For whatever reason, the tech press hasn't picked up on Todd yet, but he's as good as it gets. Prior to working for the government, he was a two-time founder: he started both Athena Health (now a public company) and Castlight (recent IPO). When healthcare.gov went down, Todd was the one Obama asked to assemble the "tech surge," including Mikey, and he pitched in around the clock to get things working--literally, at multiple points, sleeping in the office overnight when things went awry. I promise you that the people in charge don't consider this a typical, 9-to-5 job and don't leave teams to fend for themselves. They are there in the trenches.
You can get a sense of who we're working with in this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4WpQGfPt_E
The problem is one of governance. Unless this new group can cancel contracts and ban organizations from participating in future projects I see very little reason to think they will succeed.
They can suggest all they want but if they can't cold stone stop an agency from entering an agreement then they can't change existing behaviors.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/organization_mission/
It is not obvious unless you spend your time memorizing government org charts, but US Digital Service is part of OMB.
They seem to go out of their way to make UI nightmares. That, and I'm thinking of how they had one or two recent high profile failures in California.
Next up: I'll probably hear from their lawyer :-)
I'm not doubting the people named in this announcement. What I'm saying is that they can only succeed if there is ongoing support from the top. This feels much more like after the launch they will be left to fend for themselves in fighting to change a monstrous bureaucracy.
Well at least they didn't use the word "surge" to sell it. I guess that's a positive thing.