18F launches cloud.gov

For those who don't know: "18F is a digital services agency built on the lean startup model based within the United States federal government." (wikipedia)

Interesting to see Cloud Foundry take off this year after many years of being more of a curiosity on its own island.<p>I personally didn&#x27;t get it until I saw Docker a couple of years ago and wondered &quot;how will we operate all of these apps, services or even the servers they run on without playing yet another shell game and resorting back to traditional shit IT?&quot;. And that brought me back to Cloud Foundry and BOSH, to the point where I quit my old job and joined Pivotal.

Glad to see the healthcare.gov debacle leading to a positive shift in mentality at .gov.

The video at the &quot;byzantine regulatory framework&quot; link[1] is worth a watch (at least the first 10 minutes to get a taste). One of the most valuable offerings of cloud.gov is (hopefully) the ease with which it can go through the ATO and FISMA processes because it was designed with them in mind.<p>[1]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=T1S52B1-NT4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=T1S52B1-NT4</a>

This is awesome work that is going to make it easier for a number of our digital service teams across government to deploy services.<p>[shameless plug to join public service for a year or two]<p>If you&#x27;re interested in joining 18F or the U.S. Digital Service (which has an HQ office in the White House but also has teams across government), this application works for both teams: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.whitehouse.gov&#x2F;usds&#x2F;apply" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.whitehouse.gov&#x2F;usds&#x2F;apply</a>

I loathe the politics&#x2F;bureaucracy of working at large companies, and yet oddly find myself wanting to work for 18F.

Slightly off-topic, but the &quot;Butt-to-Butt&quot; browser extension makes this headline quite amusing.<p>[0] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;3q9Ujy0.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;3q9Ujy0.png</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chrome.google.com&#x2F;webstore&#x2F;detail&#x2F;butt-to-butt-plus&#x2F;apmlngnhgbnjpajelfkmabhkfapgnoai" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chrome.google.com&#x2F;webstore&#x2F;detail&#x2F;butt-to-butt-plus&#x2F;...</a>

That gif is really stressing me out for some reason

I am really enthusiastic about the potential for building Eco-systems of small developer companies that focus on building the thousands and thousands of package that governments the world over need for their stutory obligations<p>The blueprint for USDS was the UK digital service, this is hitting some issues as they have started a ball rolling but now look like a bottleneck. Some of the &quot;agile&quot; restrictions and some of the centralised nature of development teams are likely to go - but the essence is a fantastic opportunity and landscape ahead<p>(See my site gratuitous I know but <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.oss4gov.org&#x2F;manifesto" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.oss4gov.org&#x2F;manifesto</a>)

&gt; <i>The magic happens when an infrastructure team encapsulates their expertise, and then exposes that expertise as a service which can be used directly by developers.</i><p>I like this statement - how do you deal with educating team members on areas that require deep expertise? (e.g.., security, accessibility, localization).<p>Do you offer training, brown-bags, educational videos, or do you say &quot;don&#x27;t worry about it - if you do this in $x way, magic[1] will take care of you&quot;.<p>[1] Magic being defined as the compiler, automated tests, etc., feeding into a central feedback system (bugs, tickets, email, or whatever you use) telling you what you did wrong, and hopefully how to fix it.

If you are interested in contributing to cloud.gov check out all our open source repos: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.cloud.gov&#x2F;ops&#x2F;repos&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.cloud.gov&#x2F;ops&#x2F;repos&#x2F;</a>

Oh this is interesting. Reminds me of the EzBake platform that&#x27;s only been briefly talked about (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cloudera.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;cloudera&#x2F;en&#x2F;resources&#x2F;library&#x2F;presentation&#x2F;cloudera-federal-forum-2014--ezbake--the-dodiis-app-engine.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cloudera.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;cloudera&#x2F;en&#x2F;resources&#x2F;librar...</a>).<p>I wonder how many agencies will allow developers to jump into this; seems many of the agencies have a &quot;must be built internally here&quot; attitude about some of this stuff. Still, looks like a good step forward.

The more I am observing the government I wonder if it will ever be possible for the the 18F treatment to hit the more old traditional Federal Government agencies like CMS. Talk about byzantine regulations.

I think 18F is a great idea and seems to be doing good things, but are there not existing options they can use? Why reinvent the wheel?

Wonder if this will have long term impact on the likes of amazon&#x27;s gov cloud. Looks like their tools facilitate their adoption.

Cool initiative, but companies that have state government as clients would not agree to a federally hosted cloud based service.

You must check <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;cloud.gov.in" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;cloud.gov.in</a> too

This is cool, but,...18F are consultants, who pop in, wave a magic wand, and pop out. Many of its employees are.bound by law to a max 2 or 4 year term. Will cloud.gov support its users for 5, 10, 15 years?