[plonh]

This is cool, but,...18F are consultants, who pop in, wave a magic wand, and pop out. Many of its employees are.bound by law to a max 2 or 4 year term. Will cloud.gov support its users for 5, 10, 15 years?

[toomuchtodo]

18F are _not_ consultants. They're federal employees with a term limit who are domain experts.

EDIT: See sailfast's comment below. I think we're quibbling over semantics.

[sailfast]

A chunk of 18F are consultants to other government agencies and provide their services to government for a 100% cost-reimbursable fee for specific projects, much like a private consulting firm. https://18f.gsa.gov/consulting/ https://pages.18f.gov/joining-18f/who-we-are-hiring/position...

[dragonwriter]

> This is cool, but,...18F are consultants, who pop in, wave a magic wand, and pop out.

My understanding is that some of what 18F does is short-term, project-based consulting for other government agencies, but that that isn't all of what 18F does.

The limited employment term things is a real concern for non-consulting, ongoing functions, but may have salutary effects, if it means that design for shared maintainability and succession planning aren't the kind of afterthoughts that they are many places in government.

[wslack]

It also is a natural defense against ossification.

[spamlord]

Most Amazon employees only stick around for 2 years or so, but yet Amazon is still supporting its users.

[panzagl]

The downvoters don't understand how federal contracts work- maintenance will be bid to the usual suspects, with the downward spiral that entails.

[azernik]

They will maintain it like any company does - hand off support for existing products as employees leave.