Parisa Tabriz
‘I realized it was more navigating indecision and culture clash, and also empowering the tech expert in the room who definitely knew the answer’: Parisa Tabriz on having impact at the U.S. Digital Service
| Parisa Tabriz was a security consultant with the U.S. Digital Service from November 2014 to November 2016. She worked with the organization in short stints, but still stayed connected when returning to industry. Parisa has an almost two-decade tenure at Google. |
Parisa Tabriz joined the U.S. Digital Service on a short-term deployment to help stabilize HealthCare.gov, but was swiftly transitioned to another project when a network security crisis hit. While she ultimately returned to her day job at Google, Parisa continued to support the civic tech community — and also embedded at USDS two years later.
Parisa recalls the early USDS as an environment that was chaotic and fluid, and also one that forged lasting bonds and friendships. Below, Parisa discusses how public service changed her perspective on enterprise software; the tension between risk management and workforce productivity; and encountering “acronym soup” in the White House.
June 21, 2024
Kathy Pham:
Parisa, tell me about your journey to USDS.
Parisa Tabriz:
I heard about USDS and the work that was happening with HealthCare.gov, and I thought it was important and interesting. At the time, I was working in Chrome as an engineering manager, and one of the engineers on my team, Albert Wong, had worked with USDS.
I was leading about 20 people in Chrome security and had a security engineering background with some experience in IT, and I was interested in throwing my name in the pool for future engagements because Albert really enjoyed the experience. He talked about how difficult and rewarding the experience was. I had worked at Google for seven years, and I was ready for a new challenge. I was also interested in public service and this felt like something that could be fun and impactful to try.
I first connected with Jennifer Anastasoff, and then I connected with Mikey Dickerson. Mikey and I had never worked together at Google, but I knew of him, and he convinced me. There were some internal processes I had to work through at Google, but I was able to do a USDS engagement without leaving my full-time job.
I eventually got connected with Nathan Parker, who was also a Googler. He was working on HealthCare.gov at the time and was going to be my mentor, help me figure out housing, and answer any other questions I had before my start date in November.
Kathy:
You mentioned your background in security. What were you brought on to do?
Parisa:
I was brought on to help with HealthCare.gov. I remember a lot of initial paperwork, including the very long SF86 security clearance forms. That was a project in and of itself!
When I got to DC, I went through an expedited orientation and learned I was actually going to work on a White House network security incident instead of Healthcare.gov. Plans change quickly at USDS! I had to tell Nathan, “Thank you so much for helping me ramp up, but sorry, I’m going to work on this other thing that I can’t even talk about.” I focused on it for the following month with a few other colleagues.
David had spent a little bit more time in D.C., so he had more experience navigating acronym soup, hierarchy, and culture. I also worked with Haley to navigate the unwritten rules, the logistics of meetings, and this sensitive, stressful situation.
I can’t get into the details of the incident response, but I remember quickly realizing that the technology problems weren’t the primary issue, but underlying challenges of accountability and risk management. It wasn’t the “blameless post mortem” process I had become used to at Google.
Going in, I wasn’t confident that I’d be able to solve some of the technology problems since I assumed they’d have totally different stacks and it would take a long time to learn enough to be useful. But in practice, I realized it was more about navigating indecision and culture clash, and empowering the right person in the room who typically knew the answer, but didn’t feel comfortable calling it out because of rank.
Kathy:
Not everyone recognizes this. You’re brought in and you immediately think, “I don’t know your infrastructure. The security might look different.” Whereas other folks would come in like, “Oh, I do Python, so therefore I will solve all your problems.”
What also resonates is the bit about empowering the people who are already there and have the ideas, but can’t execute them.
Parisa:
I remember a guy who was probably the most senior technology leader handling this incident. He was working so hard. I could see he was so stressed and not empowered to make the calls he needed to make. He was working 80 hours a week and didn’t have the team and the talent to work alongside him. At the same time, there were definitely people in his team who were not motivated, qualified, or set up for success. It was interesting seeing such extremes in the same team.
Kathy:
What was your first day like?
Parisa:
I went to Jackson Place to meet up with someone who escorted me to actual orientation. During orientation, I distinctly remember the facilitator said, “We can’t use Chrome because of security issues.” I said, “Oh, interesting. Tell me more because I actually work on Chrome security.” They said, “It’s actually because of the updates. We don’t want to do updates as often as fully automatic updates, so we need more management controls.”
Kathy:
Folks who go into government develop an empathy they carry back to the private sector.
Parisa:
Totally. One of the reasons I was excited about doing this was because I’d worked at Google for so long and on its own private tech and culture island. I’d never used a Blackberry before. I’d never used Microsoft products like Outlook before. Everyone was using so many different acronyms and speaking in a completely different language with new unwritten norms.
I ended the first day feeling this mix of excitement and overwhelm. Everyone was super friendly, but I also felt a bit like they have made a mistake in bringing me on since I couldn’t even understand most of what people were saying with all the acronyms.
Kathy:
How quickly did you go from the first day to starting work?
Parisa:
That first day we had a meeting with the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, and work started immediately. We had really long days from there on out. I couch-surfed at a place about a mile-and-a-half away from Jackson Place, and I didn’t do much beyond long days of work during that month. I got to meet some of the other core working groups, and I met Ben Pauwels.
Kathy:
Ben was very into connecting with USDS folks. Some people were like, “Oh man, new people are in again.” But he took a stance of, “There are always new people that rotate through and that’s okay. I’m going to figure out how to get as much as possible out of each of these groups.”
Parisa:
He was so great to work with. I was so inspired by his commitment to civic duty, and how welcoming he was to me and others. With some other full-time government employees, you could tell they had trepidation or didn’t necessarily want to work with us. They probably thought, “Eh, these people are here today, gone tomorrow.”
Honestly, the four weeks were a blur. I remember lots of discussions about how we could re-enable VPN for a huge chunk of the workforce, talking through risk management and how employees will optimize for convenience over security, and ongoing security work that we needed to do in parallel.
I also remember really interesting conversations about workforce productivity. For example, we had one conversation with the White House Counsel about trying to open up a chat or messaging application for different departments or even within a team for quicker back and forth interactions and problem solving than email. It was eye opening because I’d used a chat interface with coworkers for years, but the White House Counsel was like, “No. Due to FOIA and the Presidential Records Act, absolutely not. Too much risk.” It’s easy to judge, but some of the policies in place to mitigate risk from mass public scrutiny can harm productivity and problem solving.
Some of the information we were working on was classified. It was the first time where I experienced, “You can’t touch that computer because you don’t have the right classification level.” Or, “That document needs to be in this protected briefcase.” Or, “You can’t write this down.” And I remember thinking, “If we can’t write it down, how do we remember it or share it and problem solve with the right people?”
Kathy:
From what you recall, what was the USDS team like at the time?
Parisa:
My core working team was a bit fluid, but I primarily worked with David and Ben on this project and pulled in Haley as needed. I had a different team when I did another engagement in 2016; I worked with Nathan Parker and Matt Weaver. I remember that Mikey was the Administrator, but I don’t think I would’ve been able to clearly tell you what the organizational structure was beyond that. It was just: “Erie and Haley know what’s going on, so go talk to them.” There wasn’t an established hierarchy or even clear roles and responsibilities. It was more like, “There’s so much work to do and y’all are smart, so figure it out, help each other, and we’ll adapt as needed based on what tomorrow brings.”
Kathy:
How would you describe USDS?
Parisa:
A ton of passion and focus on mission. A genuine camaraderie amid creative chaos. I came from a security hacker space and it felt similar: “We don’t have time to make it perfect, so let’s just figure out how to make some progress on the problem at hand,” whether it was helping White House IT, improving the reliability of HealthCare.gov, or improving the effectiveness of immigration tech processes. Also, everyone was very welcoming, friendly, and driven.
Kathy:
You mentioned you were brought back for another stint, which is a really important part of the USDS story. Can you share more about leaving and then coming back?
Parisa:
I felt some guilt coming back to Google, and also uncertainty as to whether I was doing the right thing or not. Mikey pitched me on joining full time, and I considered it. Life-wise, I didn’t feel like it was great timing, because I’d just gotten engaged and my fiance, now husband, worked at Stanford. I also still really liked the job and opportunities and impact that I had at Google and with Chrome.
I expressed interest in doing another stint if it came up. And I definitely wanted to get other people involved with USDS and help in smaller ways, like interviewing, recruiting, and helping to amplify the importance of working in government.
In 2016, there was a project that the Defense Digital Service was working on with the U.S. Air Force — it was dubbed the most troubled program in the Air Force. It was super over budget and super behind schedule, and they wanted people to do a third-party assessment and produce an assessment and recommendation memo. That was another multi-week project, and I went with Nathan Parker, Matt Weaver, Justin Tansuwan, and Bradley Heilbrun for a few weeks in Colorado.
We were very much brought in as consultants, so it was slightly more crisp than my first engagement. At that point, there was also a little bit more structure behind the USDS in terms of engagement. They weren’t really doing the shorter stints, in part because it’s a lot to ramp up and do something useful.
There were commonalities with this new project and past ones: How do you quickly earn trust and get to the root of the issue? How do you influence or nudge the system and empower people so that you can leave things in a better state than when you entered?
Kathy:
That’s such a great lesson on recognizing the role we play. Parisa, when you think of your time at USDS, what are some of the things you accomplished that have stuck around, or that you’re really proud of?
Parisa:
I hope the people I worked with in government found my perspective and efforts helpful. I’m personally grateful for the friendships and the experiences that I’ve been able to have and how those experiences influenced the work I still do. I still work on Chrome, and USDS helped me become a better leader and helped me build better software for government. Also, forging new professional bonds and lifelong friendships. You’ve become a best friend, and though it’s been a while since I’ve talked to some folks, I feel like I could just reach out and get help or a friendly sounding board to talk through a problem if I needed to.
There’s still a ton of work we have to do to build tech partnerships between the private sector and public sector. USDS created some connectivity that has survived across administrations and some initiatives have expanded and scaled into programs, relationships, and partnerships that durably improve how we collaborate. That’s one of the lasting impacts of USDS, and it’s cool to have seen it in the beginning when it was quite messy and chaotic, and then see how it’s evolved and matured since then.
Kathy:
That’s such a great way to end this. Thank you.