In final days in office, Obama's White House uses words of Steve Jobs to woo techies

As the Obama administration leaves the White House this week, one piece of the outgoing president's legacy — the U.S. Digital Service — is attempting to woo Silicon Valley techies to work for government agencies. Their recruitment strategy: Using the words of Apple's iconic late cofounder, Steve Jobs.

The U.S. Digital Service is a branch of the White House that seeks to improve and expand the federal government's various online services. It was formed by President Obama in the second term of his presidency, in 2014.

The service launched a new marketing plan this week that includes the words of Apple's Jobs, attempting to bring fresh IT workers to government service. The executive branch's agency chose a clip from a 1994 TV interview, in which Jobs explained his worldview of breaking the mold and upsetting the status quo.

The clip from Steve Jobs comes from a 1994 TV that explains his worldview of breaking the mold and the status quo.

"Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you," Jobs said in the clip used by the U.S. Digital Service. "And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that people can use."

The USDS was founded after the Healthcare.gov crash and refers often to itself as a startup within the White House. So far, the agency has revamped the Veteran Affairs application process, started to digitize the immigration system, and has strengthened Pentagon cybersecurity.

22 Comments

blastdoor 3594 comments · 15 Years

About 7 years ago

Steve Jobs was a great man.

Hodar0 6 comments · 7 Years

And these people, who are no smarter than you, write policies that bind you, limit you, restrict you, and punish you for any infraction for how you do you job. These policies are now a primary defining method of monitoring you perform your job, and they are inflexible. In Gov't, you sacrifice economic growth potential, for job security. You sacrifice freedom of defining your career path, the way you define your job, how you do your job, for security. You are now a cog, in a very large, slow moving and inflexible system.

dick applebaum 12525 comments · 17 Years

Hodar0 said:

And these people, who are no smarter than you, write policies that bind you, limit you, restrict you, and punish you for any infraction for how you do you job. These policies are now a primary defining method of monitoring you perform your job, and they are inflexible. In Gov't, you sacrifice economic growth potential, for job security. You sacrifice freedom of defining your career path, the way you define your job, how you do your job, for security. You are now a cog, in a very large, slow moving and inflexible system.

None of the above needs to be true! The agency is part of the Administration which is lead by the POTUS -- the only person in Government who is answerable to all the people of the United States.

randominternetperson 3101 comments · 8 Years

How odd. I'm sure other IT folks in the federal bureaucracy are thrilled when the US Digital Service comes sticking their noses into whatever IT project they are working on. This is a unit "of the White House" but surely they work somewhere else. I've poked around their website and I can't find any answers about who runs the show, but it looks bigger than I expected (at least from the group photo). https://www.usds.gov

"Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you,"

I don't believe that. Do you think Steve Jobs actually believed that? A great many of the things that make up what we call life are the product of one-in-a-million geniuses. Yes, plenty of regular people contributed too, but without people "smarter than you" we wouldn't have electricity let alone computers and the internet, for example.