Obama wants $105M to improve agencies’ digital footprint

President Obama’s budget request includes $105 million to expand a digital strike force modeled on the team that turned around HealthCare.gov.

The money will create digital teams in 25 top agencies, the White House said in a summary of its budget on Monday morning.

{mosads}The effort aims to replicate the U.S. Digital Service, an initiative launched by a former Google executive last year to make the government more responsive to the public.

“This team of America’s best digital experts has worked in collaboration with federal agencies on their high impact, citizen-facing programs to improve how citizens and businesses experience government services,” the White House said.

The Digital Service is led by Mikey Dickerson, a Google engineer who helped lead the turnaround of the federal health insurance exchange website after its disastrous rollout in late 2013.

In addition to creating the agency teams, the new money will also beef up the core U.S. Digital Service to assist those new arms and help agencies better monitor how they use tech services and defend against cyberattacks.