At a Glance
- Former USDS staffers launch Tech Viaduct to draft a 2029 government-tech overhaul
- $1 million from Searchlight Institute funds blueprints for procurement, hiring, and oversight reforms
- Plan hinges on a Democratic White House win; failure means years more of DOGE-style data-silo damage
Why it matters: If the party retakes power, Viaduct wants day-one executive orders ready to prevent another bureaucratic meltdown.
A band of ex-federal tech specialists still shaken by Donald Trump’s makeover of the United States Digital Service is channeling envy into action. They concede Trump’s DOGE squad bulldozed red tape with ruthless speed, but they loathe the wreckage left behind. Their answer: Tech Viaduct, a private initiative crafting a detailed playbook to rebuild and modernize federal services under the next Democratic president.
The project’s advisory bench carries heavy Democratic star power:
- Denis McDonough, Obama chief of staff and Biden VA secretary
- Alexander Macgillivray, Biden’s former deputy CTO
- Marina Nitze, ex-VA CTO
- Robby Mook, Clinton 2016 campaign manager
Yet the gravitational center is Mikey Dickerson, the plain-spoken Google veteran who launched USDS in 2014. Dickerson, preparing last April to leave politics for an isolated Arizona observatory, was lured back after Mook secured $1 million from the progressive Searchlight Institute. The goal: design signature-ready orders and bills that a 2029 administration could enact without fresh study panels or Capitol Hill haggling.
Dickerson admits Democrats squandered a decade of chances. “For 10 years we’ve had tiny wins here and there but never terraformed the whole ecosystem,” he says. Trump’s smash-through approach, he adds, convinced him real change is politically possible. “Trump has knocked over all the beehives-the beltway bandits, the contractor industrial complex, the union industrial complex.”
Two-Track Mission
Tech Viaduct is racing on parallel rails:
- Draft a master plan covering:
- Merit-based civil-service hiring
- Transparent procurement rules
- Built-in oversight (inspector generals restored)
- Catalog and triage DOGE‘s data-silo breaches so a future team can restore privacy safeguards
The group will test its framework through the spring, aiming to lock in intra-party consensus before the 2028 campaign heats up. “Thinking up bright ideas is going to be the easy part,” Dickerson notes. “We’re going to have to spend another two to three years … advocating as if we were a lobbying group.”
2028 Wildcard
Success depends on a Democratic victory and full White House buy-in. Jenny Wang, Viaduct project manager and former Biden deputy chief of staff, calls internal support “the key to a successful plan. If there’s no support, it doesn’t matter.” Dickerson concedes the gamble: “I am not sure at all that there’s going to be what we recognize as a fair election in 2029 … But if an opportunity comes … let’s be better prepared.”
Should politics tilt the other way, Dickerson says he will retreat to his desert observatory and watch from afar as friends-and maybe a stray journalist-come knocking to help refurbish the facility while the nation sorts out its next chapter.
