I live outside of Seattle. But nearly all of the work I do with USDS requires me to be physically present. So I travel a lot (4/5 days a week). You aren't going to find a badly broken technology project in the Federal Government that is able to leverage remote people effectively.
On many of these projects, something is very very wrong. That's why USDS/18F are there. If everything is going peachy, we could be spending our time better, elsewhere.
Government is not a place where modern collaboration tools thrive. This has less to do with "broken IT" (though that's part of it) and more to do with the government's unique legal, oversight, and compliance burdens, and a lack of modern collaboration tools that can accommodate them.
The projects in which we are most successful are also not projects where people can easily contribute remotely. Some agency teams allow remote work but the jury's still out in my opinion as to whether these people are as effective as others.
