US launches Digital government Service

The UK Government Digital Service was formed in April 2011 (according to Wikipedia).

On August 11, 2014 the White House announced the formation of a US Digital Service, as reported in the Washington Post

The White House on Monday announced that is was formally launching a new U.S. Digital Service and that they've hired to lead it Mikey Dickerson ... 

U.S. CIO Steve VanRoekel called it a "centralized, world-class capability...made up of our country’s brightest digital talent," forming a team that will be "charged with removing barriers to exceptional Government service delivery and remaking the digital experiences that citizens and businesses have with their Government."

White House launches "U.S. Digital Service" - by Nancy Schola @nancyschola - August 11, 2014

The organisation will apparently be referred to as the USDS - I couldn't find a website yet.  The Washington Post article points to a document on the CIO.gov site - U.S. Digital Services Playbook http://playbook.cio.gov/ that may give some ideas of the goals of the organisation.  The article indicates the model will be for the service to be a centre of expertise on design and transformation of services for the digital environment.

The US Digital Services Playbook has some rough similarities to the UK GDS Digital Principles and Design Principles.

UPDATE: WhiteHouse.gov blog post - Delivering a Customer-Focused Government Through Smarter IT.

Another piece of the puzzle is 18F Digital Services Delivery https://18f.gsa.gov/ @18f which will be used more to provide developer expertise to implement changes across the government.

Previously:
February 24, 2012  San Francisco Innovation - A startup called government