cost recoverable.   They have to do contracts and then we'll use, and they can't get as much they need a lot of lead time before they can actually go in and do something. But 1 of the things that we do at USCS is   we have these things called discovery sprints and we give recommendations out of it. And sometimes it's just like, Hey, you know, be known the agency that fix your problems. Like, maybe you should hire a team f, and that's kind of how we work together to solve some of these soft technical challenges that the government has.  



[00:07:32] Unknown:

And   can you give a bit of a flavor for some of the types of projects that you work on and how the overall project management and project discovery process happens and what's involved in actually   getting the USDS involved in different agencies and different projects?  

[00:07:47] Unknown:

Sure. So   some of the projects we work on is anything from helping   immigration and getting people green cards to. 1 of our projects is hacking the Pentagon, which was a crazy and scary thing to, present to the Pentagon and DOD and saying, like, hey. Look. In the private industry, we have bug bounties, and we have people   who get paid to hack   systems. In that way, you could find those vulnerabilities faster   and someone else doesn't find them and use them for bad reasons.   How we do project selection, and this is   this is 1 of our greatest factor when we pick projects is what is the greatest good for the greatest for the most amount of people. And that's usually how we pick our projects and prioritizing.  

We base it off of that.  

[00:08:29] Unknown:

And so does the project selection process happen within USDS, or is it something where different agencies will come to you with a project   proposal and then it's up to somebody some other agency to figure out what gets worked on? Or is it largely within the control of USDS to figure out where you're spending your something,  

[00:08:45] Unknown:

and we'll evaluate it. We'll do discovery sprints. We'll see. And sometimes   we'll evaluate it. We'll do discovery sprints. We'll see.   And sometimes it's just giving recommendations after discovery sprint, and sometimes it's a full on engagement depending on the project.   But for the most part, we have full control over what projects that we choose and pick. And,   like I said, the criteria is mostly the greatest good for most amount of people.  

[00:09:14] Unknown:

And so can you talk a bit about some of the overall   technology choices that you generally make? Some of the standard tooling that you use, particularly how Python might fit into the various projects and also how that,   decision making process of tooling factors in based on what agency you're working with and what systems are already in place.  

[00:09:33] Unknown:

So, yeah, when we go into agencies, we try so we work closely with contractors and vendors and,   federal employees. And we typically pick the tool kits that work for them. Some of the main things that we definitely go in and make sure that we have in place is things like version control, maybe move them and migrate into the cloud. And for the most part, that decision making is based upon what works for that particular agency.  

[00:09:56] Unknown:

And do you leverage a lot of different Python tooling as part of your overall toolkit for building different services. And also, I'm curious   if there are any types of internal services that you use to make it easier to build new projects or,   sort of enhance existing platforms that are in use across different agencies?  

[00:10:17] Unknown:

So how we use Python within,   USCS is all of our internal tooling is built on Python. All of our Slack box is written on Python, and, you know, most of the USCS engineers know Python, so we work in it. So yeah. So some of the internal stuff we we   tend to build that sometimes for a specific agency, so it's hard to share. But we try to, across the board, share whatever tools that we have available or even just lessons learned. So sometimes we learn that some things are better than to do than others, and then we'd share that. So every Tuesday, we have a COP meeting with all the engineers across all the different agencies   and talk about some of the lessons learned and some of the tools that they're using. And 1 way we've leveraged Python and an agency is so a small business administration.  

We've helped them   migrate a legacy database into a new system, and we use Python for the migration scripts and and in order to migrate that legacy database.  

[00:11:11] Unknown:

And so when you go to the USDS website,   the terminology that's used when talking about getting engaged with the agency and working for it is around these ideas of tours of service.   And I know that that's also something that's fairly common in military. So I'm wondering if you can talk a bit about where that terminology comes from and just the overall experience   of working with the USDS, what your hiring pipeline looks like, and just the overall experience of engineers coming to work for USDS, particularly since there is these,   there are these time limited tours of service that are involved?  



[00:11:42] Unknown:

And so, part of the tours of, service,   that we have is   so that way we have talent always coming in and out and fresh talent.   And for example, if we had a career model where you come into government from private industry and you   work here for 20 years, are you really still from private industry? So it's just easier for and better for us to have that new first talent coming in. And some folks come from private industry. They don't wanna leave their career   jobs at Google, but they wanna do some good for their country.   And this is a good way to do it and use your skills as engineer or designer or PM to come into government and do some good work.  



[00:12:17] Unknown:

And for people who are coming from an existing career or they might have a, you know, a house or other ties to a particular location, but they are interested in getting engaged with USDS. I'm curious what the overall story is on that front as far as maybe taking a sabbatical from a career, being able to put your career on hold, what's involved in relocation, any types of assistance that is provided by USDS for that front, and just the overall experience of coming to work for the for the agency?  

[00:12:42] Unknown:

And so I could speak on my experience moving from New York City to DC.   So I didn't own a house, but,   some people do when they just rent it out or they Airbnb it until they're ready to move back.   From my particular experience, the government it's hard for government to pay for you to relocate, so you have to come out of pocket and do it. But it's very impactful work, and,   no, there's nothing like it. So I think if I had to choose it again, I would, I would definitely come down and and do the work all over again.   As far as, like, career, we have   companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon who offer sabbatical programs for people to take. And some people take that and some people come as short as 3 months. And some people say as long as 4 years. So, like, we have an engineer come   in this summer who's good, who   has kids and got them to a good school, and they don't want   to be that good school for their kids. So we said, okay, how about you just come for the summer? You could be very, very impactful in 3 months.  

And they said, okay, Awesome. And now they come in hand and the kids get to hang on DC, which offers tons of things and they have free museums. So that's pretty cool. And they get to, you know, enjoy some of the nice DC weather, but that's,   that's why the tour do the model works so well is because people can come for   as short as just a summer vacation break with their kids and do something super impactful.  

[00:14:03] Unknown:

And with the fact that you have this sort of built in turnover and you have people coming in and out all the time, I'm curious what your onboarding process looks like so that somebody doesn't waste the first half of those 3 months just trying to get up to speed with the different systems and how you're able to help people come in and be effective and hit the ground running.  

[00:14:21] Unknown:

Yep. So 1 of the ways we help people get get the ground running is we have people who's been at the agencies for a long time. So we have agency teams and people who's built up relationships, and sometimes it's just a particular need for a particular project, and you could just get the ground running, and we can get get you your hardware really quickly. We was able to hack that process so you get your MacBook really quickly. You could access all the tools and GitHub and everything that you need in order to get hit the ground running as fast as possible. And some things we found is because we was able to hack the process and get people all the equipment very fast and get access very quickly, that somebody would even make change within 2 weeks, That's where it is at.  

[00:14:56] Unknown:

And   I know that, you know, because of the fact that we have all these managed services, it does simplify some of that onboarding, but it could also mean that somebody comes in and 5 days into the process, they say, oh, wait. I need access for that other thing that, you know, I forgot to give you grant you access to. So do you have some sort of, like, a checklist? Do you have just automated scripts or   single sign on built in so that as soon as somebody gets their credentials, they're automatically given the right level of access? And then also, how do you determine what the right level of access is based on somebody's role to make sure that they aren't sort of given too much privilege or that they don't have the access that they need?  

[00:15:29] Unknown:

So for some of our internal USCS tools like Slack, GitHub, all that's automated process. So as long as, like, you're in what I system of Trufist, which is Salesforce, as long as you're there, then scripts run to automatically get you provisioned for all those different accounts. Within the agencies, sometimes it's a little difficult. Sometimes we have to, you know, work our magic and share and say, hey. You know, this person actually doesn't need access to this, and this is why. And  

[00:15:54] Unknown:

also given the fact that there is this turnover and you you have people coming in with different skill sets or who might be interested in learning new skills, How do you go about figuring out what the appropriate mix is for staffing a new project and   making sure that you don't have somebody coming in for a 3 month tour of service on a project that's gonna take 12 months and, just making sure that you have the appropriate people working on the appropriate project at the right time.  

[00:16:19] Unknown:

Yep. So   part of it is is that, you know, you can hand the baton also. You could do a lot of good in 3 months and just hand the baton to someone else who can then come in   and take the baton and go over to the finish line. So 1 of the things we do is just make sure that people are empowered to be able to do that.  

[00:16:38] Unknown:

And also for sort of knowledge sharing to make sure that you don't lose a lot of information from somebody leaving, I'm curious what sorts of cultural practices you have in place around documentation   and wikis and just sort of overall knowledge management so that there is so that it is easy to have these handoffs.  

[00:16:55] Unknown:

Yep. So we we try to document everything.   And a lot of it is is so as people are coming and going, there's people who's been on the project for a long time. So   how we staff it is we usually send an engineer PM and a designer,   a bureaucracy hacker,   and someone on that team would always have the historical knowledge and the way the agency leads the agency teams to set up is as an agency lead who also keeps all the historical knowledge and is able to share that with with people. And a lot of it is also relationship building. So before people leave, they.   They know introduce all the relationships that they built to the peep to the person coming in behind them. So we try our best to keep all of that institutional knowledge in for everybody.  



[00:17:36] Unknown:

And, also, because of the fact that you have people working across all these different agencies embedded with their teams, I'm curious  

[00:17:43] Unknown:

how you do sort of knowledge sharing across with within the USDS to make sure that you're not duplicating effort where somebody might be working on adding new capabilities with 1 agency that could be potentially useful for a different project, but just making sure that all that information gets surfaced so that you don't have that lost opportunity or duplicated effort. Yep. So what we do is we do deep dives with every single team, and we see what their problem is. And sometimes through those deep dives of figuring out the projects, we say, like, oh, you know, this other team is doing that work. Maybe you should go talk to them. And we you know, they everybody knows each other, so we do that. We have   weekly staff meetings every Tuesday where we showcase some of the works that other people are working on because it could be very easy to be siloed into the agency and and heads down in your work. And then you come to these staff meetings. You can see what everybody else is working on. You say, what's the problem I actually have? And you can go meet with them at the staff and try and solve that. So a lot of it is just getting people together in in the room to share what they're working on. And some of it is just when they had deep dives with the,   community of practice directors or the administrators and or the agency leads, and they could bubble up those issues here. And the agency lead could go like, oh, you know, we have the same problem over here. How about you all just talk to each other and, like, hang out and, you know, try and see how you can, tackle this problem together. So a lot of it is just being 1 community and sharing all that knowledge by being together and doing fun things. And, like, we just recently did laser tag. And even after laser tag, everybody's like, hey. What do you work on? Someone's like, I work on this. It's like, oh, I kinda I'm doing something in similar space.  

Maybe we should meet meet up for lunch or or coffee 1 day and kinda figure out how we should tackle this problem.  

[00:19:13] Unknown:

And so working across all these various agencies, I know that there are a number of case studies that you have on your website. But I'm curious,   in terms of your personal experience, what what have you found to be some of the projects that were most personally interesting and rewarding?  

[00:19:26] Unknown:

At Department of Education   when I was at Department of Education,   the White House came to us. This is back from the former president Obama and said, hey. We we're having a bunch of students come to kind of go in the press briefing room, and we sort of wanted to introduce something to them. Is there any way you can help us? And he said, okay. That kind of fits our need for the you know, doing the most good for the most amount of people. And he said, okay. Cool. You got 1 month to do it. And he was like, wait.   What? And he was like, yeah. The students is coming next month. You got 1 month. And he was just like, wait.  

1 of the things that we're biggest on at USCS is doing user research and going out to users and actually seeing what is what problems are you having? And we went out and did a ton of user research to figure out what is the problem they're having. So for the 1st 2 weeks, all we did was just talk to users about some of the problems they're having in education. And 1 thing we found is that a lot of people are in debt and default, and they just don't know how to get out of it. And we said, well, there's tons of department education programs. And as we was doing this huge research and sharing with people, they didn't didn't have any clue what they qualify for. And some of it's hard.   And, and so what we did was we built a simple wizard. You can answer 5 simple questions and be able to tell what loan you qualify for. And that helps a lot of people because when you graduate college,   you have 6 months to up, like, non payment. And then you then you start paying, and it it's a standard 10 year payment plan. And unless you can find a great job within 6 months, it's sometimes hard to pay it off or to start paying and people go into debt and default. So 1 of the programs we have at department of education is   income   based repayment, where it's just a percentage of your income as opposed to, like, a state and a 10 year plan based upon your loan. And a lot of people didn't know about that program,   and you could find   that out through Department of Education's website, but some of it's hard to figure out. So we've just built a wizard, and the wizard helped people understand that. And   a couple months after you built it, the president the POTUS,   launched it. Internally, we coded the POTUS landing page, and the president launched it. It's super exciting to have the president announce something that you worked on, especially when you only had a month a month to do it. And a couple months after that happened, I'm in Staten Island, with my sister just hanging out, and she's just telling me, like, she wants to rebuild her credit, and she wants to fix her credit. But all the student loans are drowning her, and I was like, hey. There's this thing that I built. You know? You can answer simple questions, and she answered questions. And it turns out that she defaulted on her loan, but she qualified for a program called rehabilitation loan forgiveness. And, basically, all it is is it says, like, you can make 9 payments. You make 1 payment a month for 9 months, and it could be as as short as $5 a month depending on your income. And if you pay that, Department of Education will go back and say you've been paying on time ever since and take you out of default.  

And my sister did that, and once she was able to do that, her credit jumped up because   student loans is really the only thing she had on the credit, and the credit jumped up because   I went back years and said she was up to date this whole time. And she was able to get a car. From getting the car, she didn't have to take public transportation, and she was able to   get a better job because she can actually travel further. So it's the same amount of time traveling, but she's able to travel further, and she's able to get a better job. And through getting a better job, you know, was able to find like an apartment   and was able to put my niece into a basketball program that she probably wouldn't have done. And she had to take, public transportation   because basketball couldn't end lead and things like that.  

So that was 1 of the projects where not only did, was it super impactful because a lot of students are on debt and default. And   not only was it, like, kind of cool because the president got to announce something that we worked on, but I actually saw the impact firsthand through my sister. And I'm still seeing it every day, some of those benefits of my sister,   doing that thing. And it was just a thing we built in a month that helps 100 of thousands of students every single  

[00:23:00] Unknown:

month. Yeah. Student loans is definitely 1 of the unsolved problems in our country, so it's great to see some progress on that front and ways that, the government is working to improve it. So Yep. Definitely appreciate that as somebody who has student loans that I'm working on repaying.  

[00:23:16] Unknown:

Did the re have you done the repayment wizard? It's on student loans dot gov, and it's it's a link in the HERO section that just says, find out how you can repay your student loans. It's a simple wizard. You just go to it. You answer simple questions, and you could figure out how to what repayment option works  

[00:23:31] Unknown:

best for you. Yeah. I'm 1 of the lucky ones where I was able to actually get a decent job as a result of my education. So I'm I'm I'm not too worried about it, but, you know, it's definitely still something that's a burden. And and so on the on the other side, what are some of the most challenging aspects of working for the USDS and working with the government and various agencies   and just some of the hurdles that you've had to overcome in your own work and as a and and for the USDS as an agency? I think some of the hardest is change is hard.  

[00:23:58] Unknown:

There's a lot of people who   have been in the government 15 years, and they only know 1 approach. And sometimes it's hard telling them, I know there's a better approach in private industry. We use agile. We don't use waterfall. We don't wait. We don't build requirements upfront. We actually start building MVPs right away and start putting those in front of people's faces. And, we have a thing called the people list reduction act, which is good in, you know, practice where you shouldn't ask questions that you shouldn't have like, you don't have to, but it also says it also set limits of how many people you can actually do usability testing with. And we had to hack that process to say, like, no, actually, that's not the case. Right? But you can talk to users. You don't have to go through this entire process. And I think just sometimes getting the policy and and talking to people and saying, like, hey, you know, let's revisit this policy. Is it correct? It's 1 of the hardest challenges, and   I find that it's sometimes not hard technically. Right? Sometimes technically, it's it's very simple. It's a very simple fix. But just so the bureaucracy and all the policy and all the things that maybe   can be changed in policy and regulations is sometimes hard.  



[00:25:01] Unknown:

Yeah. If I had a nickel first every time somebody told me that the technology is easy, it's the people that are hard, then I'd probably be a rich man by now.  

[00:25:09] Unknown:

Then, and   those people there's a lot of people who do want change, and they just don't know how to go about it and just trying to introduce them to new things. You gotta do it slowly from time to time. So, like, sometimes it's not introducing them all the agile. Sometimes it's just showing them and showcasing that, hey, here's the MVP that we built in the weekend.   Then they see something in front of them right away, and they stay automatically just start making suggestions. And then we come to them the next day, and with all those those things that they make suggestions with, I'm like, okay. How does how is this better? Is that does that work better? And go like, oh, that's really cool. Because they used to making those suggestions 6 months and then someone coming back 6 months later. Right? And now they get to see the next day, then we slowly do that, and we just keep making iterations. And we're like, hey. You know, this is this is agile. Right? Like, you're doing it, and sometimes it's just, you know, taking it slowly for a change.   So the people I wouldn't say people are hard. It's just some people are just fine tuned into the ways of doing things, and breaking them out of their shell sometimes can be difficult.  



[00:26:05] Unknown:

And on that front, I know that particularly in the sort of technology space, that procurement for government contracts has largely   been problematic and usually ends up at a lot of cost overruns and,   deadline overruns. And so I'm curious what your experience has been   working in this agile model and trying to   help educate people in government who are used to sort of the old way of doing things, figure out what a new approach to approaching software projects can be, and just your overall experience of what that juxtaposition is of the old way of technology procurement versus the the way that you're trying to advocate for and help assist with? Yep. So we have an amazing procurement team at USDS, and 1 of the things that they they do is a lot of training. And they have a program called DITAP, which does teach  

[00:26:51] Unknown:

contracting officers how to procure   agile software a lot easier and a lot better. And this is how you do it. This is how you write the contracts. And so we've been able to take all the things that we've learned and start training other people in federal government on how to do it.  

[00:27:04] Unknown:

And   so having worked at the agency for a while and being involved in a number of different projects, I'm sure that there is a sort of wish list of things that you would like to see worked on. So I'm curious   of all the possible things that you could be doing and that you probably are doing right now, what are some projects that you would like to see come your way in the future or that you would like to advocate for or be involved in?  

[00:27:27] Unknown:

So just a personal 1. It's NASA. NASA, if you're listening, you know, USCS is available. We have resources, you know, and we're willing to help. But, I think   just everywhere, any way we can help make a difference in government is something that I would love to do. And I think 1 of our constraints is like, we're about a 170, a100, 180 people strong. And 1 of the constraints is just resources. So if we have more people, we could do more things   and we want to do more things. So that's why I'm hoping, you know, to all your listeners who wanna join the government and wanna, you   know,   help make impact and change to please apply at uscs.gov/apply   because we could definitely use your help and talent because   the government government is hard.  



[00:28:10] Unknown:

And on that front, I'm curious sort of, what's your biggest constraint? Is it that trying to have an available budget to hire enough people? Is it the pipeline of having enough people apply to do the work?   Is it issues as far as, like, retention or just,   I'm I'm curious sort of from your perspective, what are the limitations that you're trying to overcome to help be able to   provide more valuable service to more agencies and help to sort of bring more of the government into the current digital  

[00:28:40] Unknown:

age? I think 1 of the hardest is a lot of people don't know about us. So we're here at PyCon. A lot of people's like, I didn't know government does this. It's so awesome. So I think the more we're at conferences like PyCon I was at SREcon a couple of months ago. The more we're just getting word out, I think it'd be really, really helpful because a lot of people don't know that there's this group in government who is trying to tackle these tough, technical problems.  

[00:29:00] Unknown:

Alright. And are there any other aspects of your work at USDS and your experience there or just overall projects that you've been involved with, technologies that you work with that we didn't discuss that you'd like to cover further?  

[00:29:13] Unknown:

This is a good 1.   So I think,   for me,   1 of the biggest   things since coming into usgs is having no previous government experiences, just how   much people in government care. And I think it's very easy to look on the outside and say, what the heck like is the government doing?   But that the people on the ground really do care and they're, they're putting them all in every single day. And I think when I go into   places like FEMA and see everybody doing   their best, and I go into places like department of education and see everybody working extremely hard.   It's really inspiring. And I think   for me, it's sometimes they just don't have that technical expertise in the room to tell them that there is a better way and just be in that voice in the room that could say that, okay. Oh, you wanna try this? Hey. I have an engineering background. I can help you with that, and and   we can actually move the needle forward. So I think for me, it's   that that 1 thing I advocate for is that the people in government are working extremely hard and I thank all of them for the surface every single day because they   work on tough problems just some of these things are not easy and they give it all every single day and especially when you see the people they had 20 plus years still you know   fighting for change, wanting,   wanting change. And   sometimes it's hard dealing with the bureaucracy. And 1 of the things that we do at USCS is we're empowered,   super empowered so that we can go to the highest level. So sometimes it's just empowering the people on the ground at the agencies doing all the work to just the people, you know, at   know the higher levels and just saying, like, no, this person right there, that's the person you should listen to. That that is that is, you know,   the person fighting for all of this. And sometimes they just don't know. And I think there was 1 thing that there's 17 levels between the president and the nurse at the VA,   and the nurse at the VA is doing all the VA work. How do we empower that nurse to actually   have their voice heard to, you know, the president and people like that? And that's 1 of the things because of the way structured, we can do and provide. So I guess   1 thing for me in particular that   I would want people to know is that the government is working extremely hard, and all the people in the ground,   thank you all for your service because   I know it's not easy.  



[00:31:35] Unknown:

And how much of the work that you're doing in USDS is focused on just overall digital literacy for people within these agencies and helping them   to helping to provide them with even just simple tools of, you know, here's how you write a script or here's how you interact with different services that can potentially help them automate menial aspects of their job that will then free them up to be able to do more effective work.  

[00:31:59] Unknown:

Yeah. So we do a lot of that work, especially the automation work of saying like, Hey, we can have a script, just run   this. And sometimes it just go in and just showing them that it's possible. Right. That that these things can be automated and being in the room and being on the ground with the folks doing the work and saying like, Hey, like, like, you know, through technology, we can make a job a little bit easier. And then that frees them up to do a lot more. So, so I feel a lot of our job is that is, is just showing them what's possible.  

[00:32:27] Unknown:

And so for anybody who wants to follow along with you and your work and your experience, I'll have you add your preferred contact information to the show notes, and I'll also add links to the USDS site and the application. And so with that, I'll move us into the picks. And this week, I'm going to choose the movie Captain Marvel. I got around to watching that recently, and it was very enjoyable. I thought it was quite well done.   I don't have a lot of previous knowledge of the overall Captain Marvel storyline, but it was great to sort of get that introduction to it. And,   I'm looking forward to the next, Marvel movie. So, do you have any picks for us this week, David?  



[00:32:59] Unknown:

Picks. Endgame, definitely watch it. It's it's amazing. So if you haven't seen it, definitely see   it. Game of Thrones this Sunday. If you don't if you haven't watched Game of Thrones, you should definitely watch it. This Sunday was   was amazing.  

[00:33:12] Unknown:

What else is I started watching the show Black Lightning, which is really good. Alright. Well, thank you very much for taking the time today to join me and discuss your experience working with the USDS and helping people get a better understanding of the types of work that you're doing. So,   I appreciate all the work that you and your teammates are up to, and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day. Same to you, and I definitely appreciate you taking the time to talk for us.