(I've been working on Healthcare.gov for the past year and know some of the people at USDS; I was also YC S11 and appreciate the great parts of startup culture even more now)

PSA: I know it's not easy to tell from the outside, or from a website, but this is the real deal. Things are starting to change; by government standards, at ludicrous speed. The Healthcare.gov crisis really started a useful fire.

Todd Park, Mikey Dickerson, and the team he's building at USDS and the people he's placing into new "digital services" teams at other agencies like the VA-- if you meet them you'll quickly find out why they were superstars at their tech companies.

One important thing to understand is: yes, things really can be vastly improved IRL, not just in theory. It's not that government IT services ("IT") suck because the people responsible for it don't care. They're just in a completely different world, expectations and otherwise, and don't know how much better it could be.

E.g., they don't know there exists a hosting option that is more secure, more reliable, and less risky (and costs 90%/$90M less per year). Or that there exist software people who can build a far better user experience (#1: the worst UX is downtime, #2: product lead needs a) exist, and b) fight for the user on every decision), while still meeting all business requirements (for 80%/$20M less per year).

Some people do know, but they can't do it themselves [0], and they also don't have access to the right people to do it for them; their practical options are Lockheed Martin's "small-business" subsidiary, or ACRONYM's federal IT division.

USDS and 18F are fixing this, and much more. They need your help. I'm not sure what's public, but the progress is incredible. It's still going to take a long time. Most of all it's going to take more software engineers, designers, PMs, etc. The tech gap between Silicon Valley and DC is unbelievable until you've experienced it. Go east! (Or west [1])

It's definitely frustrating to work for/with the government (not sure how it compares to other institutions that provide many real-world services to a diverse 300+ million population), but if you're put in a position where you can actually change things, the impact is enormous. And now you can do that as a software engineer/technologist with no existing clue about government, because USDS/18F has leverage and the ability to place you where you can make that impact. [2]

The federal government deeply impacts all of our lives [3] and whether you think it should do more or less, there's no reason for what exists to be so incredibly inefficient and customer-unfriendly, especially when there's a huge pool of tech people with the skills needed to fix it, and now, a pipeline that can get them (you!) to the right place. Please apply!

(There's also small teams of engineers [4] on the inside tackling this problem, if you prefer that (less direct, but avoids gov. pay being capped at ~$150k or so and the strict background checks.) Contact me if you want more details.)

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[0] They're also too busy trying to keep their heads above water in a bureaucratic system that seems to function only because many of the people in it work so hard, but I digress.

[1] AFAIK, USDS is based in DC (and I think has positions in Boston), 18F is mostly in SF (Civic Center) and DC, with a few remote people around the US.

[2] Imagine if you could direct and organize a team of people to rescue expanded healthcare coverage in the US (oops, Mikey did that already)

Imagine if you could help 22 million veterans get the care they deserve on time, instead of hundreds of days late

Imagine if you could help "fix" the IRS with auto-prepped tax returns (definitely seems like the hardest one on this list-- but it's also one that everyone wants to see happen. And yes it's a policy problem, but it's also a technical problem-- imagine policymakers having to trust the system that resulted in the original healthcare.gov. And informed engineering opinions have much more weight than you'd imagine.)

[3] Yes I know there's a whole world outside of the US, especially on the Internet :)

[4] "startups" and "small businesses" both have connotations on HN that I'm trying to avoid...