Presenter: David Binett, co-founder USA.gov
Presented backstory on how USA.gov got started. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usa.gov#History .
This project was relevant to the federal government ten years ago. It might not be relevant today. It also had some characteristics that are exceedingly difficult to replicate: direct presidential backing and significant intital funding.
Four things to expect/do:
- Know the rules
- Get a Champion
- Build Relationships Before Code
- Expect a Battle, not a Thank You
Know the Rules
There are a lot of rules associated with operating in the Gov – Section 508, heightened security, archiving, RFP, procurement. Know them before you go in.
People will want to say 'no', because the government is not in the stability business, not the innovation business. Don't give them easy ways to say “no”.
Get a Champion
Find someone(s) to vouch for you (if you don't know the system.) You need an advocate who can 'carry your water'; if you have time, build a coaltion. Be sure to include all sides (if there are sides to the issue.)
USA.gov had President Clinton as a direct sponsor. This was 90% of our success (duh.)
Build Relationships Before Code
This is probably the one hardest for tech-types to understand. Your relationships are far more valuable than your code. Get buy-in from everyone you can. Ask them for feedback and if they have a lot of 'no' power, then whatever they say, implmenent, no matter how stupid.
For USA.gov, I spent the first 60 of the 90 days talking to everyone I could – Congress, the States, the Pentagon, the Supreme Court, Journalists, industry – it was non-stop meetings and I didn't write a single line of code until the last month before the deadline. I did this because I knew that any one of those groups could torpedo the process through some means. The trick to avoid that was to give them each a stake in USA.gov's success.
Expect a Battle, not a Thank You
And, at the end of the day, if you accomplish all of this, expect the following: * The press will question your motives * Industry will attack you * You'll need to jump through more hoops you could possible imagine. * It will take far, far longer than you think to get it implemented. * And other such stuff that will make you question why you did it.
At the end of the day, we did get many thank yous – but overall it was far more of a battle than we had anticipated. Dr. Brewer wound up spending many millions of his own personal money to essentially present USA.gov to the government at no charge. You would be shocked at how difficult that was to do (from a system perspective, not a people-perspective. The people are great.)
Q&A
Lots of great, great questions that I hope I did a fair enough job answering. The highest-order bit is that many people gave the impression that my experience might have been a function of ten years ago and not today; that work from the Sunlight Foundation and others is making transparency more acceptable and encouraged. I hope so, and I encourage everyone to 'fight the good fight.' In the end, it's worth it.