The Defense Digital Service practices a principle that’s proven to be integral in driving digital transformation across the Pentagon and executives think it could propel modernization across all agencies: Design with the technology’s users, not for them.
“What we like to say is that changes are made by those people that show up,” Chief of Staff Katie Olson said at an FCW workshop in Washington Wednesday.
As an agency-specific team of the U.S. Digital Service, DDS rapidly responds to a variety of technological challenges across the Defense enterprise and runs projects that aim to transform federal systems and processes. The agency is made up of “a SWAT team of highly skilled nerds,” Olson said, who serve two-year terms. Their diverse backgrounds span across design, engineering, product management and other versatile skills.
“It’s important that we are not just a team of software developers,” she said. “But the fact that we have bureaucracy hackers on the team—who are really sort of mining the process for what's happening behind the scenes and we also have designers who, again, can sit side by side with the users to make sure we are coming up with a comprehensive solution—this is really important to the work that we are doing.”
Since it was stood up four years ago, Olson said DDS has run 29 projects and 22 “rogue squadrons,” which are 2-week sprints to implement new technology. And on top of working to create new technical capabilities within Defense, the service has also asked for 33 waivers to put different types of commercial technology in place in the department and has run 17 bug bounty programs to date.
“What’s really, I think, a testament to our team and the success we’ve had so far in some of the major tran ..
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