would you ever work in government?

i have a hunch here, but maybe FC will surprise me with responses

/ted | exploring the onchain frontier | surfing @ venice, ca | eating @ gjusta / gjelina

Porto Seguro, State of Bahia, 45810-000, Brazil

Yes.  In my previous job we ended up doing a lot of consulting w/ civil agencies and it was shocking to see the size of impact you can have in a short time.  There are groups like 18F that are doing an amazing job of bringing transparency and modern software practices to a very old system.

https://18f.gsa.gov/

this is fascinating, particularly juxtaposed against many of the comments here that express a sense of *not* being able to have an impact in gov't.

which agencies did you feel your have an outsized impact at? or was it uniform across all?

Some I'm not allowed to mention.  Ones that I can -- IRS, CIS, NYC DOE, Air Force, Army.

In most cases, we helped to automate very manual/bureaucratic work.  One example -- for CIS they were processing visa applications at a pace of ~45min/application.  In a few weeks we helped them automate this to ~4min/application