For those curious about a more thoughtful model of government reform--which is still sorely needed--the original US Digital Service team just published a bunch of interviews:
https://usdigitalserviceorigins.org/interviews/
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I was working for a federal contractor when we had a release go out that had a problem. Some digital service folks got sent in, arriving about the same day we figured out the environmental problem planted by the previous contractor for the program. The digital services folks were extremely useful in getting us in contact with other gov folks to speed up releasing the fix, but otherwise they didn't do anything. They took all the credit afterward though.
In many ways, the fact that Digital Service intervention was useful/necessary there, and the fact that you thought that other than liaising with other feds they "didn't do anything" is indicative of a major--perhaps the major--issue with the government's overreliance on contractors for technical projects: since the contractors are tasked with building, and the non-contractor feds are tasked with approving/releasing/delivering, nobody wins.
Contractor teams end up staffed largely with builders who are held accountable for what they build not shipping, but it usually isn't shipping because it's held up by approval processes outside of the sphere of influence in which the contractor operates. Outside that sphere, feds tasked with releasing on a timeline end up frequently confused by perceived reticence on the part of the contractor--"why aren't they getting this bugfix out the door ASAP?" (answer: they are only often staffed for/limited in authority to building the thing and throwing it over the wall, not making sure it goes live).
What you get as a result is a situation where a cross-context group like the Digital Service is often the only way to speed up those bottlenecked processes. In other words, the problem was the failure at "getting us in contact with other gov folks to speed up releasing the fix", not the coding of the fix itself.
The larger solution to that failure mode is to fix the accountability matrix (I'll never stop linking to this article, which sums it up so well: https://www.eatingpolicy.com/p/understanding-the-cascade-of-...). That can mean a lot of things. It might mean that contractors are staffed/expected to work with fed shareholders running the release/approval processes to get their changes actually shipped. It might mean that federal departments bring more "build" or "technically own product delivery" expertise in-house. It might mean fixing/streamlining approval processes (this is lot harder than it sounds).
Thats what seniors do. For good and bad, but they can be invaluable. Lots of problems are primarily people problems.
I hope a similar oral history will be done for 18F – it ran very, very lean.
The US Digital Service has done a ton of great work in a thoughtful manner. Thanks Obama!