Good question. Maybe someone else here knows more, but the first thing that jumps out at me is to ask your Congressman not to listen to lobbyists that are against the 18F for no valid reason. Whereas some government workers may be hard to fire and take it too easy on the job (a stereotype, I know, but mentioned in case this is a concern for you), the 18F members serve for only a 2-year term which can be renewed once. Performance is high and they've been very busy helping many government agencies in their first couple of years and as far as I can see the agencies need them to really continue pushing a culture change towards more rapid innovation of business processes, etc.