United States Digital Service Origins
An oral history documenting how the United States Digital Service came to exist, and the initial days of building its foundation.
Started in May 2019, this oral history preserves stories from interviews with individuals who planted the seeds, launched, and built the early foundation of the U.S. Digital Service from 2009 – 2015.
It features nearly 50 interviews with those involved in the founding of the U.S. Digital Service, as well as the first leaders of agency teams and Communities of Practice. Included are biographies, transcripts, quotes, a timeline, and themes.
The United States Digital Service (USDS) launched on August 11th, 2014 to improve some of America’s most critical public services. On January 20th, 2025, ten years after its founding, it was reorganized and renamed to the United States DOGE Service.
Why is this important?
The origin story of the United States Digital Service (USDS) has never been fully told. A common origin story ties it to the effort to fix the healthcare.gov crisis, yet while that crisis was a major catalyst, it didn’t create the USDS in isolation. Instead, the response to HealthCare.gov demonstrated a viable model for tackling complex government technology challenges, and underscored the need for an organization like USDS.
For years, a growing community of technologists, civil servants, and policy experts had been laying the groundwork to use technology and design to improve government. Healthcare.gov validated what they already knew: that people with experience designing and delivering digital products, combined with institutional knowledge and positioned at the right level of government, could transform public services.
This oral history highlights the stories and experiences of the people who laid the foundation for an organization that brought over 700 technologists into government across multiple presidential administrations.
Letter from the Curators
June 6, 2025
Launching an Oral History of the Origins of the United States Digital Service
Opinions about technology’s role in government are everywhere right now, especially after the United States Digital Service was reorganized and renamed to the United States DOGE Service on January 20, 2025.
While there’s certainly a need to think strategically about the future, it is also critical that we understand and learn from the past, because hard-won lessons shouldn’t be overshadowed by controversy or politics. After all, having a government that functions and delivers on its promises to the public shouldn’t be divisive.
That’s why over the past several years we have been collecting stories and experiences from our colleagues — the people who laid the foundation for an organization that brought over 700 technologists into government across three presidential administrations. Today we are proud to share the outcome of this work: an oral history documenting how the United States Digital Service came to exist, and the initial days of building its foundation.
The United States Digital Service Origins features nearly 50 interviews, spanning 2009 – 2015, with those involved in the founding of the United States Digital Service, as well as some of the first leaders of agency teams and Communities of Practice. Each interview stands on its own, but in the aggregate the interviews piece together a larger story and vision of technology in government, and the realities of creating something new in an environment that is often paralyzed by inertia.
When we looked across interviews, we were able to identify key themes and lessons, and create a chronology of events that tell the story of how the U.S. Digital Service was conceptualized and how it came to life. We also identified key quotes that together provide a sense of the experience itself — what the work was actually like, as well as differing views and reflections on that time.
This is just one part of a larger story that led to the U.S. Digital Service; it’s one part of a 20+ year civic tech movement that transcends organizations, disciplines, and borders, and is built on the belief that people with experience designing and delivering digital products, combined with institutional knowledge and positioned at the right level of government, can transform public services — and that if we do this right, maybe we can make life even just a little bit better for people.
That story and movement doesn’t halt when one program — or presidency — comes to an end. Because it’s a body of work that’s bigger than any agency or group of people.
Whatever form government technology teams take in the coming years, the U.S. Digital Service’s legacy and learnings are relevant. It was not perfect, but it demonstrated what was possible, and those who had an opportunity to serve were forever changed.
– Kathy Pham and Emily Tavoulareas