Introducing the 2022 Coding it Forward Fellows

We’re welcoming 157 early-career technologists to local, state, and federal government this summer.

Today marks the start of our 2022 Civic Digital Fellowship and Civic Innovation Corps programs! We’re welcoming 157 Fellows to local, state, and federal government where they’ll spend ten weeks working across one of four areas of practice: data, design, software engineering, or product management.

Our team celebrated five years in January, which means that this summer marks our fifth summer providing opportunities for early-career technologists to serve with their skills in government.

Since our founding, we’ve placed over 500 Fellows across all levels of government.

We launched the Civic Digital Fellowship, a first-of-its-kind model that empowers early-career technologists to explore careers in public service through a 10-week fellowship in the federal government, with 13 Fellows at the U.S. Census Bureau in the summer of 2017. In the past five years, we’ve placed over 300 Fellows at 12 federal agencies. 98 Fellows join our seventh Civic Digital Fellowship cohort in their work at 10 federal agencies this summer.

Last year, in response to the impact of COVID-19 on state and local offices across the country and recognizing the importance of empowering talent to serve at all levels of government, we launched the Civic Innovation Corps. The Civic Innovation Corps is a replica of our federal model but executed with partners in state and local governments across the country. Last summer’s inaugural cohort of 55 Fellows served at 19 host offices across 6 cities and 3 states. 59 Fellows will be serving at 30 host offices in 15 cities, 2 counties, and 3 states this summer as part of our second Civic Innovation Corps cohort.

We can’t wait to see how our Fellows will grow as public interest technologists as they help deliver more effective and efficient government services over the next 10 weeks.

Introducing the 2022 Cohort

157 Civic Digital Fellows and Civic Innovation Corps Fellows kicked off their Fellowships today. From the start of our very first cohort in 2017, it’s always been of the utmost importance to our team that our Fellows reflect the American people that they will be building products and services for this summer. Our 2022 cohort:

• Reflects a diversity of backgrounds, with a majority of Fellows being women and people of color, and are representative of a spectrum of socioeconomic backgrounds.
• Represents 28 states across the country, from Arkansas to Virginia, Rhode Island to Minnesota, and Tennessee to New Jersey.
• Developed skills at 70 academic institutions, from small liberal arts colleges and boot camps; to certificate programs and public research institutions.

We’ll be further introducing a number of Fellows throughout the summer. Stay tuned here on Medium and on our Twitter for our “Meet the Fellows” blogs.

Host Offices

We are so excited to see what our 2022 Fellows will accomplish over the next ten weeks. This summer would not be possible without our partner host offices which are providing Fellows with the opportunity to serve. We would like to thank our 2022 host offices for their partnership this summer:

Federal Agencies

• Bureau of Justice Statistics
• Bureau of Labor Statistics
• Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
• U.S. Census Bureau
• U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
• General Services Administration
• Department of Health and Human Services
• Internal Revenue Service
• National Institutes of Health
• U.S. Special Operations Command

State and Local Offices

• Arapahoe County, CO: Department of Information Technology (Digital Services Team)
• Athens-Clarke County, GA: County Manager
• Austin, TX: Transportation (Data & Technology Services)
• Baltimore, MD: Mayor’s Office of Performance & Innovation (Innovation Team), Mayor’s Office of Recovery Programs
• Boston, MA: Analytics Team, Department of Contract Services
• Buncombe County, NC: Strategy & Innovation Department
• Carlisle, SC: Equity Broadband
• Charlotte, NC: Innovation & Technology Department (Smart Cities)
• Cincinnati, OH: Office of Performance & Data Analytics (OPDA)
• Des Moines, IA: The City Manager’s Office
• Detroit, MI: Connect 313 Data Team
• El Paso, TX: Department of Information Technology (User Experience Division)
• Long Beach, CA: Department of Public Works (Contracts and Grants Division), Technology & Innovation Department (Digital Services and Data Analytics), Technology & Innovation Department (Smart Cities)
• Los Angeles, CA: Civil, Human Rights and Equity Department; Innovation Team; Mayor’s Office of Budget and Innovation (Data Team); World Airports IT Data Management
• Missouri: Office of Administration (Division of Personnel)
• New Jersey: Office of Innovation
• New York City, NY: Department of City Planning (DCP) Digital Services, DCP Engineering Team
• Philadelphia, PA: Fire Department (GIS and Analytics Unit), Parks & Recreation Strategy & Engagement Division
• San José, CA: The Mayor’s Office of Technology and Innovation
• Syracuse, NY: Digital Services Team
• Utah: Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget

Contract Partners

Our Civic Digital Fellowship program would not be possible without the partnership of our federal contracting partners. We want to thank the teams at the Washington Center, INSI Cloud, and Belcan for working with us to make this program possible.

Check out our website for more information on the Civic Digital Fellowship and Civic Innovation Corps and sign up for our mailing list to be the first to know when applications for our 2023 cohorts open.