The pens of U.S. Presidents have extraordinary power. How much power they have can be seen in the short history of a small agency within the office of the U.S. President. That history began in 2013 when the U.S. government launched the most visible website ever: Healthcare.gov. Spawned by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, the site had been in development for three years. It was critical for President Obama’s plan to establish a monopoly digital marketplace as the only place Americans could access subsidized health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

Millions of Americans tried to sign up for coverage on the day it launched, and it crashed. It was a digital disaster that dragged on for weeks and months.

To fix the very visible problem it became, President Obama turned to a “small team of America’s best digital experts.” After several months of effort, their work made the site and its supporting databases functional.

Recognizing the talent of those digital experts, President Obama soon found more ways they could impact government operations. On August 11, 2014, he 

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