Summary
The U.S. government has a vast quantity of software projects across the various agencies, and many of them would benefit from a modern approach to development and deployment. The U.S. Digital Services Agency has been tasked with making that happen. In this episode the current director of engineering for the USDS, David Holmes, explains how the agency operates, how they are using Python in their efforts to provide the greatest good to the largest number of people, and why you might want to get involved. Even if you don’t live in the U.S.A. this conversation is worth listening to so you can see an interesting model of how to improve government services for everyone.
Announcements
- Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great.
- When you’re ready to launch your next app or want to try a project you hear about on the show, you’ll need somewhere to deploy it, so take a look at our friends over at Linode. With 200 Gbit/s private networking, scalable shared block storage, node balancers, and a 40 Gbit/s public network, all controlled by a brand new API you’ve got everything you need to scale up. And for your tasks that need fast computation, such as training machine learning models, they just launched dedicated CPU instances. Go to pythonpodcast.com/linode to get a $20 credit and launch a new server in under a minute. And don’t forget to thank them for their continued support of this show!
- Bots and automation are taking over whole categories of online interaction. Discover.bot is an online community designed to serve as a platform-agnostic digital space for bot developers and enthusiasts of all skill levels to learn from one another, share their stories, and move the conversation forward together. They regularly publish guides and resources to help you learn about topics such as bot development, using them for business, and the latest in chatbot news. For newcomers to the space they have the Beginners Guide To Bots that will teach you the basics of how bots work, what they can do, and where they are developed and published. To help you choose the right framework and avoid the confusion about which NLU features and platform APIs you will need they have compiled a list of the major options and how they compare. Go to pythonpodcast.com/discoverbot today to get started and thank them for their support of the show.
- You listen to this show to learn and stay up to date with the ways that Python is being used, including the latest in machine learning and data analysis. For even more opportunities to meet, listen, and learn from your peers you don’t want to miss out on this year’s conference season. We have partnered with organizations such as O’Reilly Media, Dataversity, and the Open Data Science Conference. Go to pythonpodcast.com/conferences to learn more and take advantage of our partner discounts when you register.
- Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the newsletter, and read the show notes. And if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions I would love to hear them. You can reach me on Twitter at @Podcast__init__ or email hosts@podcastinit.com)
- To help other people find the show please leave a review on iTunes and tell your friends and co-workers
- Join the community in the new Zulip chat workspace at pythonpodcast.com/chat
- Your host as usual is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing David Holmes about his work at the US Digital Services organization
Interview
- Introductions
- How did you get introduced to Python?
- Can you start by explaining what the USDS is and how you got involved with it?
- The terminology that is used around "Tours of Service" is interesting. Can you explain what that entails?
- relocation
- what if you have a house and career?
- Can you explain the model of how the USDS works?
- What is involved in staffing a new project?
- What is your typical toolkit, and how does that vary with the specific departments that you are working with?
- What are some of the most interesting projects that you and the team at USDS have worked on?
- What are some of the most challenging projects that you have been involved with?
- What are some projects that you hope to be asked to work on?
Keep In Touch
- davideholmes on GitHub
Picks
- Tobias
- Captain Marvel movie
- David
- Avengers: Endgame
- Game Of Thrones television series
Links
The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA
Activity