Author’s note: After nearly eight years, I am leaving government service. This is a lightly-edited version of the farewell letter I posted in our Slack. (Edits were for clarity and prose, the substance has not changed.)

hai frands,

after a lot of heartbreak, contemplation, and grief, it’s my turn to leave TTS.

When I joined 18F in 2018, I expected to be here for no more than 4 years, a full Schedule A(r) term and then leave after my tour of duty. In that time, I had the privilege of working on some of brilliantly impactful work, starting with e-regs, the redesign for pubmed.gov, findtreatment.gov, and way too many COVID projects. As I was preparing to leave in 2022, perhaps to move to Asia to support the vibrant international civic tech community there, I got the chance to stay. Never did I think I might get the chance to stay to help build a new office, much less to one dedicated to equitable access to the regulatory process and open government—to use expertise as a political science researcher in democratic systems, not just my skills as a technologist and design strategist. The hope was to build something durable, that had the potential to radically improve how the public contribute to and have a say in the rules and regulations that governed the communities we share. That time is at an end.

While we all live under capitalism, those of us in government have the privilege and responsibility to work next to it where our job is to serve the public and work for the common good. We get the rare opportunity to focus on stress cases—those who had nowhere else to go, those who are forgotten or ignored by profit motive because not all public good can be calculated through quarterly gains and shareholder value. With the privilege of not having to work with a profit motive, we have the duty to serve everyone—not just those who can afford to pay.

When I first joined 18F in 2018, we were nearing the end of another mass-exodus, so I tried to have as many exit conversations with people as I could. In those conversations I always asked two question: “What do you hope is your legacy at 18F?” with a follow up “How can we help see that continue?” Here are a few of my favorites:

• Modeling healthy conflict. One person remembers their role during the conversation when the original Guys Bot was being debated. They disagreed with its need, but when the organization came to consensus, they made an intentional decision to do two things: 1. make sure that those from marginalized communities need to have a larger voice in deciding what is necessary to make a healthy space for them and 2. Backing the community’s decision once it was made even if they still had private reservations.

• Radical transparency, openness, and trust. Several people talked about the radical transparency of the early days. They talked about how it sometimes got 18F in trouble, and how it was sometimes structured poorly, but how it was necessary for building a cohesive team. They hoped that as the new generation starts stepping into leadership, we would hold to that ideal—they also hoped that we’ll be more mature about it than they were.

• Never stop asking questions. “Some people thought I was being troublesome, but really I just wanted to understand things.” This person said that we need to keep asking questions on our projects, and of our own organization—that is the nature of agile and iterative organizations. Yes, make progress, but progress for its own sake fails when not everyone is sure we’re solving the right problem.
• Do things in a way that can be duplicated by others, and don’t just do it for your own projects. One engineer was proud to be able to use their is spare time to do drive-by Dockerizations.

Transparency has never been enough. We are at our best when we make space for disagreement, open discussion, and collective problem solving. We are at our best when everyone has the safety to raise their concerns. Openness, collaboration, and striving together with each other in service to the public. That is dignity.

TTS will always be a special place to me. At our best, we are people who are daring and brave yet humble and kind. People unerringly dedicated to a culture of kindness, of helping, and pitching in. We are a place where you are never turned away when you have a question. Where queries for help are never halted with an “I don’t know” or a “stop asking”; instead, they are met with a “Let’s figure it out together.”

Onward, fellow travelers. Stay in touch and see you on the other side.