A flood of AI-generated pitches is expected. Hsiang cites an HHS website called that takes submissions for thousands of funding applications. But like it or not, the AI boom has to be dealt with. She cites concerns that AI bots might infect services with bias. “We’re looking at it very carefully,” she says-a line currently mandatory for those in her line of work. I ask Hsiang how USDS regards generative AI because, well, my license as a tech pundit would be revoked if I failed to do that. “He brings us in and ensures that programs are running the right way,” Hsiang says. On the other hand, Biden’s current chief of staff, Jeff Zients, is deeply familiar with USDS, since he was once in charge of the rescue. “It would definitely be better to have an incredible partner in that office,” Hsiang concedes. One missed opportunity is the failure of the Biden Administration to fill the post of chief technology officer of the United States. “One of our superpowers is our ability to work between multiple agencies.” One problem, she notes, is that getting help often requires a citizen to access programs from multiple agencies that are poorly coordinated. “I think a lot about the opportunity for technology to reduce that administrative burden,” says Hsiang. Matthew Desmond, in his book Poverty by America, describes how millions of Americans don’t take advantage of vital programs because they are difficult to access. “We can restore trust by having a thing that operates as you would expect it to, that looks more like the products we all choose to use every day, rather than the ones we have to use.” “It was a phenomenal example of the partnership between USDS and agencies and the White House and the US Postal Service-of how we can all work together,” says Hsiang. Two-thirds of American households ultimately participated, with over 755 million tests distributed. Yes, there was a speed bump when the site couldn’t parse some addresses for citizens who lived in multifamily residences, but that was quickly resolved. Instead of asking people dozens of questions before they could sign up, the drop-dead simple form just asked where to send the darn things. Or consider the website that allowed Americans to order home delivery of free Covid tests. One radical idea: “In all sectors, services should reduce burdens, not increase them.” It also helped that late in 2021, Biden issued an executive order making human-centered design a key part of the federal government’s digital interface with citizens. So it was, ‘OK, how do we rebuild, scale, and up level,’” says Hsiang. “There was just a ton of demand across government. That enabled USDS coders and designers to work with more agencies and start new programs. Biden’s 2021 American Rescue Plan directed an astonishing $200 million to the USDS, ballooning its previously modest budget. Hsiang took over just as things were looking up. “The last administration had done a lot to undermine staffing,” she says. Nonetheless, USDS wasn’t thriving when Hsiang returned. They managed to thread that needle, in part, because Jared Kushner was at one point infatuated with the concept. The team survived through a combination of lying low and doing productive work. During the Trump years, the agency had to scramble just to stay alive, no easy task when a target was tacked onto anything even tangentially related to Obama. I spoke to Hsiang this week about how the USDS is faring after two years under her leadership. The tiny team of idealistic rescuers not only helped design a cleaner avenue to health insurance, but charmed the lifers at Health and Human Services (HHS) into enlisting them to fix up digital government more broadly. Those six- or seven-figure contracts seldom demanded benchmark performances and often took years to complete, or were never finished at all. Their methods flew in the face of typical arrangements in federal agencies, which would contract out digital operations to legacy firms with Beltway connections. Hsiang was a key member of the scrappy rescue team that turned things around, using principles of web design that were common in Silicon Valley operations but underutilized in government. The organization had sprung from the infamous debacle in 2013, when the website for selecting insurance plans under the new Obamacare law crashed badly. Upon her return, Hsiang worked on Covid response, and in September 2021, she became the third administrator of the USDS. She was one of the group’s founding members but had spent the past few years working for a health care startup. Mina Hsiang returned to the United States Digital Service, the US government's rapid digital fix-it squad, on January 26, 2021, when the streets of Washington, DC, had hardly been cleared after Joe Biden’s inauguration.
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