United States Digital Service Origin Story

COMING SOON.

Started in May 2019, this oral history preserves stories from interviews with individuals who planted the seeds, launched, and built the early foundation of the United States Digital Service from the period 2009 – 2015. 

At its core, the project features over 40 interviews with those involved in the founding of the United States Digital Service, as well as some of the first leaders of agency teams and Communities of Practice. Included are biographies, transcripts, quotes, a timeline, and themes.

The United States Digital Service (USDS) launched on August 11th, 2014 as a start-up in the White House to improve some of America’s most critical public services. On January 20th, 2025, ten years after its founding, it was reorganized and renamed to the United States DOGE Service.

Why is this important?

The full origin story of the United States Digital Service has never been fully told. A common origin story ties it to the effort to fix the healthcare.gov technology crisis. While that crisis was a major catalyst, it didn’t create the USDS in isolation. Instead, the response to healthcare.gov demonstrated a viable model for tackling complex government technology challenges and underscored the need for an organization like USDS.

For years, a growing community of technologists, civil servants, and policy experts had been laying the groundwork to use technology and design to improve government. The healthcare.gov crisis validated what they already knew: that people with experience designing and delivering digital products, combined with institutional knowledge and positioned at the right level of government, could transform public services.

This oral history highlights the people who laid the foundation for an organization that brought over 700 technologists into government across multiple presidential administrations.

Who is this for?

Practitioners, scholars, historians, and storytellers of all kinds.