Inside President Obama's Stealth Startup

The new hub of Washington’s tech insurgency is something known as the US Digital Service, which is headquartered in a stately brick townhouse half a block from the White House. USDS ­employees tend to congregate with their laptops at a long table at the back half of the parlor floor. If there’s no room, they retreat downstairs to a low-ceilinged basement, sprawling on cushioned chairs. Apart from an air-hockey table, there aren’t many physical reminders of West Coast startup culture -- a lot of the new techies are issued BlackBerrys, which seems to cause them near-physical pain.

The point for President Barack Obama is not to sell these candidates on a career in government, but rather to enlist them in a stint of a year or two at USDS, or even a few months. For decades, accomplished lawyers and economists have worked in the capital between private-sector jobs, so why not technologists? "What I think this does," says Megan Smith, the current US chief technology officer, who spent much of her career at Google, "is really provide a third option. In addition to joining a friend’s startup or a big company, there’s now Washington."