Introducing the Civic Digital Fellowship
A fully-funded data science and technology internship program in federal agencies.
UPDATE 5/30/17: We’ve selected our fellows!
Our cohort has been selected. Fourteen talented Civic Digital Fellows from across the country start at the US Census Bureau on June 5th. Follow along with their experiences this summer at blog.codingitforward.com!
My friends and I at Coding it Forward are passionate about civic technology, so we spent months looking for technology-related internships in government. Despite searching high and low, we couldn’t find much beyond IT jobs that involved installing Microsoft Sharepoint onto 2000s-era computers.
We couldn’t find any government tech internship at a level comparable to what you’d find in Silicon Valley.
So we’ve teamed up with Harvard faculty and senior leadership at the Census Bureau, Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to start one.
Why there are so few government tech internships
The government has done a great job recruiting technical talent in recent years. Just look at success stories like the United States Digital Service, 18F, and the Presidential Innovation Fellows, all of which seek to bring Silicon Valley veterans to DC to modernize governments.
But for summer internships, there isn’t much like that outside of a few scattered jobs.
It isn’t difficult to see why when you search for technology internships on USAJOBS, the federal government’s official hiring portal:
That’s not nearly enough to lure talented technology students away from the comforts of Silicon Valley. That’s the first problem — CS students want internships where they can work on modern software problems, and there’s just no supply of that from the federal government.
The second problem is that the “user experience” of a government internship isn’t up to scratch. Silicon Valley interns have cohorts, mentors, speaker series, intern programming, housing, and other perks. And did I mention pay? Federal government internships rarely provide that. Plus, the application process is clunky and unstructured, and many times the only way to get a federal internship is by knowing the right people.
We at Coding it Forward think this is a huge problem.
The best way to inspire the next generation of talented students to pursue careers in the federal government is through summer internships, and that on-ramp is missing.
But we thought we could change that. That’s why we’re teaming up with students, Harvard faculty, and federal agencies to start the Civic Digital Fellowship, a student-led data science and technology internship program in federal agencies, and the first of its kind.
The origin story
My friends Athena Kan, Chris Kuang and I have worked with Nick Sinai, the former deputy CTO of the US and now a Harvard Kennedy School professor, for several years now. At Harvard, Nick has been passionate about getting undergrads involved in civic tech, something we’ve started doing by founding the Harvard Open Data Project — a student-faculty collaboration to create Harvard’s first open data catalog in the vein of data.gov. We’ve also founded Coding it Forward, a network of 500+ students who are passionate about using technology for social good.
Through Nick, we connected with Jeff Meisel, the Chief Marketing Officer at the Census Bureau and a former Presidential Innovation Fellow (a program that Nick help start, with many others, to bring entrepreneurs and technology experts to government.)
I offhandedly mentioned to Jeff that students like us were frustrated by the scarcity of good civic tech internships. And, as it turned out, Jeff had been trying to start an elite technology internship at Census for a few years but hadn’t found enough student and faculty interest.
And so our partnership was born. Within just the last month, we’ve put together a vision and structure for the program, gotten interest from hundreds of students, fleshed out budgets and benefits, and started bringing other agencies including the VA and IRS on board. In short, we’ve gone from an idea to being almost ready to launch in one month — a project that might ordinarily take years.
How the fellowship will work
This summer, we’ll send a cohort of software engineers, data scientists, product managers, designers, and data journalists to our participating agencies in DC. There, they’ll spend 10 weeks building out data-related projects for their host agencies, working closely with professional mentors.
The Civic Digital Fellowship will be far from one unpaid intern fetching coffee and coding in a cubicle. We’ll have not only meaningful work but also the support, programming, education, and — dare I say it — fun that will make it a true fellowship experience. Here’s what we hope to offer:
- Each fellow will work one-on-one with a mentor. Many of the mentors we’ve lined up are Silicon Valley veterans themselves, and some were even Presidential Innovation Fellows.
- We’ll be bringing in leaders in the civic tech space as guest speakers.
- Fellows will use modern technology and data science tools to work on some of the nation’s largest datasets and most important problems.
- As budgets allow, we’re hoping to provide stipends, housing, and relocation funding.
Our roles are both technical and non-technical, and we need a good balance of the two!
Want the job? Stay in touch!
The Civic Digital Fellowship is very close to launch. Sign up for our mailing list to get notified when our application goes live this week! You can learn more about the fellowship on our website.
We at Coding it Forward are so excited to be starting something that aligns so closely with our mission of inspiring and empowering people to use their technology skills for social good. Visit our website to get involved, and follow our blog for more news and stories!
As always, feel free to reach out to me directly at neelmehta@college.harvard.edu with any questions or concerns.
