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Senator Kamala Harris wants $15 million for state and local tech projects
California Senator and presidential hopeful Kamala Harris wants to create a $15-million fund for state and local government technology projects. She doesn't want to focus on routine IT maintenance, but on making government services more accessible to the public. Today, she'll introduce the bill, the Digital Service Act of 2019.
Immigrating to the US was hard, but tech will make it easier
When I arrived in the US just after New Year's Day in 1999, I didn't think I would stay. I came here for school and fully expected to return to Malaysia after I was done. Except I didn't. I met my future husband, found new friends, stumbled onto an exciting career and I knew, deep in my heart, that there was no way I could leave. So I began the long and arduous process of making this country my home. Finally, on February 22nd, 2010, I became a citizen of the United States. The entire process cost me hundreds of dollars, required multiple trips to the immigration office and had me filling out lots and lots of forms. I kept thinking the entire time that there had to be an easier way. It turns out the US government thinks so too.
White House wants its top agencies to have digital task forces
The US's web-based health care portal didn't launch as planned, to put it mildly, but the digital task force created to salvage that mess (and prevent others) showed that it's possible to have modern, responsive government services on the internet. Accordingly, the White House wants more -- as part of its proposed fiscal 2016 budget, the Obama administration is asking for $105 million to give each of its top 25 agencies a digital team of its own. The hope is that these new divisions, along with a bolstered central task force, will both improve your experience dealing with government bureaus online and help fend off malicious hackers.
Government forms digital task force to avoid future Healthcare.gov disasters
If former Googler Mikey Dickerson and his team could fix that HealthCare.gov nightmare last year, then they can certainly fix any other faulty government website. That's likely what authorities were thinking when they decided to hire this group full time to form the new US Digital Service team. They're supposed to establish digital standards that government agencies should follow, among other things. But, in a nutshell, the task force's duty is to identify and fix shoddy government websites and inject features that'll actually make people want to visit and use them. Dickerson, who'll serve as the team lead after leaving his post as Google's Site Reliability Manager, told The New York Times that mending HealthCare.gov was a life-changing experience, so he couldn't say no to the government's offer.
