Kathy Pham
‘Few of Us Who Studied Computer Science Saw Paths to go Into Government’: Kathy Pham on the Growing Government Tech Community and the Importance of Honoring Many Disciplines at the Table
Kathy Pham was a founding member of the US Digital Service focused on product and engineering, a role she held for over three years beginning in December 2014. Kathy was also an engineering and product advisor for the organization from 2021 to 2023. Prior to joining USDS, Kathy worked on data and product at IBM and Google, respectively, and also founded the Cancer Sidekick Foundation. |
Kathy Pham was one of the first US Digital Service hires and was also among the longest-serving members: As staff and a consultant, she has been involved with the organization for a combined five-and-a-half years.
Kathy was moved to apply to the organization after witnessing the importance of federal healthcare policy to her mother’s cancer treatment. She was hired to work on data interoperability at the Department of Veterans Affairs — but in start-up fashion, ended up contributing to other projects as well, including USDS recruitment.
Below, Kathy discusses USDS’s early priorities, the importance of giving colleagues kudos, and the need to treat civic tech as a community that transcends organizations.
May 13, 2024
Emily Tavoulareas:
Kathy, tell us how you got to USDS.
Kathy Pham:
I’ll go way back, because a lot of this was about planting seeds. Mikey Dickerson had come back to Google to talk about his experience with the HealthCare.gov launch rescue, and that was the first time I heard about any of this. Megan Smith was just announced as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of the United States, and I thought, “Oh, interesting things are happening with government technology.”
My career up until that point was pretty typical computer science grad: Go get a job in the tech sector, go find a technology company. I had never thought about working in government.
I messaged Mikey after he came back to Google to give a talk about his experience. My note said, “Thank you so much for your work with HealthCare.gov. My mom was just diagnosed with cancer. If you ever need anything, let me know. I have a background in healthcare data interoperability.” This was 2013, and HealthCare.gov have us peace of mind changing health plans from Georgia to California with pre-existing conditions. The policy eliminated barriers associated with moving to a different state for cancer care. The technology piece enabled that policy piece, so for the first time I was seeing how all this came together. In my past life, I had helped immigrant communities sign up for social services. But I hadn’t really made direct connections to the technology.
I wrote “data interoperability” in my note to Mikey because I spent quite a few years building technology that connected different healthcare tech systems together, whether it was health data and electronic health records or insurance data and pharmacy codes. For example, a hospital might say, “We want to understand why our population in parts of Virginia have a higher rate of COPD.”
I didn’t hear back from Mikey immediately, but I know he was getting a lot of interest. The government has always had a hard time hiring, but the flashy HealthCare.gov technology failure caught people’s attention. Government had been trying to hire tech professionals for a long time at this point, but few of us who studied computer science thought of government first for our careers.
Eventually I did hear back. At that point in time, they needed someone to figure out healthcare data movement between the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and Department of Defense. They asked, “Would you be willing to come to this tech startup at the White House to do health data interoperability?” I remember thinking, “Those words don’t go together: Startup, White House, healthcare.”
This was 2014 and my mom’s cancer had gone into remission. I thought, “I can do this. I don’t need to go to as many chemo appointments, and mentally she’s okay.” Mikey reached out to me the same time he reached out to Parisa Tabriz, who was a VP at Google working on security. We all saw each other at the Grace Hopper Conference in October of that year and had a conversation about Parisa and me coming to the USDS. Mikey said told us about leaders like Vivian Graubard, Marina Martin and Erie Meyer. I learned later that these were the leaders who had been transforming government behind the scenes.
I decided to come, and they started the hiring process. I submitted my resume and went through vetting. They interviewed me, wrote up a brief for all of us to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) about why each individual should be hired at the highest GS level to serve in the government. They had to prove our expertise.
I came on board at the end of November 2014. There were 10 of us and we held our staff meeting around the little couch and table in the front room of Jackson Place, a townhouse by the White House. As of 2024, Jackson Place is still our headquarters today for sentimental reasons, not practical reasons. It’s too small, but we are tied to it.
Emily:
Were those 10 people all new folks like you? Or people who had already been there?
Kathy:
A combination. In those early days, we needed people who’d been in government for a long time and new people. It was impossible to start USDS without folks like Haley Van Dyck, Erie, and Vivian, who knew how to get things done in government. And by “get things done,” I mean write the right kind of memo, reach out to the right kind of people, get funding from Congress, and hire people into government on short-term, renewable mechanisms — what we call intermittent consultants, or Schedule A.
To this day, we still need people who deeply understand how government works. And then we need the folks who fill the gaps where we no longer have capabilities. Or maybe there are people with those capabilities inside our government, but a new person in the right role can unlock their potential.
Emily:
That’s so overlooked, especially in places like government. But also any of these very large institutions that have been around for a long time. You need someone to help you understand how things work; to know where you can push and what bends.
Kathy, tell me more about your first day.
Kathy:
It felt both magical and new, and also familiar. I was in this townhouse right next to the White House where a President used to live with his family. I was working inside the federal government for the first time. And yet I was also working with people iterating on processes and doing user research. People bringing design thinking into government and improving engineering practices for weird, outdated version control policies. That was the familiarity of the tech sector.
I’ll share two things I loved about my first day. I was sitting at the long, white rectangular tables inside Jackson Place. We didn’t have many computers yet. Seated around the table were Haley, Erie, Mollie Ruskin, and Vivian. They’re all incredibly brilliant. They’re experts in so many different topic areas across design and technology and engineering and breaking through bureaucracy — but the right amount of bureaucracy. We were talking about designing better services, a memo to the President — and also vintage shopping to find the right dress to wear to a government meeting.
I’ll never forget thinking, “I can only hope a tech executive board meeting looks like this.” And also, “This is it, I’ve landed. This is the kind of leadership team I would want anywhere. The seriousness and the fun all at once.”
I knew the work was going to be hard, because they were talking about a website for immigration and Veterans not getting access to healthcare because of broken systems. There’s no messing around with that. But there was still a level of exploration and camaraderie, which you really need when you’re trying to change things.
Then Ginny Hunt took me to Teaism next to the White House for a scone with butter and jelly and a chai tea latte. I have the best memory of her welcoming me to D.C. in a really warm way, while also talking about really hard things.
My first day also included onboarding at the New Executive Office Building and the Eisenhower Executive Office (EEOB) Building. Walking into the White House complex for the first time to get my badge, which was surreal. Getting my first meal at the cafeteria.
On my last days at USDS, people asked where I wanted to have my final dinner or lunch, and it was at the cafeteria inside the EEOB. Because of the privilege of being in that place, and the immense opportunity you have. That place holds tremendous power, and people tend to listen. I felt that on my first day, walking into that building.
Emily:
Kathy, tell me what you were brought on to do and how it evolved over time.
Kathy:
The first pitch was healthcare, data interoperability, and Veterans. We were based out of the White House and Congress funds us, so to some extent what we work on has direction from that. Over time we built out our teams inside these agencies and learned we could surface things and bring them to the table. But in the early days it was things that the President or Congress cared about.
Initially I had conversations with folks at the VA. I met Marina Martin— the first CTO at the VA — early on to see what her priorities were. I went on discovery sprints like the one at the Department of Defense, to understand the complexity of the electronic health record system and what an update would look like. We were having meetings with all sorts of people, some strategic and some random, to better understand the ground truth.
I was part of figuring out how to keep Congress updated. Should we have a whole day where they come and it’s like a science fair? I also worked with Charles Worthington, talking to agencies about USDS and how we want to help. We wanted to make sure we understood context.
All this eventually morphed into tangible projects on the ground. Specifically, looking at spinal cord injuries at the VA and how they handle health records. Also, as with any startup, if you have a skill you can be sure you’ll be asked to use it. In Mollie Ruskin’s case, she developed our first website and our first logo. In my case, because I had spent a year at Google working in Human Resources, I happened to know more about Human Resources than others. And we needed help using the White House’s current CRM system for hiring. We grappled with whatever tool we could use, since we didn’t have the luxury to buy new ones.
Also, I had previously worked with a ton of data for the hiring and recruiting process on the people analytics team. I ended up working pretty closely with Jennifer Anastasoff, who was doing a ton of recruiting. I helped put in place the first CRM instance for hiring for USDS alongside a couple of other folks, like Chase Kimball. That entailed sitting with the contractors inside the NEOB, asking: “Can you give us a part of your CRM instance? Because you’re Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and so are we.”
We were also trying to decide if we wanted the same hiring pipeline as 18F. That was complex. In the early days, we were both working really hard to add value to the government, and we were different. For example, USDS had a model with unrestricted funding, which gave us some flexibility on spending — but also meant we relied on Congress for funding. 18F had a consulting model and they were able to receive funding from agencies.
Emily:
What did you learn from that experience?
Kathy:
I realized early on — which still holds true today — the importance of folks who can surface the value add of different groups in the government tech space. They can do a lot for the movement. Compared to the workforce of the entire federal government, we are still quite small. It’s important to discern that some people make sense to be hired into 18F, which was always more remote-first friendly. Some folks make sense to be hired into USDS, and some should do a tour as Presidential Innovation Fellows. Some might stay in the Code for America arena focused on the state and local levels, and others might be so inspired they go back to their home country and start their own program.
We figure out ways to support each other’s hiring and each other’s projects. We send one of our people over into the other org because they’re missing someone. Let’s say they need a front end developer or a designer, and someone comes through your hiring pipeline — you then have an actual mechanism to surface that.
In May 2024, we have Mina Hsiang at USDS. We have Robin Carnahan at the General Services Administration (GSA). We have Clare Martorana as the United States Chief Information Officer (CIO). Erie Meyer as CTO of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And they all see value across the board. For example, we might not focus mainly on consumer protection here in the White House. So some of our folks can go and be the new chief technologist at the Federal Trade Commission (Stephanie Nguyen), or the new chief technologist at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or the new CIO at the Department of Homeland Security. These are all former USDS folks.
Emily:
A common narrative at USDS was the need for people who understand technology to be at the policy table. You have been in one of those roles at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). What was that like?
Kathy:
Well, at USDS my day job was figuring out the complicated system inside the VA spinal cord injury site. But if somebody needed help reviewing language in an executive order, I could help. Or if Congress had this new technology bill and needed someone to vet language, I could help. When you have a .gov email address, regardless of where your .gov is, it’s easier for someone else to ask, “Hey, can I get your perspective on something?” It’s much easier than reaching out to someone in academia or the private sector.
So early on I thought, “Huh, what would it look like if some of us were in those other places?” Whether it’s Congress helping with bills, the FTC helping with guidance, or the National Institute of Standards and Technology helping with standards. It’s the same skillset, but in different environments. At the VA, you can apply those skills to technology systems that need to change. At the FTC, you can apply those skills to technology systems that do not work. Since FTC handles enforcement with technology companies, you have to have enough tech understanding to hold a conversation with any lawyer inside the government or any lawyer outside the government at one of the companies being investigated. The same skills that people use at USDS to build technology systems are also immensely valuable for writing memos, crafting executive orders, writing technology standards, writing meaningful regulation rooted in practice, and talking to a private-sector engineer from a company being enforced by the FTC.
I never thought to work at the FTC, but I found my time there immensely rewarding. They valued my expertise and I was able to add value back. Some of the most brilliant lawyers I’ve ever worked with have chosen the life of public service while their peers went to work at a technology company and were paid tenfold. They recognized where they could learn more. I had no formal law experience so I’m like, “Tell me what I can do to help.” And our pairing was so valuable. It’s similar to when we first came to USDS. I knew how to deliver tech products iteratively, but I never worked inside an on-premise government technology system trying to track progress of our Veterans. So I partnered with public servants who’ve been doing the work for a long time.
Emily:
There’s a lot more to dig into there, but I’m going to take us back to the early days of USDS. Healthcare, data interoperability, and people analytics were the first areas you focused on. What else did you focus on?
Kathy:
I helped Jennifer Anastasoff with the first draft of our hiring website. We were able to host our own hiring website in addtion to usajobs.gov. I remember meeting in Jackson Place and thinking, “What fields should we have?” We landed on a pretty simple form where people self-identified their subject matter expertise. These included: Accessibility, Administrative Support, Artificial Intelligence, Communications, Content Design, UX Writing, Content Strategy, Cybersecurity, Data Science, Information Technology, Operations, Procurement, Product Management, Product Policy, Site Reliability/Production Engineering, Software Engineering, Talent Acquisition, Talent Management, User Experience, User Research, and Visual Design. Most of the fields are still the same today. We added a field that asked, “Anything else we should know? Tell us what problems you’d like to solve, areas you’re passionate about and why you’d like to join.” We kept it incredibly open, and people wrote all sorts of interesting stuff.
We had to launch the form before the State of the Union address, because we thought President Obama might announce the USDS. Mollie Ruskin and I iterated on the website and application form up until the last minute, the day before the State of the Union.
I am so proud of that because hiring is the backbone of any organization. And hiring is so hard in government, so having a form that helps digest the information and hire good people is important. Keeping that running is no easy feat.
Another big piece of work was the Communities of Practice (COP). The UK Government Digital Service had something similar. We decided to focus on Community rather than Organization, so the Engineering Community of Practice versus the Engineering Org.
My main focus were the product and engineering COPs: coming up with competencies, coming up with interview questions. These are all hiring 101. I came up with some of the early interview questions. Kim Rachmeler led a lot of the competencies for engineering and brought great leadership to the engineering COP as the first Director. Eric Hysen, Vivian and I worked on some of the early COPs on the product side.
We used GitHub for tracking competencies. GitHub was mostly known as a developer tool for code, but we used it as our system of record. And now GitHub has a whole suite for project management!
Another thing I’m proud of is Kudos. It seems silly, but I’ve been told it’s been one of the most critical parts of USDS culture. The idea of giving kudos to each other is not new, but it wasn’t common.
At that time, Alex Gaynor was reading out people’s open GitHub issues as a way of remindingthem into closing them out. So I thought, “I’m going to use GitHub to have people submit kudos about each other.” It took off right away. Elliot Wilkes would read the kudos in a theatrical and wonderful way. It became a way to recognize each other, but also stay up on what was going on.
For example, someone might give Emily Tavoulareas kudos for doing user experience research in the field in order to create better government forms. That allows others to see the recognition, but also that we work on forms. At that point, we were growing bigger and it became harder to know who was working on what. I saw Kudos as a way to fix that, and I’m so proud that it continued. I’m told that through COVID, it really helped. People have gotten really creative about reading Kudos during staff meetings, too. People have sung songs; It’s taken off in ridiculous, amazing ways.
Emily:
This is a perfect place to leave it. That is so much to be proud of.
Kathy:
Thank you.