After Healthcare.gov, can the government make its technology suck less?

There’s some evidence that the government is trying to head off future IT disasters by calling in the crack team first.

In October, General Services Administration (GSA) administrator Dan M. Tangherlini recruited 11 Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIF) graduates to start 18F, a 15-person digital services agency within the GSA that just launched.

The rhetoric is lofty: the agency plans to prove that rapid prototyping, live testing, and other elements of the speedy "lean startup" methodology will work for the government, delivering better products to taxpayers and saving money.

"This is about building real IT services," says Greg Godbout, one of 18F’s cofounders. "It wouldn't be fair of me to say that we would build Healthcare.gov in the future, but it might be done differently."

18F is still oblique about exactly what it will be doing, but Godbout says it is already booked to build projects for four government agencies that will be announced this summer. Eventually, 18F also wants to encourage agencies to use open-source software and work with contractors outside the Beltway.