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During the semester, I shall post course material and students will comment on it. Students are also free to comment on any aspect of the presidency, either current or historical. There are only two major limitations: no coarse language, and no derogatory comments about people at the Claremont Colleges.

The course syllabus is at
http://www.claremontmckenna.edu/pages/faculty/JPitney/gov102-14.html

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Tuesday, November 18, 2014

White House Staff Culture Shock

What happens when Silicon Valley meets D.C.? A very interesting clash of staff cultures.

Mikey Dickerson PO '01 became Administrator of the White House's newly created U.S. Digital Service. And he's brought Silicon Valley's work culture (including the no-suit policy) with him. (Watch the video. DO IT.)


He was part of the group that worked on revamping healthcare.gov. As he says, "there was a sufficient number of programmers, designers, everything you needed was already there, had been hired onto the project somewhere. They just needed to be coordinated and managed better." Mikey's one of the people that coordinated and managed them better. "So," the White House asked Mikey, "why don't we try to do that for all of the agencies in all of the federal government?" And that's where Mikey's U.S. Digital Service comes in.

The new government service, new batch of minds, and new work culture seem to diverge radically from what the White House (and D.C. in general) is used to. And hopefully that's a good thing.

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