For the last 10 weeks, 53 college students from across the country have been embedded in federal agencies working on data and technology projects as part of the Coding It Forward Civic Tech Fellowship program. During that time, the fellows learned a lot about how government operates—both the process and the people—and offered agencies some insight on how to attract young, skilled employees.
First, “hire more fellows—we’re surprisingly cheap,” Johncarlo Cerna, a computer science major at the University of Florida who worked with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services over the summer, said Thursday during the Civic Digital Fellowship Demo Day.
Beyond that, Cerna suggested building a stronger—and more vocal—community around civic tech.
“We all stumbled upon this program. But there are hundreds of people in college and just starting out their careers who really want to make big impacts in their careers. They want to use their skills to do good,” he said. But those people don’t always know about opportunities like Coding It Forward or technology-focused jobs available in government.
“Just having a presence. Saying, ‘Hey. We’re here, we’re doing really cool stuff and we’d like you to join us,’ that can go a long way to taking some of the really great talent and bringing it into your agency, which would be awesome,” he said.
“The other thing that really helps a lot is to be a champion for the person you want to bring on,” he added. “The hiring system can be really scary. … Opening doors and not being afraid to help them be effective. If you can empower them, then you’ll find that they’ll go a long way and you’ll find that your agency is also going to be much better in the long ..
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