The rebels won
By: jinyoung englund
Acting Deputy Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer, Directorate for Digital Services & DDS DIRECTOR
Our story began with the infamous launch of Healthcare.gov, the nearly $2.1B website that was originally supposed to cost $93.M (still too much) to build, but processed only 6 applicants out of 250,000 in its first 24 hours.
This was the epitome of government waste. It turns out, not only was Healthcare.gov over-budget and under-delivered, it was also insecure. Upon this very expensive and embarrassing revelation of how bad the federal government was at technology, the Obama administration stood up the United States Digital Service in the Executive Office. This Office utilized existing hiring authorities to recruit top-tier technologists from the private sector to build a modern, digital workforce.
In November 2015, the then Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, stood up the Defense Digital Service to bring those same capabilities to the Department of Defense in support of our National Defense and Security Strategies. We were a scrappy startup team of rebels with some seed money charged to lead a technological transformation within the largest employer in the U.S. – the nearly 3M person-strong Department of Defense.
Within 6 months, we launched Hack the Pentagon, the first-ever bug bounty, a crowdsourced security assessment, in the federal government. Spending only $150k, cleared, ethical (white-hat) hackers discovered 138 vulnerabilities with a potential impact to national defense and security of over $1M.
Since then, time after time, we’ve proven our value and in December 2021 the decision was made for our first “Series A” injection. We joined forces with the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), the Office of Secretary of Defense’s Chief Data Office (CDO), and the DoD Comptroller’s ADVANA business management tool to form the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO).
Same awesome team, newish name, much larger mission.
Here’s the BHAG: The Secretary of Defense has charged us to digitize DoD by 2030.
As a team, we are working in concert to deliver decision advantage to DoD leaders and warfighters through providing quality data, data analytics, and AI/ML capabilities from the boardroom to the battlefield.
Here’s the why: No other country in the world can compete against our military. We are, without debate, the most lethal combat force in the world. However, in the areas of emerging technology, specifically Big Data and AI/ML, our adversaries are poised to leapfrog the U.S. and seize a competitive advantage. We cannot allow this to happen.
As Dr. Craig Martell, the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer who hails from Lyft and Dropbox, says, “The rebels won.”
After 8 years of being the “rebels” in the Pentagon, pressing forward with modern cybersecurity, software development, product management, and user-centered design practices, it is time for us to grow and scale our team’s talent and “truth to power” culture, building a digital and cyber-smart armed force and civilian service that is a force to be reckoned with.
It isn’t enough for DoD to just buy the latest and greatest technology. Buying technology doesn’t make a technology company, having technologists does. And in the sea of constant change, that part of DDS remains constant – we are a team of top-tier product managers, hardware, software, cybersecurity, and data engineers, data scientists, and UX/UI designers who have a bias towards action and bring a record of building real products for real customers.
The world is on the verge of a recession and major technology companies are laying off highly skilled technologists in droves. If you’re one of them, there is no better time to take a detour in your career to join DDS and CDAO. While it's cool to say you have an office in the Pentagon, actually going into the office every day is so 20th century. We’re a remote-first team providing you with the opportunity to serve your country with your laptop without going to boot camp. It’s a #winwin.
Your country needs you, and unlike tech giants, we’re hiring.
Will you join us?
