My (remote) summer in civic tech
As a graduate student focused on the intersection of data science and public policy, the Civic Digital Fellowship was a perfect fit for me. The Fellowship’s goal of embedding young technologists in the federal government to solve important challenges on behalf of the American people was something that aligned closely with my own interests and passions, so I jumped at the chance to be a part of the program.
As I’ve now reached the end of the 10-week Fellowship, I can’t speak highly enough about the program. In the sections below, I’ll expand a little more on what I enjoyed about each of the following aspects of the Fellowship:
- The work and my project
- The events and programming outside of work
- The people and community
The Work
I spent the summer working in the Economy-Wide Statistics Division of the U.S. Census Bureau, where I focused on building a proof-of-concept for an extension of the County Business Patterns data series. County Business Patterns (CBP) is an annual data series that provides data on employment, payroll, and the number of businesses operating by industry, at a granular geographic level. Our project was focused on adding revenue as an additional metric to the existing data product.
Some of the challenges of the project included:
- Missing data
- Unreliable data / outliers
- Differences between revenue measures across data sources
Working together with my fellow Fellow and project-partner Drishaan Jain, we dealt with these challenges by developing outlier detection models, creating imputation algorithms, and conducting a deep-dive analysis of how to reconcile different revenue measures in certain industries. In the end, we were able to successfully create a proof-of-concept for a County Business Patterns data product with revenue included. While there is still much work to be done before this product will be ready for publication, we think the prototype and the roadmap we’ve created for future research have proven that the concept is achievable, and will be hugely valuable to a variety of stakeholders once complete.
Fellowship Events and Programming
In addition to the work-aspect of the Fellowship, the program also gives you access to an incredible array of events and programming over the course of the summer. I was totally blown away by how many cool speakers the Coding it Forward team pulled together — here’s just a small sample of some of the awesome speakers that I had the opportunity to interact with this summer:
- Todd Park and Megan Smith, former U.S. Chief Technology Officers
- DJ Patil, former U.S. Chief Data Scientist
- Rohan Pavuluri, CEO and Founder of Upsolve, an amazing non-profit that helps low-income folks get out from underneath crushing debt loads
- Jennifer Pahlka, founder of Code for America
- Eddie Hartwig, Deputy Administrator of the US Digital Service
Fellowship Community
Between the Coding it Forward team, agency supervisors, mentors, and the other Fellows in the cohort, the Fellowship offers an incredible support system and community. The Coding it Forward team did an amazing job of planning social events, book clubs, and more to facilitate community building amongst the Fellows. My supervisors at the Census Bureau were awesome to work with, and provided a ton of support and guidance over the course of the project. My mentor offered great career advice and connected me with a bunch of people in his network to chat further about my career interests. And it was great to have a huge group of friendly Fellows to hang out with on Zoom over the course of the summer.
Having such a strong Fellowship community is one thing that really sets the Civic Digital Fellowship apart from other internship/fellowship programs. Special thanks to Javi Miranda and Anne Russell from Census, Steven Reilley from 18F, and Rachel, Chris, and Ariana from Coding it Forward for making this such a great experience for me. I’m sad to be finished with the Fellowship, but I’m looking forward to my future adventures in the civic tech space!
Andy Green was a 2020 Civic Digital Fellow with the Census Bureau. He is a graduate student in the Data Science for Public Policy program at Georgetown University. Learn more about him at www.andykgreen.com, and connect with him on LinkedIn and Twitter.
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