US Digital Service Administrator Looks to Silicon Valley to Fix Washington

ABC News(WASHINGTON) — After eight years working for Google in Silicon Valley, Mikey Dickerson got comfortable wearing a T-shirt and jeans to work. So when he took a top White House job last year, he saw no reason to change wardrobes.

“I have exactly one suit,” Dickerson told ABC News/Yahoo! News in the White House Executive Office Building, dressed in a casual button-up shirt and pants for the occasion. “I put it on when I know I’m going to see the president.”

Dickerson leads a newly created agency within the executive branch called the U.S. Digital Service. But he’s more commonly known as “the guy who fixed Healthcare.gov.”

It was Dickerson, along with a team of engineers, who rebooted the government’s healthcare exchange website following a failed rollout in 2013. And soon thereafter, the White House called Dickerson back to take on a mission of replicating the results of the Healthcare.gov rescue team across the rest of the federal government’s clunky IT network.

“This is not going to be an easy task,” Dickerson said of his new job. “I don’t think there’s danger of it being too easy.”

That’s why Dickerson has recently received the go-ahead for a hiring spree to grow what is currently a modest team of about 20 web designers and engineers into a robust IT army.

“Everything the government does that interacts with citizens digitally — that’s in scope for us,” Dickerson said. “It’s a huge amount of work to do.”

To accomplish the task, Dickerson is looking to lure the nation’s best and brightest IT minds away from the plush salaries and job perks of Silicon Valley to join him at the heart of federal bureaucracy in Washington, D.C.

It can be a tough sell.

Dickerson admits that working for the federal government is “not quite Google” and comes with a “more humble” salary. Still, he has already recruited some of the nation’s top web developers, including the lead developer of Google Chrome and a former Twitter operations director, to join his team.

And he notes that the White House is not without its perks.

“Some things will surprise you,” Dickerson said. “We still have a cafe in this building, it’s right downstairs. There’s a bowling alley, and it’s right downstairs.”

But the biggest payoff of all, according to Dickerson, can’t be measured.

“It’s really striking how much people believe in what they are doing here, which sounds cheesy but that’s a fact,” he said. “Honestly, I rarely saw people that are that passionate about what they did when it was on Google, on Twitter, on projects in Silicon Valley.”

Another assurance Dickerson makes to those he’s recruiting: you can wear what you want.

“When I first got here, that was a big deal,” Dickerson said of his choice to continue dressing down for work. “Now, everyone kind of got over it. Now, if I’m wearing a suit…everyone’s like, ‘Are you going to a funeral today?’ or ‘What happened?’ So, now it’s a big deal if I do put on a tie.”

In a video posted on the White House website last year, Dickerson explained why keeping the casual dress code — a tech standard — is such a sticking point in the IT development world.

“People…want to know if I’m wearing a suit to work every day, because that’s the quickest shorthand way of asking, is this same old business as usual, or are they actually going to listen,” Dickerson said in the White House video.

As for Dickerson’s solitary suit, it hangs partially crumpled behind his office door in the Executive Office Building — just in case the president should call.

“My friends helped me pick it out for Google’s formal holiday dance, which they call Google prom, so I’ve had it all those years,” Dickerson said of the suit.

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