Steven VanRoekel
‘If You Come in as Tech Saviors, You’re Doomed to Failure’: Steven VanRoekel on Planting the Seeds for the U.S. Digital Service
| Steven VanRoekel entered public service in 2009 as Managing Director of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). He later served as Executive Director of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID); the U.S. Chief Information Officer; and Chief Innovation Officer for USAID. Prior to public service, Steven spent 15 years at Microsoft, ending with the title of Senior Director, Windows Server. |
As U.S. Chief Information Officer during the Obama Administration, Steven VanRoekel helped lay the groundwork for what would eventually become the U.S. Digital Service. He played a key role in securing flexible, non-time-bound funding for the organization.
As CIO — and also in roles at the FCC and USAID — Steven strategically tapped into his private sector experience from Microsoft. He also found clever ways to operate within the confines of the federal government, like “using the system against itself” — that is, creatively working with the bureaucracy rather than against it. One such success was reimagining the Federal Acquisition Requirements (FAR).
Below, Steven discusses the difference between government and politics, the “tech savior” fallacy, and the origin of the USDS’s Jackson Place headquarters.
August 5, 2019
Emily:
Steve, you started your journey with the Obama White House in 2009. I’d love to hear your journey getting into government.
Steve:
I had a super weird path. My first job out of college was working at Microsoft when it was very small. I worked there until 2009. Leading up to the 2008 election, I was a huge Obama supporter and did a little bit of work for the campaign.
I came to the inauguration in 2009. I went to lunch with a friend, Mike Kinsley, and had come to the conclusion that I wanted to do my next thing. Mike said, “You have to join the Obama administration.” But people were talking about the state of education, the wars, the economy still being in the tank — nothing I felt I was qualified to help with. Mike said, “I think you could really help,” and I laughed it off to some degree.
This was a realization. Coming from the West Coast and the tech sector, government and politics were the same thing in my mind. What I was seeing on television is what I thought government was. But what you find out is that government and politics couldn’t be further from each other.
Thirty minutes after that lunch, the transition team called me and said, “We’re looking for people like you.” I went into the transition building in downtown D.C. and met with Julius Genachowski, who ended up being Obama’s first chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Julius asked if I would be one of his first hires. So I came in as a political appointee to help run the organization.
I searched for the FCC online, thinking it would be the most cutting-edge agency of government. But in the Partnership for Public Service Best Places to Work rankings, the FCC was second to last, just above the Selective Service — which is the people who administer the draft.
Julius and I started the same day. I went to my desk, met my team, jiggled my mouse, and a product that I had launched about a decade before at Microsoft was waiting for me. It was an old, old copy of Windows. The website was from the ’90s, and we had so much work to do. But I view that as some of my most valuable time.
Had I not had the experience of running the FCC for a couple years before I went to the White House, I wouldn’t have been able to do the things that I did or partner with the people I did. In that job, I learned how to empower amazing federal employees and give them permission to innovate. I learned how to really use the system against itself, to fix itself. I learned that you had to build a relationship with Congress to get budget stuff through and you had to hack the Federal Acquisition Requirements (FAR). You had to find those people buried in the basement who have had great ideas for years, but have never been given permission to do those ideas.
All those things ended up becoming elements of my future in the administration. Within a year, the Partnership for Public Service recognized us as the most improved agency of government, and we were in the top-third best places to work. I didn’t do that — it was the people of the FCC who did that. But I gave them permission, the tools, and the ability to do so.
Kathy:
That is what we think about so much in USDS. Empowering federal employees and giving them permission to innovate and find the people in the basement.
Steve:
Exactly. I finished my federal career working on the African components of the Ebola response in late 2014 and 2015. In the same way, we collectively eradicated Ebola — but it was the Liberians that really eradicated it. We gave them the tools, the know-how, the ability to see through the fog and get it done.
The theme that persisted throughout was how to use the system against itself, and getting federal employees to carry the mantle forward.
Emily:
The language that you’re using and the tactics that you’re talking about really carried over and are the beating heart of USDS’s approach to change.
So at some point in your federal government experience, USDS becomes a thing. How do you recall hearing about it for the first time? And how did it go from an idea to an actual organization?
Steve:
I moved to the White House in the summer of 2011, having left the FCC after I hit my two-year mark. While my White House appointment was going through, I went over to USAID and helped with a crisis in the Horn of Africa. I brought one of my first hires over to USAID with me from the FCC: Haley Van Dyck.
That summer, we created the Global Development Lab at USAID. We hired one of the first chief data officers in the federal government and created a geo and mapping team. We set up the way the agency would think about incident response.
When my White House appointment came through, I almost immediately started to run some of the same plays from the FCC, which was to think about open data. Haley and I started working on the Open Data Directive. We started thinking about mobile and government in a new way, and started to work on a new cloud computing infrastructure.
One of the first meetings I had was with Todd Park from Health and Human Services (HHS). I had heard about all the great work he was doing about data. We talked about the role data could play in the healthcare space. There was a model we were seeing manifested, which was looking at people moving from the private sector into government and what effect that could have.
There have been so many times over the last three decades when people said, “Oh, you need to bring the private sector into government. You need to run the government like the private sector.” The Trump administration is a manifestation of that to some degree: The successful business guy coming in and running things in a much different way.
But when you douse that thought with the reality of government, it rarely works out. The government just doesn’t work like the private sector. The rules of the road are different. Everyone who lives and breathes in your geographic space is your customer. The private sector is not that; you can focus on specific customers.
One thing that was a differentiator in the last decade was the role that technology, the web, mobile, and social played in getting President Obama elected. Almost every American had a smartphone or some level of technology that gave them a different perspective. So the role that tech people could play in government was having an outsized and transformative effect.
The way Todd and I had historically approached work — me from an established company that had been around a long time, Todd from the startup world— was to do things in a different way. And we wanted to replicate that model. In that vein, we ended up co-creating the Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIF) program at the General Services Administration (GSA). It allowed private sector people to take a rotation in government.
Also during that time, we did the Open Data Directive and wrote an executive order from the President to codify it in government. We took our favorite sections of the FAR and created something called the Tech FAR. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) had this ability to go in and do experimental things. We could get permission as long as things were temporary. We used the system to fix itself.
To your point, Kathy: If you come in and it’s just a bunch of engineers disrupting stuff, you’re never going to get anything done. But if you write an executive order or you pull out a section of the acquisition requirements and you show it to the right lawyer or the right procurement official, and you think about putting a customer voice into the system, then all those things end up creating real change.
One of my proudest moments in the creation of USDS was going to Congress and getting the budget set up. Because of my time at the FCC, I knew that if we could get “no-year money” — which meant that you didn’t have to spend it all in one fiscal year — it could span fiscal years and we could make some really cool stuff happen. So we got that approved. But I’m jumping way ahead.
Emily:
It’s the un-sexy, behind-the-scenes stuff that’s critical. None of this would have happened if you weren’t able to secure that money.
Steve:
We would have hit a fiscal boundary and a bunch of people would have been let go.
So, this stuff we were doing was emerging as a theme. Todd, with his work in open data at HHS — and some of the stuff I had done before — showed there was an ability to get real results. On the side, we were creating HealthCare.gov with HHS. The HealthCare.gov launch in 2013 brought Mikey Dickerson into government. Todd was able to pull together an amazing team to jump on and fix that system. Then we looked at that moment in time, and all that stuff we’d been doing around using the system to fix itself, and said: “We need to do something more permanent. To take this miracle we saw fixing HealthCare.gov and apply it in many different places.”
From fall of 2013 into early spring of 2014, we started creating the U.S. Digital Service. I focused a lot on the operational aspects — everything from securing Jackson Place to the budget language to tons of early meetings on the Hill to talk about the budget. I got appropriation language into the winter 2013 budget that ended up being released in 2014, and then eventually got approved and went forward.
Kathy:
Steve, can I ask a quick follow-up? What did that transition from the FCC to the White House look like?
Steve:
In 2012, I was very involved in the Obama reelection campaign. I would go with the President to tech and business round tables. There was a campaign group called Tech for Obama that would assemble tech and business leadership across the country. I would be the opening act and talk about what we’re doing in technology and government: Why are we disrupting? How are we bringing the private sector mentality to government? How was that having an effect?
I started looking around for space to house the U.S. Digital Service, and I ended up talking to the White House campus facilities person. She handled real estate for the 17 acres over the White House. I said, “I’m looking for space.” She goes, “I’ve got something for you.” She took me over to Jackson Place.
I called Jen Pahlka and said, “I’ve got a surprise for you, come down to this security gate.” I walked her over and said, “This is our home.” Someone borrowed my truck to go to IKEA and pick up furniture.
About the Jackson Place history: Teddy Roosevelt had many kids running amok, and they needed space. So he decided to have the West Wing built. While they were modifying the actual White House and building the West Wing, he used 736 Jackson Place as an office. I wanted to call the USDS the Rough Riders, which was his group when he was a commander in the military.
I said to the team when we got this place, “It has to be inside the wall, but outside the wall.” We needed a model where people could just show up.
Emily:
How and when did it go from, “It would be really cool to do this” to “Let’s go.” I’d also love to hear a little bit more about what it was like to use the system to fix the system.
Steve:
Going from inception to reality in the White House often followed one of a few paths, and we took all those paths — one of which is a memo to the President. Second, and tactically more important, was getting the OMB administrator to approve it and add it into the budget framework. And then came the full-court press of meeting with staffers on the Hill and members of Congress to talk about, “Why is this important? Why is no-year money important? Why will this have transformative effects?” There were lots of questions about where we would focus, what kind of projects we would work on.
You need people, you need a mandate, and you need resources to get anything done in government. We certainly had the right people: Dan Tangherlini, Todd, me, the OMB director, the President, Mikey. The mandate was that we all knew that the government needed this, that the government wasn’t keeping pace with the technology. That’s painfully apparent. And the resources were another key thing. Had we not gotten no-year money for USDS and the large allocation that we were able to secure in that first go — well, that’s really sustained us almost probably until today. That initial money and that initial investment have certainly been re-upped. But that’s how you weather political storms. Tech doesn’t follow fiscal cycles, especially broken fiscal cycles.
Emily:
So the key is a pot of money that is not time-bound, that is flexible and able to be used.
Steve:
That’s right. Imagine that initial allocation, which was maybe $25 million. It probably got approved in February or March, and by October, you had to spend it all or lose it. Can you imagine what would have happened that first year?
This allocation, and Jackson Place — they’re all elements that were critical to the way USDS came to be. I wasn’t there for the teenage years; I was there for the birth and adolescent time. But I couldn’t be prouder of where the team took it.
Emily:
What is your memory of USDS becoming a real, tangible organization?
Steve:
In the summer of 2014, a lot of our time was spent figuring out hiring mechanisms and getting people in on these temporary schedule As so we could bring them in rapidly. We were defining those systems and prioritizing projects.
I remember bringing Mikey to the CIO council meetings to talk through what we were building: “Here’s what we’re making. Here’s what we’re doing.” It’s mundane but necessary to get that group of people together. A lot of our work in the government was trying to get the CIO function elevated in the agencies to have a bigger voice and get more involved in strategic decisions about technology.
I’d sit down with the head of an agency and their deputy director and ask, “What are you spending on? How are you doing technology? How are you winding down old stuff? How are you shifting to the cloud? How are you embracing Agile or customer-centric design in your work?” And that’s all the primordial soup of how we thought about USDS.
I’ll add one thing: Imagine Todd and I and others sitting for hours in front of the House Oversight Committee and explaining the work of recovering HealthCare.gov. “Why did it break? What happened?” What they wanted to hold us to in that moment, their political motivation, was all about the White House. They were claiming — and I’m not saying this was the case — that the White House was improperly meddling in the affairs of agencies, that Democratic politics played too much of a role. That was their goal. I don’t think they accomplished that goal.
But then we showed up a couple months later and said, “We’re trying to create this new central organization that’s going to be run out of the White House that’s going to meddle in the affairs of agencies. We’re going to disrupt stuff.” It was profound to think about the connection between those two things. The hardest part of it was saying, “We want to create this central body,” because they said, “We know what you’re going to do. USDS is only going to work on highly political-type things.” And we’re like, “No, we’re actually going to prioritize based on what citizens are asking for. We’re a customer-centric team, not a political team.”
We were able to win them over by giving them examples of stuff we wanted to repair. I would always use this example: To get my D.C. driver’s license, I had to copy my Social Security card, which was still in my safe in Seattle. So I had the experience of going to the Social Security office to get my Social Security card in 2009. I had to take a number off the wall. I had to wait in line. I had printed out the form online and filled it out on paper. I handed it to someone who then reentered it back into a computer.
The end-to-end process took three hours. It’s the most inefficient, un-customer centric, horrible experience. On the Hill I would use that example all the time and say, “They rue the day that I became the U.S. CIO. Because I went in and helped them fix the Social Security reprint application process.” We wanted to fix boring stuff that touches so many Americans.
Kathy:
Steve, of all the things you’ve told us, what are you the most proud of?
Steve:
I’m most proud of the fact that we left government better than we found it.
It took a long time to do that and it has, knock on wood, weathered the transition. That tells you it was probably the right idea going forward and that we were able to give the great women and men who are career public servants the permission to innovate and do things.
Hopefully, the fruits of this will be more decades in the making, but looking back on our history of all of us working together will be seen as a real bright spot in the way the government runs. That is what I’m most proud of.
I’m also proud of my involvement at that primordial soup stage and pouring the right ingredients in to make it grow into something really great. I couldn’t be more personally proud of that.
The motto I still use to this day and I have printed in my office is the motto I established back then: “Break the rules, don’t break the laws.” Because “the way we’ve always done things” mentality was holding everyone back. The fact that we went in and broke the rules is really, really fun.
Kathy:
You also empowered the people who were already there.
Steve:
Exactly. You had to have the EQ and the IQ to get stuff done. Microsoft taught me a product mentality: Just ship stuff and get stuff out. I brought that background in, too. I’m disrupting the Rockefeller Foundation now. People think in more product ways, which has been fun.
Kathy:
You had experience in the tech industry. How did that influence your time in government?
Steve:
If you come in as tech saviors, you’re doomed to failure. The first meeting of USDS new hires needs to say, “Here’s this book called the Federal Acquisition Requirements. Here’s the section we pulled out called the Tech FAR. That’s the one you’re going to like the most, that most apply to Agile. Here’s the language you need to come in with.” Because employees can shut you down. It’s not hard. They’ve built up decades and decades of that skillset.
Emily:
That has definitely stuck in USDS culture. The focus on civil servants, the focus on doing the right thing for people and really rejecting the tech-first, Silicon Valley-on-a-white-horse mentality. It’s very much about finding partners in government and using a lot of the language you’ve described.
Steve:
I could tell that from the outside, because USDS has survived. If that hadn’t been the case, USDS would be gone. Because the government knows how to reject transplants better than any organism on the planet.
Kathy:
Steve, thank you so much for spending this time with us.
Steve:
Thank you. It was great.