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Evan: Rachel, just to start, we want to get into Coding it Forward's origin story. So what was the motivation behind starting Coding it Forward? And what is the mission of your organization?
Rachel: We started in 2017, actually as a group of students that were interested in using our technical skills in a mission-oriented way. And when we started looking for summer internships, we were really frustrated by the opportunities that were available to us. It seemed like all the companies that came to campus were big tech or, startups, and weren't necessarily aligned with the type of work that we wanted to be doing. And when we looked online to find some sort of government internship or internship at a nonprofit organization, the opportunities were few and far between. It was things like installing software on computers or other sorts of work, which is certainly super valuable to organizations, but it wasn't the type of work we were looking to do. So what we decided to do was kind of start a network of like-minded peers, folks that were looking to use their tech skills for social good.
We started a Facebook group and a blog where we interviewed folks like myself, like this podcast, where we were asking them about their journeys and how they got started in civic tech. And then that sort of evolved when one of our mentors, Nick Sinai, who at the time was teaching a course at the Harvard Kennedy school about using technology and government. He connected us with another individual named Jeff Meizel. At the time Jeff was a Presidential Innovation Fellow who worked at the Us Census Bureau as their Chief Marketing Officer. Jeff had been trying to recruit data science interns for a really long time and was really struggling to get folks involved at the Census Bureau. So we teamed up with Jeff. We said, “Hey, we think we know some students who would be willing to do this work and who would be super excited to intern with you for the summer. Do you have opportunities available?” And that was really the origin story of the first iteration of the Civic Digital Fellowship.
We launched a really bare-bones application in less than a month's time, received something like 200 applications, and ended up placing 14 students from 11 different universities at the census that summer. Based on the results of that summer, other agencies started to get wind of our work and they were really excited about getting involved and bringing early career talent into their agencies. And we just started growing and growing from there.
Ajay: That is really, exciting. I wanted to expand on something that you had mentioned when people like you were applying for internship opportunities a couple of summers ago, and you know, big tech and thing. They were doing all this recruiting and had all these amazing internship opportunities, but in government tech, it was just like installing software and a lot more like solving very minor problems. From our understanding of Coding it Forward, you're trying to create a pipeline of early-career civic, technologists (designers, data scientists, software engineers, and product managers) in government or government adjacent work. Can you give us a picture of what that pipeline looked like before Coding it Forward, came along?
Rachel: To be honest, there really were no opportunities and that's not me trying to be overly dramatic or say, there's no competitor to Coding it Forward but frankly, there just were very few and far between. If you were someone who wanted to find an entry-level internship in government, it was a struggle. I would say it wasn't impossible, but it was somewhat close to it. And compared to the kind of recruiting activities that were happening on campus, every other tech company coming to campus was handing out free swag and really trying to woo you to come for the summer. I would say close to none were social impact related.
Evan: Speaking of the fellowships, we know that Coding it Forward has two different fellowships, the Civic Digital Fellowship, and the newly created civic innovation core. My first question is what is the difference between these two fellowships?
Rachel: The difference between the two fellowships primarily is that the Civic Digital Fellowship is dedicated to working with federal government agencies. Whereas the Civic Innovation Corps is dedicated to working with local and state governments. Those are the primary differences at this moment because of COVID. We launched the Civic Innovation Corps during the pandemic, but our goal after we are able to return safely in person would be to actually send civic innovation core members to their host offices across the United States. So folks would actually be working, in Miami, Florida, or San Jose, California, or Austin, Texas, or wherever else we may partner with in the future. Whereas all the civic digital fellows are based in Washington DC, where a good number of federal agencies are based, and they would have more of a national experience or national overview of the civic tech ecosystem. Whereas our civic innovation core is focused on more localized and state work.
Evan: Just to confirm, the upcoming cohort will be virtual for the upcoming summer?
Rachel: Yes, that's correct. Our hope, fingers crossed, is that if things turn around by summer, we'll be able to at least invite folks out for about a week in DC to meet each other in person and have that face-to-face experience that you can't really get over zoom. But as of right now, the program is looking like it will be entirely virtual again.
Evan: Do we have any specific partners lined up for this upcoming cohort? Did we lose or gain any in terms of local and federal agencies?
Rachel: We're in the process of finalizing, but what I'm able to share with you is that for federal agencies we have a lot of folks who are returning: the Census, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, General Services Administration, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services and some others. We also have quite a few (at the local and state level) cities and states returning: the City of Boston, the City of Los Angeles, the City of San Jose, and the City of Miami. We're also looking at engaging with a few other new partners that we're not able to announce just yet, but that we're super excited about.
Ajay: Those are all really awesome partners. I was at CMS and Evan was at the IRS and I believe Chizo was at Health and Human Services. And we all just gained so much amazing experience networking opportunities and got to meet a whole wide array of wonderful people. So glad to see that the Coding it Forward family is expanding in terms of agencies and city partnerships. Moving forward from partnerships to candidates and people applying, how would you describe the ideal candidate for a Coding it Forward fellowship?
Rachel: I would say my answer is that there is no ideal candidate. I know may be frustrating to hear for folks listening, but I think as you all can attest to, there is such a diverse array of individuals that go through our program and there is not really one background we're looking for. I am excited to be able to share that we have been able to expand our eligibility criteria a little bit it. Before we only accepted applications from Us Citizens who were studying in the United States at an accredited institution. Now we are actually able to work with folks who have work authorization in the United States through a program like CBT. We are also able to accept folks from boot camp certificate programs as well. So that's something I'm really excited about in regards to expanding the diversity of applicants that are going through our program.
We're open to all majors and all years of school. You do have to be graduating in December 2021 or later for consideration. We can't accept individuals who have graduated earlier than that, because we are looking for folks to be recent graduates since the program starts in June of 2022. However, beyond that again, we are open boot camp certificate, undergraduate community college, graduate students, wherever you might be in your early career. I would really say the main factor is that we're looking for applicants who are motivated to serve. Why are you interested in public service? Do you have any kind of prior volunteer experience or interest in working with your community or perhaps the federal government? We are looking for folks who obviously have some sort of technical capacity or background. So, individuals who might be studying computer science, data, science design, but ultimately you don't have to have a particular major. We have had folks who have majored in things like music and physics and English and have all done, really incredible work for our partners. So again, might be a frustrating answer that there is no perfect or ideal attribute that we are looking for. But I also think that is something that's really special about the program is that we try not to limit who can or can't apply.
Ajay: What challenges can fellows anticipate facing while being fellows working in the federal state or local government, especially if it is their first time working in government.
Rachel: You all can probably talk to this even better than I can, but I think a few of the challenges that folks bring up time and time again. One is just the work environment is very, very different than the private sector. Folks who are in public service are wonderful individuals. Many of them have dedicated their entire careers to serving the public. But what I will say is that many agencies are lack technical knowledge. And so that can be frustrating, certainly for a student who is used to working somewhere like a big tech company or a startup where everyone around them is technical to some capacity. The government is not like that. You might have a handful of folks who are technical or understand the work you are doing, but many folks have expertise in other areas like healthcare or economics, other areas that are certainly again, very important to keep our government running, but aren't necessarily technical fields.
So I think that's something that gets lost in translation a bit with students when they first start the program, have to get a real understanding for learning how to communicate and operate in an environment that isn't just filled with other people who share the same exact knowledge that they do, but instead learning how to communicate across different subject matters and also learning from people from other subject matters. I think also the speed of the work and sometimes be frustrating for folks I won't lie. And I, I don't think this is something that isn't obvious, but the government can be bureaucratic at times. For sure it can be much slower than you want it to be for sure. And I am not trying to cover that up by any means, but what I think is really special is that, uh, folks can really make a big difference in title weeks. It's a lot of work. You have to do a lot of, uh, again, communicating, trying to liaise with a variety of individuals, but the impact that can happen is really outsized compared to other internships. So there might be some learning curves in regards to the kind of the work environment and, um, learning how to work with other folks. But I also think those skills are really transferable to any job that you'll hold for the rest of your life. Um, and their important skills to learn as a professional as well.
Ajay: Yeah, and I think a lot of those skills that I learned in coding get forward and a lot of the people that I think I got to work with and the projects that I got to work on in coding get forward versus like big tech was so much more transferable to the jobs that I have right now and the jobs that I've had over the past year. I don't think I would've, you know, been able to go down that route if it wasn't for Coding it Forward, because it did give me that opportunity to, you know, collaborate with a whole wide array of people who were not just, you know, so technical, but also just had a wide variety of diverse perspectives, backgrounds, interests and life experiences to get to where they were today.
One major aspect of the civic tech and public interest tech spaces that I personally enjoy is how important community building is, whether that is within an organization itself or between networks of people solving vastly different, yet important problems in our society. Rachel, how does Coding it Forward build community between fellows and other members of the civic tech and public interest tech communities before, during, and after the fellowship?
Rachel: This is probably one of my favorite parts of our programs is the community building before the pandemic. We were obviously able to do a lot more in person and really get involved with folks on the ground. But what we are doing right now in regard to community building is when an individual joins our cohort, they're added to our slack community and we have a wide variety of channels that slack for folks that are interested in talking about things like books and movies, or pop culture or sharing news articles or celebrating each other's accomplishments. It is a really wonderful way for us to be able to connect asynchronously and synchronously and be able to connect across state lines and across the country.
We also offer a variety of virtual programming events, which I love doing. It is really fun to see everyone's personality shine. We have also done a virtual escape room that two of our alumni designed by Maria Gargiulo and Vinesh Kannan. They have hosted it for the last few cohorts to learn about tech ethics through a virtual escape room, which is super odd and not two things I would've even thought to combine. But, I also think that's the magic of our community is that we have people who thought to do that.
We also offer some opportunities for folks to connect one on one, we use a tool on slack where folks get paired for coffee chats and really get to learn about each other in a more intimate setting. And then we also have some opportunities for folks to kind of work synchronously kind of over zoom. We are always thinking of new ways to do community building. Unfortunately, I wish we could go back to some of our old traditions. Like we used to do a 4th of July barbecue in DC, which was always super fun. And we used to be able to do a lot more in-person dinners and events of that nature, but we're doing our best. And we're always open to new ideas if folks have them as well.
I think as this podcast can attest, obviously, you all have stayed in touch. I've heard from so many folks about Hangouts that they've been able to do safely in person or continuous zoom nights together. A lot of amazing relationships have been built throughout this program and the community does not go away. It really stays with you for as long as you want to engage in it.
I heard from two different people a few days ago that they both got jobs because I posted them in our alumni community. And that happens pretty much every week, if not every other week where someone says, “Hey, Coding it Forward, connected me at this individual. And I got a job or I made a new friend, or I met my roommate through you.” It is really amazing to see that even though we can't be in person together right now that these bonds are still forming. I think that's because folks who are really passionate about public interest technology really want to engage with our community.
Evan: Here is a scenario for you, Rachel. Let’s say I am a college student who has received multiple tech internship offers for the summer at a FAANG company, a bank, a consulting firm, and a Coding It Forward internship. What is your pitch to me for choosing the CIF internship over the other prospective offers?
Rachel: I think for me, it is really the impact that you can make as part of one of our programs. We will never put you on a project that something like, “Hey, fix this button or this interface,” or “make this thing work 1% faster for us.” It is not about making money or driving clicks. It is really about making government work better for the people that it serves. And I think our fellows have been able to have an outside impact on the agencies and host offices that they have worked with for this past summer. Two of our fellows in the city of Los Angeles worked on the second ever equity analysis of the city of Los Angeles's procurement. And what essentially that means is the city contracts with different companies. And they were figuring out whether or not the city worked with small businesses, diverse business owners, et cetera so that the procurement opportunities were reflective of the city's population.
And that was the first analysis to happen in two decades, which is really important work. But unfortunately, the city didn't have the budget to do it before our fellows came on board. We've also had folks who have worked on things like machine learning algorithms. For example, Christian Moscardi, who actually now works full-time at the Us Census Bureau when he was a fellow, was working on something called the Commodity Flow Survey, which is a really important economic and business survey to essentially understand the flow of goods and services in the United States. And as a business, when you fill out this survey, you must indicate what is called your NAS code, determining what industry you're in. And this is important survey information, but unfortunately, not many businesses know theirs and it is actually somewhat difficult to kind of figure it out for folks.
So Christian was able to use the information that was in the rest of their survey to help accurately predict what a business or organization makes code would be. And it turns out that his work saves the Census Bureau that summer something like 2 million in taxpayer funds and several months of work that would've had to be done by hand by individuals. It freed up folks to be able to focus on other work, not to say that this wasn't important, but it was something that could have been easily automated, which is what Christian did. It's actually expanded into other use cases at the Bureau and some other agencies as well. I think what's really fantastic and amazing about a program like this is the impact that you can have. I hear from our fellows time and time again, that, “wow, I can't believe I accomplish this in 10 weeks” and “wow, I can't believe I'm serving thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of people with the work that I'm doing,” but that's the reality of working in government. You have an impact with every action that you take, whereas working in the private sector, I know tons of our alumni who have done that, but the impact is a little bit different. It is about driving revenue or driving customers, which is equally important to those businesses. But I think if you are really looking to do something for the public, then this fellowship is an awesome opportunity for you.
Evan: So, after the fellowship, what do alumni end up doing? Other than starting civic tech podcasts, haha.
Rachel: Lots of things is my answer. We break it down into four key categories. The first is government. We have actually had several individuals have, who have stayed with their agencies or who have started work at a different agency. We also have a ton of alumni who work in what we broadly define as social impact, which could mean something like a public benefit corporation, a nonprofit, an academic think tank, a policy think tank, anything really in that field of work, uh, or line of work is something we categorize as social impact. We also have quite a few alumni who will go into graduate school right after the program. He is the fellowship as an opportunity between their undergraduate and graduate careers to do something impactful. And then we also have quite a few folks who do go into the private sector with the intention of coming back into public service later in their careers.
What I will say is, unfortunately, the reality of the current public interest landscape is that there are very few early career opportunities still. And that is something our team is actively trying to fix every day. But I also understand that many of our alumni have the seed of public interest planted when they go into a program like Coding it Forward and then that blossoms over their career. So, I've heard from many folks who spent two or three years going into the private sector and then said, “Hey, Rachel, I found this really great kind of midcareer engineering opportunity or manager role or something else in the public sector that they're then qualified for after having several years of experience.” So, it's really fantastic for me to be able to see after just a few years, we've only been in existence for about five years.
Most of our alumni are trending towards public interest careers. There has definitely been a renewed interest or new interest in early career technologists. When we first started this work almost no one was talking about how to expand pipelines or talent opportunity use for early-career technologists. And now there are lots of different fellowships, apprenticeships, and other opportunities that have been popping up in this ecosystem. For instance, I think about organizations like skylight and nav, both of which offer apprenticeship opportunities, which some of our fellows have gone on to do. I think about US Digital Corps, which was inspired by Coding it Forward and was actually modeled after our programs and is now a nationwide two-year fellowship that the administration recently launched. I think about all the other kinds of opportunities that have come up one by one. For example, organizations like Column and organizations that are focused on doing this public interest tech work have really started to spring up in the last few years. I think the movement towards building a more equitable society when it comes to technology has really caught on and I'm excited to see where that goes.
Unfortunately, right now the opportunities are still slim, but I have hope, and I know there are a lot of determined folks who are working to bring more and more early-career technologists into this space.
Evan: So Rachel, we've talked about the origins of Coding it Forward. We've talked about what you all are currently doing. We have talked about even those amazing organizations that have inspired or are sprung up because of coding forward, but we want to know what do you see in the future for Coding it Forward?
Rachel: I think in the future, we would love to create opportunities for any early-career technologist that is interested in doing work in the public interest. And what I mean by that is right now, we have to reject applicants because we, unfortunately, don't have enough positions available. And it is still really hard to find a role in the public interest technology space if you're an early career technologist. So right now, we're focused on expanding our programs as much as we possibly can so that we can accommodate more and more participants each and every year. And we are also looking to build new programs.
I'm excited to share very soon, we will be officially announcing a broadband and digital equity-focused fellowship program. And we are also looking to expand into longer-term fellowships for recent graduates and folks looking for full-time employment. We have a lot of exciting ideas for 2022, and we are really looking forward to being able to build more opportunities and pathways.
Ajay: All right. Rachel, last question, tying all of this together. What does thinking civic as a concept mean to you?
Rachel: For me thinking civic means thinking about your community; the civic sphere that upholds you: individuals like your neighbors and individuals that make your life possible from thinking about your garbage men and thinking about your electric workers and any sort of other individuals who make your day to day life easier. How can you help contribute to the society that they uphold? How can you be a better neighbor, a better community member, and help these individuals access the everyday needs that they require to be human? Thinking civic to me is probably a local answer when I say that out loud. Really thinking about what you can do to be a better citizen and community member in your day-to-day life, not just thinking in the broader term, but also those micro-actions and those micro details that happen all around us every single day that are upheld by our society.
Ajay: Well, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast for Rachel though. It was an excellent answer about how you think civic. And this is honestly just a great episode for Chizo, Evan, and me because we all met doing Coding it Forward. And now as we start our second season of think civic, we are coming back full circle and interviewing you about Coding it Forward. It was just truly an awesome experience. So, thank you again.
Rachel: Thanks so much for having me and it truly delights me that you all are doing this podcast and that you all met through Coding it Forward. And I cannot wait to listen to the rest of season two.
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