One of my favorite stories from my time in Washington, D.C. came from a dedicated civil servant who became one of my closest friends and colleagues at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid.
With a background in public health and a passion to help people, she joined CMS 25 years ago. Over time, the policies and programs she was working on needed websites. As she took on more and more responsibility and began managing these programs, the websites now needed to allow people to login…and be discoverable on Google…and have web analytics…and conform to design guidelines…etc etc. She found herself learning about agile software development and using github.
Today, these same policies and programs now have APIs and all of the complexities that come along with building and operating APIs such as developer portals, key management, new security risks and developer evangelism to drive the adoption of these APIs.
When I asked my friend what her proudest moment has been at CMS she told me a story about helping get lead paint out of houses with kids in Baltimore. It is the impact that drives her, not the tech. She didn’t grow up coding in her parents’ basement or have fond memories of the first app she built. As Marc Andreesson says “software is eating the world” and this is so very true for government programs and the dedicated civil servants that run them.
By the way, the US Digital Service is always hiring.
Kelly Taylor's Blog 