Projects interrupted
These are some of the projects that were in progress when 18F was disbanded. No notice was given to the project teams or agency partners, and no time allowed for a handoff of key project information or materials.
Weather.gov
The National Weather Service provides vital weather forecasts and updates across the country. Unfortunately, lack of resources over the years have forced them to rely on outdated technology to do so. This multi-pronged project was working to provide the agency with a more stable public API, a modern content management system, and a website that anyone could use to quickly find and understand the weather in their area.
The project stood up new infrastructure, launched a pilot version of the website, and was in the process of expanding it when 18F was eliminated. This leaves the National Weather Service stuck with outdated technology that is less reliable and more time-consuming to use, at a time when the organization is also losing staff. A push to privatize weather data could also threaten public access to critical forecasts, potentially introducing paywalls and reducing transparency to the American people.
Federal Voting Assistance Program
The Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) works to make sure military service members and Americans overseas are able to vote, and that their votes are counted. Some states require ballots to be submitted via fax, so FVAP offers a free email-to-fax service. However, during presidential elections, their system was getting overwhelmed by the number of people trying to use it.
FVAP reached out to 18F to see if we could help them process this higher volume securely and efficiently. Unfortunately, two project members were unexpectedly laid off while the team was beginning its research. Even if others are brought on to continue the work, we did not have enough time to complete user interviews or technical discovery to set the project up for success.
Department of Treasury, Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau
18F worked with the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) to modernize their applications for processing formula and label submissions from all beverage and non-beverage alcohol producers. The goal was to reduce approval times and give users clearer guidance.
The project was expected to continue into the fall. However, after three months of stakeholder interviews, the work was halted before the team could finalize their recommendations. TTB now faces the choice of abandoning the project or hiring a vendor to restart the discovery process.
IRS Direct File
In its second year, Direct File is a free service for eligible American taxpayers to file taxes directly with the IRS. Building on last year’s successful pilot, this year’s Direct File is active in 25 states for the free filing of simple tax returns — more than doubling the number of states as the pilot, and with an expanded tax scope. 18F has been supporting the IRS to create and launch its Direct File project alongside the US Digital Service, vendor teams, and participating states.
Direct File is still active, and eligible taxpayers are encouraged to consider it as an option to file this tax season. However, the dismantling of 18F recklessly cuts off those team members of the Direct File project. This will directly affect the work planned for future tax years to add more tax forms and situations. The abrupt terminations and absence of any time for transition planning stretches an already lean team, and deprives them of critical project background and knowledge.
In Care Case Management System for Unaccompanied Children
Each year, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) takes into their care around 100,000 children who have entered the United States without a parent or guardian. Unaccompanied children spend an average of 36 days in ORR care, where a case manager is assigned to navigate their housing, education, medical, and legal needs. Eventually they will be vetted for long term placement with a relative or sponsor.
ORR case managers rely on a legacy software system called Portal to manage and track the needs of children in their care. Portal is outdated, challenging to use, and experiences frequent outages. These technological issues can put children in danger. Some have lost their medical records, or the documentation that could place them with safe sponsors, leading to real-time safety and security risks.
At the end of October 2024, 18F began the engagement with ORR to build a replacement for Portal, based on real user needs and modern technology best practices. This critical work was planned for two years before 18F was abruptly terminated on March 1st. Without the opportunity to transition work, and given the current hiring and contracts freeze, the trickle-down impact is immeasurable and cascading. Without 18F to continue this already-funded work to ease unnecessary burdens, case managers are prevented from getting the tools they need to better serve the highly vulnerable population in their care.
Maryland Family and Medical Leave Insurance
The state of Maryland passed a law directing the creation of a self-funded Family and Medical Leave Insurance Program. They reached out to 18F because of our expertise in standing up and scaling teams in government settings. We worked with them to launch their digital service team, building capacity, establishing best practices, and creating an infrastructure to grow the team in the long term. We also helped them with the acquisition process so that they could bring on and actively manage vendors in a way that keeps the program’s interests front and center, and reduces waste.
With the program team launched and working on scaling up, 18F shifted focus to making the program’s website and content management system more modern and easier to use. This work had just started when 18F was eliminated. Without a proper handoff to our partners, we don’t know what will become of that work.
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
The U.S. Courts for the Ninth Circuit is the largest of the U.S. circuit courts, covering nine states and two territories. Its public website has not been redesigned since 2005. Confusing information architecture, dense text, and a lack of content strategy and governance had made important information hard to find, especially for users bringing cases before the circuit’s Court of Appeals.
The project team was asked to completely redesign the website so it better serves the needs of its public users, particularly attorneys and people representing themselves with cases before the appellate court. Along with designing new information architecture and reusable templates based on the U.S. Web Design System, 18F was asked to establish new governance processes for the circuit so staff could produce consistent content and manage it sustainably. We conducted foundational research, crafted a strategy, built a new design system and information architecture, completed a prototype, and were coaching the circuit staff in all aspects of modern UX design and research so they could launch the new website within the year. We had just started usability testing when the work was forced to stop.
Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs
The Bureau of Consular Affairs is the public face of the Department of State. Consular Affairs protects U.S. citizens, facilitates international travel, and increases national security. Consular Services processed 24.5 million passports in FY2024 and issued 7.3 million visas in FY2022.
18F was collaborating with Consular Affairs to improve consular services based on customer needs, and support modernization efforts across the Bureau. This included:
- Building a new system to process online passport applications more efficiently, and help Passport Services better respond to emergencies or surges in demand, which in the past have created months-long backlogs.
- Standing up the first Customer Experience program at Consular Affairs to direct and support improvements in all services based on what people actually need.
- A transformation of travel.state.gov to ensure the American public has trusted international travel information and easy access to consular services when they most need them, especially when there is a crisis overseas.
Because of 18F’s abrupt elimination, these efforts were ended without the opportunity for a proper handoff, leaving State Department without any way to reference work they had already paid for. It also endangers the future of these projects and the services, as they no longer have the staff or expertise to support them, and it deprives the American public of the level of service they should be able to expect from their government.
Watch this space for more in-flight projects that were interrupted by 18F’s elimination.