USDS looks for new deputy to lead as Trump administration approaches 

The U.S. Digital Service is looking for a new deputy administrator in the twilight weeks of the Biden administration. 

“This is a tremendously consequential role for USDS (always) and especially at this moment — the next USDS deputy administrator will be the acting administrator after the presidential transition,” Mina Hsiang, current USDS administrator, wrote in an email to USDS alumni late last month and obtained by Nextgov/FCW. 

Hsiang is a political appointee who took the helm during the Biden administration and has told other digital service leaders that she plans to step down by President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, according to a person familiar. The Office of Management and Budget confirmed that Hsiang will depart with the Biden administration.

USDS — borne out the rescue effort following the HealthCare.gov crash as a means to bring technologists into government for limited terms of service — hit its ten-year anniversary this year.

Its proponents say the tech team is an important tool to bring private sector talent into the government and help agencies with engineering, design, data science, procurement and other tech-related work.

The deputy administrator role is not currently a political appointee role. The former USDS deputy, Cori Zarek, left the post in early September, and USDS is taking applications to fill the deputy role through Monday.

Whoever fills the job could take on an important role in the organization if that top administrator post isn’t filled soon after the start of the new Trump administration — although the USDS head doesn’t require Senate confirmation and could be installed quickly, said Michelle Amante, vice president of federal workforce programs for the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service.

The coming administration may also have flexibility in terms of who takes the deputy spot, the Partnership told Nextgov/FCW, adding that technically, Hsiang could stay on if Trump chose to keep her, as Schedule C appointees serve at the pleasure of the president.

Hsiang took the leading role in the organization in fall 2021. The previous administrator of USDS was Matt Cutts, who held the position from January 2017 to April 2021 — at first in an acting capacity, per his LinkedIn.

The classification for the head of USDS, whether career or political, has changed over the years since the team was created during the Obama administration.

Originally, USDS was led by a political appointee before the Trump administration changed the job to a two-year career appointment in 2018, said Amante. 

In the Biden administration, the top role switched back to an appointee, albeit a different type of appointee than the Obama-era administrator. USDS also gained a new political appointee during the Biden administration called a senior advisor for delivery, per the records the government keeps on political appointees, called the Plum Book.

Political appointees can be “a way to signal that that agency is a political priority,” said Amante. “If you think about USDS and the projects that they have been working on over the last four years, it was clearly a priority.”

“Also, you do have more influence over the leader when they are political appointee versus a career,” she added.

The White House transition comes as the tech team is already in a moment of change itself. 

USDS has been running off of $200 million it got from the American Rescue Plan Act since fiscal year 2021. That funding, which lawmakers actually pulled back $10 million from as part of the FY24 funding package, expired at the end of the fiscal year in September.

The White House asked Congress for $30 million to fund 100 employees and move operations back to appropriations in its FY25 budget. It also asked for the authority to get reimbursements from agencies for USDS expenses, to the tune of another estimated $30 million an additional 112 employees. 

Congress passed a continuing resolution in September to move the government funding fight to December 20, but so far lawmakers have shown mixed degrees of enthusiasm for sending more funding to USDS. 

One former congressional staffer has written that those on Capital Hill “rarely received a straight answer from USDS leadership” during their time there, arguing for more transparency and accountability for the organization.

Editor's note: This article has been updated to include comment from OMB.