18F/18f.gsa.gov

---
title: One year in and looking forward
date: '2015-03-20'
layout: post
image: /assets/img/logos/18F-Logo-M.png

tags:
- how we work
- agency work
- acquisition services
- talent
- platforms

authors:
- hillary
- aaron
description: "One year ago we said, 'Hello, World' and launched not only a new team, but also the promise of a new way of working with and for the Federal Government. Here's what we've accomplished so far."
excerpt: "One year ago we said, 'Hello, World' and launched not only a new team, but also the promise of a new way of working with and for the Federal Government. Here's what we've accomplished so far."
---
One year ago we said, ["Hello, World!"][1]
and launched not only a new team, but also the promise of a new way of
working with and for the Federal Government. The first 15 of us
committed to making government services simpler and easier to use—a
mission that continues to guide us. We set out to do this by drawing on
principles of user-centered design, developing in the open, and
incorporating agile and lean development practices.

Our goal was (and is) to transform the way the U.S. government
approaches problems. We proposed we could accomplish this by:

- putting the needs of the American people first;
- being design-centric, agile, open, and data-driven;
- working in the open to make our products stronger; and
- deploying our products early and often.

Our goals and approach established, we rolled up our sleeves and got to
work. With each new project we take on, we know the long tail of our
impact will be the education and empowerment we share with our partner
agencies. And, following in the footsteps of the UK’s Government Digital
Service, we’ve been capturing, documenting, and blogging about our
process as much as possible — not simply for the purpose of recording
our history, but so we can share our process and progress with you.

“Just Start” was our mantra in the early days of 18F, and we did.
Sometimes we stumbled, but each time we practiced what we preach—build,
measure, learn, and do it again.

## It's been an incredible year

The initial idea was simple: Attract talented technologists to the civil
service, enticing them with meaty problems and an opportunity for huge
impact. The MVP (minimum viable product) was the [Presidential Innovation Fellowship][2], which proved you could get
people to give up (or take a break from) their jobs in the private
sector to come serve a tour of duty in the Federal Government. The next
step? Convince people to serve longer than a six-to-12-month fellowship
and join a product delivery team. The results speak for themselves:

- 18F grew from a 15-person team to a 100-person team, including the
Presidential Innovation Fellows. Fun fact: We’re still rapidly growing.
We have more than 20 people joining us in the next few weeks alone!
- We're working with 16 agencies on projects ranging from the creation
of open data APIs, a service to collect donations, a purchasing approval
tool that could save the government millions of dollars, and a platform
to facilitate collaborative work amongst a distributed workforce.
- We’ve used lean innovation to improve key internal processes such as
hiring, acquisition, software deployment, and finance.
- Our inboxes have fielded inquiries from more than forty agencies.
- Demand for our services has been so high, we helped create a [brand
new way for agile teams like us][3] to [get involved in the procurement
process][4].
- We have employees in 12 different locations, with offices in D.C., San
Francisco, and Chicago.
- Teammates left jobs at Apple, Google, Microsoft, Pivotal Labs, IDEO,
IndieGogo, Groupon, NPR, the Sunlight Foundation, and more, excited
about the prospect of serving their country in this unique way.
- Our team [engaged with more than 125 end-users][5]
while researching, prototyping, and developing projects.
- More than 100 API teams received training and direct support via our
[/Developer Program][6].
- Our [open source policy][7] has been forked 14 times, and directly led to the GSA CIO articulating
an ["open source first" policy][8]
for the entire agency.
- We have hosted two hackathons and two demo days, with more around the
corner.
- As a team, we've published 66 blog posts, tweeted 695 times, and have
made so many updates to our code (called pushing a commit) that it took
us two days to gather the info because we kept hitting Github's API
request limit.
- We've created 203 public repositories on Github. 64 of these have been
active just in the last month. (Source:
[Govcode.org][9])
- Teammates are creating their own open source software like
[urlsize][10] and
[rdbms-subsetter][11].
- We launched [Dashboard][12] to keep the
public informed of our progress, project milestones, and reusable
software.
- We helped get the first .gov websites pre-loaded into major browsers
as always-HTTPS.
- Just yesterday we helped launch
[analytics.usa.gov][13], giving the public a
view of federal government website analytics for the first time.

## And we're just getting started

During the next year, you'll see the expansion of several projects and
lines of business:

- 18F Consulting, to provide design thinking and technical acumen on a
short-term, as-needed basis, helping agencies acquire better software.
- 18F Talent, to help agencies identify and recruit cutting-edge
technical talent.
- FISMA Ready, a toolkit that provides Federal information security
compliance for open source software.
- [Agile Delivery Services BPA][14],
a micro-market blanket purchase agreement to help [agencies acquire
better professional services][15].
- A partnership with the U.S. Digital Service to help hire and start
digital service teams like ours at many other agencies.

Not to mention the fact that we plan to double in size and scale our
services to make a larger impact. Check back here in one year and hold
us to it.

## Thank you

Finally, a personal thank you to the entire team. It is an honor to work
with passionate people who are absolutely committed to both making our
team better and our government better. And thank you to our partners.
Sixteen agencies jumped in with both feet in our first year, taking a
leap of faith that with great talent comes great possibility.

As we set our sights on 2016, we'd love your feedback and ideas, and we
also need your help!

If you're a designer, developer, or technologist who has ...

- A couple of hours: Check out our ["help wanted" tag][16]
on Github.
- A couple of days: Attend a [hackathon][17], or peruse our [Dashboard][12] for open
source projects.
- A couple of years: [Your country needs you!][18]

Onward!

[1]: https://18f.gsa.gov/2014/03/19/hello-world-we-are-18f/
[2]: http://pif.gsa.gov
[3]: https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/01/08/creating-a-federal-marketplace-for-agile-delivery-services/
[4]: https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/02/12/highlights-from-the-agile-delivery-services-industry-day-events/
[5]: https://speakerdeck.com/18f/user-centered-design-18f-demo-day-9-may-2014
[6]: https://18f.github.io/API-All-the-X/
[7]: https://github.com/18F/open-source-policy
[8]: http://gsablogs.gsa.gov/innovation/2014/08/01/our-guiding-principles/
[9]: https://www.govcode.org/repos
[10]: https://github.com/18F/urlsize
[11]: https://github.com/18F/rdbms-subsetter
[12]: https://18f.gsa.gov/dashboard/
[13]: http://analytics.usa.gov
[14]: https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/01/08/creating-a-federal-marketplace-for-agile-delivery-services/
[15]: https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/02/12/highlights-from-the-agile-delivery-services-industry-day-events/
[16]: https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=user%3A18f+label%3A%22help+wanted%22
[17]: http://www.eventbrite.com/e/gov-tech-hack-by-the-people-for-the-people-tickets-16135863803
[18]: https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/02/25/We-Are-Hiring/