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Slide: 1 / of 1. Caption: Caption: Barack Obama gives his farewell address in Chicago on January 10, 2017. Jon Lowenstein/Redux

It was 10:15 am on Inauguration Day, and John Paul Farmer was beginning to lose hope.

The former Obama White House staffer had spent the last night at his sisters apartment in Washington DC, working the phones and emailing any sentient being hed met during his years in Washington. Farmer was trying to find someone, anyone, who could get the Tested Ability to Leverage Exceptional Talent Actthe Talent Act, for shortto President Barack Obama. The bill would make law a program to give technologists temporary tours of government duty.

It had received bipartisan support in the House and Senate that week, but it still needed the presidents signature to become law. If he signed, it would take another act of Congress to dismantle.

But with roads closed throughout Washington, security checkpoints causing even more gridlock, a shoestring staff left at the White House, and less than two hours to go in Obamas presidency, odds seemed slim that the physical piece of parchment on which the law was printed would get to the 44th president before there was a 45th.

Farmer, who co-founded the so-called Presidential Innovation Fellows program, the centerpiece of the bill, wasnt sure they were going to make it. Neither was Matt Lira, a senior advisor to House majority leader Kevin McCarthy whod been instrumental in McCarthys decision to introduce the bill. Lira hoped the Talent Act would show that bipartisan consensus is possible in Washington, particularly when it comes to technology. But it was starting to look like the opportunity would pass.

Over the last week, its become clear how much of a presidents legacy can be erased with a signature. On everything from immigration to the Dakota Access Pipeline, President Donald Trump has begun the work of erasing the last eight years. But this isnt a story about that. This is the story of how a band of technophiles from both sides of the political aisle joined forces in the last minutes of the Obama administration to ensure that President Obamas efforts to modernize the government would survive his term of office.

The Presidential Innovation Fellows launched in 2012 as a sort of Peace Corps for programmers. The idea was to make it possible for technologists to take on temporary projects within government, from simple tasks like building user-friendly websites to quite complex ones, like saving the broken Healthcare.gov website.

Fellows worked on Vice President Joe Bidens cancer moonshot, building tech tools to fast track patients through clinical trials. They helped build the Blue Button Initiative, an effort to make peoples health records readily available to them. And they designed elements of the Veteran Affairs offices online employment center, making it easier for vets to find job opportunities. More than 100 fellows have cycled through the program since 2012.

Whats more, the success of the program inspired the launch of the United States Digital Service, a more permanent, but separate, tech agency within the White House, as well as 18F, a sort of consulting firm inside the General Services Administration that deploys technologists to various government agencies.

But the Fellows only ever existed because of an executive order signed by President Obama. So, last summer, in hopes of codifying it into law, McCarthy introduced the Talent Act of 2016. It passed the House almost unanimously. But the Senate didnt go as well. It got caught up in election year politics, Lira says.

We thought, Well thats it,' Farmer says. President Obama is leaving office and a new Congress is coming in. Wed have to do the whole process over again.

When the 115th Congress was sworn in in January, McCarthy reintroduced the billnow the Talent Act of 2017. This time, three days before the Inauguration, it passed the Senate unanimously. The last stepas any Schoolhouse Rock fan knowswould be for President Obama to sign.

Thats hard enough even when half of Washington hasnt already turned in their Blackberries. Its the oldest school of old school processes, Lira says. It has to be printed on a certain kind of parchment and everything.

Which brings us to Friday morning. By around 8 AM, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Orrin Hatch, president pro tem of the Senate, had signed that piece of parchment. It was sitting in the House clerks office, ready to be delivered to President Obama. But no one, it seemed, knew how to get it to him.

Thats when Farmer and Lira, as well as former US deputy CTO Nick Sinai, former head of the fellowship program Garren Givens, and his wife (and a former Senate staffer) Alexandra Reeve Givens, sprung into action. They called the clerks office, the White House, and every Senate staffer they knew. At around 10:15, after reaching one of the Presidents senior advisers, they figured out how to get the House clerk into the Capitol holding room where President Obama would spend a few private moments before watching Trump take the oath of office.

At this point, we go dark, Givens says. He was negotiating all of this via his mobile phone, from a trampoline park where he and his wife were babysitting their nephews. Theres no one else to call. Theres no one else to ask.

I watched the president get out of the car and walk into the Capitol, says Farmer, and I knew wed done everything we could.

A hundred miles away in Charlottesville, Virginia, Lira was watching, too, and was just as tense. Would the clerk make it in time? It was this Argo-like moment, he says.

To be fair, Lira had faith the Trump administration would pass the bill even if Obama couldnt. Givens and Farmer didnt. More than that, though, Farmer felt the bill would be a fitting coda to President Obamas tech legacy. It was foundational to so much of the progress his administration made, he says.

At this point, we go dark. Theres no one else to call, no one else to ask. Garren Givens, former head of the Presidential Innovation Fellows program

At some point after 11 AM, the House clerk entered the holding room where President Obama was waiting and presented him with the bill. Obama paused. This, then, would be his last official act as president. Obama looked at the parchment, and signed.

The group gathered around the soon-to-be former president applauded, and at 11:07 AM on January 20, 2017, the Talent Act became law. It was like the ending to a great movie, Lira says. The good guys won.

The Presidential Innovation Fellowship may be one of the few slivers of the Obama presidency that endures the next four years. In another small consolation to Obamas tech legacy, the White Houses new chief digital officer also recently tweeted that the US Digital Service is here to stay in the new administration. Period.

That may not comfort Obamas admirers, who are watching the signature accomplishments of his presidency quickly slipping away. But its as clear a sign as any that the role of technology in government should never be a partisan issue. And that it doesnt have to be.

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The Race to Pass Obama's Last Law and Save Tech in DC - WIRED