nacin
The "term-limited" positions are actually quite nice. Generally, you can serve for up to four years. USDS is almost 3 years old, and anecdotally it feels like people tend to leave by the end of their first two-year term because, well, it's hard and it can be exhausting. You lose effectiveness over time, and returning to the private sector is important to re-strengthen your skills and knowledge.
As it happens, the excellent career civil servants we work with also appreciate knowing we're there to help them, not take their jobs. :-)
As you probably realized when going through the process, USCIS has historically been 98% paper [1] (I've been to the underground limestone cave where they store a lot of it), and we've been working hard to help them modernize the entire agency, including an online application for naturalization [2] and the corresponding backend processing systems.
There are a lot of reasons why it's so hard to get agencies to work together, but making it better starts with modernizing individual systems and processes, especially when we're starting with paper that, obviously, can't be transferred seamlessly. For the most part, USCIS doesn't store your entire case file digitally (yet), and even the metadata is stored in a bunch of different systems, which includes (of course) an actual mainframe. (I've seen the mainframe too; it has pretty sweet green LED strips, and not much else going for it.)
I'm actually not familiar with how USCIS triggers SSA cards, but I'm going to ask. As it happens, USCIS and SSA do interact electronically in some situations. USCIS runs the E-Verify program, which talks with SSA, as described in this dense but refreshingly public privacy document: https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/privacy.... We've also helped USCIS introduce and improve data exchanges with State, including an early engagement on modernizing the immigrant visa process [3], which you went through, and work on refugee admissions [4].
One of the things I love most about my time at USDS is how many civil servants have embraced and championed best practices for building digital services to best serve the American people. The former director of USCIS, in particular, intuitively understood how technology can improve the immigration process and continued to push us and the agency until their final day in office. As USCIS makes more benefits applications available online, they'll have more data in a readily accessible digital format. They'll be able to streamline the user experience as you progress through the process over the years, and by the end of it, they shouldn't need to ask you a whole lot. It's been great to see human-centered design being championed over and over.
Congratulations on becoming a citizen! Want to help us continue to improve the immigration system? We could use the help: https://www.usds.gov/join
[1] https://medium.com/the-u-s-digital-service/technology-is-hel...
[2] https://my.uscis.gov/exploremyoptions/us_citizen_through_nat...
[3] https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2015/07/15/bringin...
[4] https://www.usds.gov/report-to-congress/2016/refugee-admissi...
There's a ton happening here. From http://www.nextgov.com/defense/2015/04/dod-start-its-own-dig...: "The new team is already working to transfer electronic health records to the Department of Veterans Affairs from DOD."
[1] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries...
Remote work does work at 18F, where they are often shipping projects that are self-contained and executed in-house. It's also a lot easier to build a remote-friendly culture if you start on day one, which 18F did. It's really just about the nature of the work we do, embedded on these agency projects, that necessitates being in D.C. The role of USDS HQ is simply different -- we're often grafted onto existing 'culture' elsewhere (I work on a floor with more than a hundred of product and engineering folks who were here years before we arrived), and are then tasked with helping to advise/fix/transform those projects as quickly and effectively as possible. (I'd also read https://blog.newrelic.com/2014/03/26/depth-look-team-saved-h..., which was a precursor effort.)
If you're interested in serving in the U.S. Digital Service but are in a position to be only able to work remotely, 18F is a pretty great option.
The goal is to get to 500 by the end of next year. [1]
Our friends at 18F (https://18f.gsa.gov) have a lot of people working remotely, as well as offices in SF, Chicago, and New York. The nature of their work is simply different (and just as awesome).
Because we talk so much about our back compat efforts, it is certainly understandable that people might think that is where almost all of our development effort goes. But that isn't actually the case.
We heavily emphasize our philosophies because it makes adopting and updating WordPress easier, and we want users to know that. But in practice, the way we build software doesn't hamstring us. We've introduced new features and rewritten entire APIs without needlessly breaking plugins or sites. And we do sometimes drop stuff -- we are just careful about it. We do whatever is necessary to make WordPress evolve. In the end, we've simply become really good at following through.
To reply to your PS: Something tells me that if WordPress.com uses GoDaddy, they have a bit of leverage there.