Didn't know .gov dudes _openly_ post here. For a discussion, let me make some conjectures about *us.gov.
Conjecture 1. USA is a pyramid, AKA Ponzi scheme Conjecture 2. USA will die in its present form in at most 5 years (possibly causing troubles to other nations too). Conjecture 3. USA will be bought by the People's Republic of China (PRC) in at most 5 years (possibly with other investors). [This already happened to some USA corporations]. Best of luck, -- gg On Fri, Nov 14, 2014 at 11:13:41AM -0500, Eric Mill wrote: > Hey, > > I wrote a piece today for my organization, 18F, about our HTTPS-everywhere > policy for the .gov websites we build inside the US government: > > https://18f.gsa.gov/2014/11/13/why-we-use-https-in-every-gov-website-we-make/ > > I wanted to give this list some extra context, since I understand the US > government is a big, complicated, freighted topic. Below is my *personal* > attempt to describe my workplace and is not anything close to an official > description or the voice of the government. > > 18F[1] is a team of ~70 people working as full time employees inside the US > federal government. (The name comes from the street intersection -- 18th St > & F St -- that its HQ is at in DC.) 18F as a unit was created around a year > ago to be a competent, top class in-house technology team for the US > federal government. > > A driving idea here is that the government shouldn't need to outsource its > *entire* technical brain to contractors, and that government services can > be simple and even beautiful. If you've noticed what's happened over the > last few years in the UK at https://www.gov.uk by the Government Digital > Service[2], 18F takes a lot of inspiration from them. > > 18F is housed inside the General Services Administration, an independent > federal agency[3] that does as many different things as its name implies, > from running all the buildings to housing the nation's data catalog at > Data.gov. It's an "independent" federal agency in that it's not subject to > the same level of direct executive and White House control that cabinet > agencies are. It's the same kind of "independent" that lets the FCC > potentially disagree with the President on net neutrality, for example. > > The team has people all over the country (it has a big SF office, for > example), many of which have either never been in government before, or who > came in after doing the Presidential Innovation Fellows[4] program. > > I joined 18F after working for 5 years on open data apps, infrastructure, > and policy at the Sunlight Foundation[5], a non-profit in DC that pushes > for open government. I had also done a fair amount of work around privacy, > HTTPS, and ongoing judicial activity around surveillance. I get to continue > doing all of that work in my personal capacity. > > I say this just to try to communicate that the 18F team has some very > sincere people trying to make the US government work better for people all > over the world, and to do right by technology in the process. We have > substantial support and autonomy to make that happen. > > When it comes to HTTPS, the .gov surface area is absolutely enormous, and > moving it helps move the whole Internet forward. Bringing the government in > line with the rest of the web/security community (and being loud about it) > is one of my big priorities at 18F, and so I wanted to share this here with > you all. > > -- Eric > > [1] https://18f.gsa.gov/ > [2] https://gds.blog.gov.uk/ > [3] > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_agencies_of_the_United_States_government > [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Innovation_Fellows > [5] https://sunlightfoundation.com/ > > -- > konklone.com | @konklone <https://twitter.com/konklone>
