Beth Cobert

The Obama Administration is formally launching the US Digital Service.

Mikey Dickerson, a top private-sector engineer who was part of the team that helped fix HealthCare.gov will serve as the new Administrator of the US Digital Service and Deputy Federal Chief Information Officer. The digital team has one core mission: to improve and simplify the digital experience that people and businesses have with their government by:

• Establishing standards to bring the government’s digital services in line with the best private sector services;
• Identifying common technology patterns that will help us scale services effectively;
• Collaborating with agencies to identify and address gaps in their capacity to design, develop, deploy and operate excellent citizen-facing services; and
• Providing accountability to ensure agencies see results.

With this announcement, the Administration is also releasing for public comment two crucial components in our growing IT toolkit that will help enable agencies to do their best work -- the Digital Services Playbook and the TechFAR Handbook.