Government IT: The difference between 18F and USDS
18F’s secret sauce is that it is insistently dogmatic about collaborating in the open, and after expending a great deal of organizational energy painting a picture of a citizen-centric future and doing their best to inspire agency stakeholders that the way 18F approaches technology is vastly superior to the status quo, they will simply refuse to work with an agency unless the agency agrees to adopt 18F’s culture and workflow, at least for the project at hand.
For 18F, the goal isn’t simply to deliver the piece of software that they were asked to create, but to leave the partner agency with a better sense of and appreciation for what modern software development looks like outside the Beltway.
.. Whereas a win for 18F might be for a partner agency to grace the front cover of the Washington Post, for USDS, the goal is the exact opposite: to prevent a short list of technology-backed policy initiatives from making the news, at least not from a technology standpoint.