Breaking into civic tech
Last updated: April 22, 2024
When I first learned about civic tech* back in 2017, it was an entirely different field. Few resources existed for those hoping to learn more and/or break in. Today, things have improved greatly, though gaps still remain. I’m deeply grateful to the many accomplished and very busy people who took time out of their days to get coffee or chat when I was still a college student, in the early days of Coding it Forward, and I hope that this page can help others who similarly find themselves curious about civic tech.
Any opinions or recommendations on this page are my personal views alone. Please do reach out if you have questions or suggestions.
General tips
Build your own mental model of the civic tech ecosystem, and stay up to date. For me, in the pre-Elon days, Twitter was an invaluable resource to see who was working with who, who was hiring, and what people were talking about. I’ve since migrated my Twitter activity to Threads, but if you are still active there, check out this list of suggested accounts to follow. Lurking and/or using a burner account is just as valid—no posting necessary. Subscribing to and skimming newsletters from public interest tech organizations (see below) is another great way to track developments passively.
Find your people. Civic tech, by definition, is not a competitive field. To a person, everyone I’ve met has been warm and welcoming and happy to talk to gov-curious people about their experiences, so don’t be afraid to send that cold email or LinkedIn message. As the field grows and even sub-specializes, being in a few Slack groups or the like will increase your chances of hearing about a dream job opportunity. In this vein, a group of similarly-motivated peers is often more fruitful than a singular high-level mentor.
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Books
The number of civic tech books has grown significantly, and the following give a good overview of civic tech history, key moments, and potential paths forward — from a who’s who of civic tech leaders.
Power to the Public: The Promise of Public Interest Technology by Hana Schank and Tara Dawson McGuinness
A Civic Technologist’s Practice Guide by Cyd Harrell
We the Possibility: Harnessing Public Entrepreneurship to Solve Our Most Urgent Problems by Mitchell Weiss
Hack Your Bureaucracy: Get Things Done No Matter Your Role On Any Team by Marina Nitze and Nick Sinai
Administrative Burden: Policymaking by Other Means by Pamela Herd and Don Moynihan
Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better by Jennifer Pahlka
Organizations
In semi-order of career level:
Many colleges and universities now have student organizations focused on civic and public interest tech (“social impact” is another common term)
The Paragon Policy Fellowship is a cross-campus, student-led introduction to science and tech policy.
New America’s Public Interest Technology University Network includes dozens of schools across the country and continues to grow.
Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy organizes the Siegel Public Interest Technology Summer Fellowship.
The Consortium of Cybersecurity Clinics offers valuable hands-on opportunities for cyber students to defend local organizations.
CyberCorps Scholarship for Service is a great scholarship opportunity for cybersecurity students interested in public service jobs.
Coding it Forward offers wonderful internship opportunities (I’m biased) as well as curates a kick-ass biweekly jobs newsletter.
U.S. Digital Corps places recent graduates in five tech fields in two-year, full-time, paid fellowships across the federal government.
U.S. Digital Response organizes volunteers to assist governments in delivering critical services to the public.
TechCongress places technologists in policy advisor roles in the United States Congress, and sends out a great jobs roundup.
Code for America leads important programs improving the criminal legal system, social safety net, and tax system, and also hosts the civic tech conference — Code for America Summit.
Federation of American Scientists is a nonprofit think tank that runs the Day One Project, facilitating “policy entrepreneurship” and recruiting scientists and technologists to stints in government service.
Aspen Tech Policy Hub is an incubator that trains technologists on the intricacies of the policy process.
Fast Forward incubates tech nonprofits and has a great newsletter with job opportunities and resources in the space.
Tekalo is a newer initiative that matches tech talent with impact-driven organizations.
18F and the Presidential Innovation Fellows are two programs within the auspices of the Technology Transformation Services at the General Services Administration, which is also home to the hugely important Technology Modernization Fund.
Lab at OPM uses and advises other government agencies on human-centered design practices.
House Digital Service is an office within the House of Representatives focused on improving congressional processes through technology.
U.S. Digital Service is a tech office within the White House that hires technologists for term-limited stints in government.
Office of Science and Technology Policy is a policy office within the White House.
Tech Talent Project helps bridge the gap between technologists interested in public service and government agencies hoping to hire them.
Some federal agencies have matured to the point where they have robust technology teams, including:
VA Office of the Chief Technology Officer
State Department Center for Analytics
CISA, which has a unique hiring authority called the Cyber Talent Management System that can offer higher pay than traditional government tech jobs.
Census has an emerging technologies group called xD that runs a fellowship program.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the CIO, which includes a leading-edge customer experience team.
While a majority of my work—and thus, knowledge—has been primarily at the federal level, there is an increasing number of state and local digital service organizations, as well as civic tech companies that work closely with government.
Boston Department of Innovation and Technology and Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics
Philadelphia Digital Services Team
Nava, Ad Hoc, Skylight, and the rest of the Digital Services Coalition
University centers are also a vibrant place…
Georgetown’s Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation facilitates the Digital Service Network, which has a great newsletter.
Georgetown Law’s Judicial Innovation Fellowship also sends a great newsletter with news and jobs in justice tech.
Slack groups & job boards
Technologists for the Public Good is a (free) membership-based organization for civic technologists, by civic technologists.
Rebecca Heywood curates a #PublicSectorJobBoard each week on LinkedIn.
Bill Hunt’s “Cool Govtech Jobs” board.
Tech to Gov is a joint initiative that has hosted a series of job fairs and recruitment events in response initially to tech industry layoffs.
USofTech is a collective of many civic tech organizations dedicated to bringing diverse technologists into public service.
Tech Jobs for Good is another valuable job board.
Civic Tech Field Guide is a comprehensive guide to public interest technology organizations and opportunities worldwide.
USAJOBS does have a tech portal, but it can be hard to find the signal in the noise here and make sense of many of the job titles/descriptions.
Other resources
If you plan to apply to a federal job, you may hear people talk about “federal resumes.” They are not required, but they may increase your chances of selection for many jobs. Here is a good guide to federal resumes. USDS pioneered a new program called SMEQA that leverages subject matter experts to review applications instead of relying on HR specialists, which decreases the importance of a federal resume, but hiring actions using SMEQA are still much more the exception than the rule. More recently, shared certificates and pooled hiring actions are bringing a more “common app” approach to hiring where you can apply once and be considered for multiple openings across all federal agencies.
Once you’ve accepted an offer, Aspen’s "Skills Wiki for New Government Tech Employees” is a great starting point.
With this page, I’ve tried to build on similar guides published by colleagues of mine, including:
Emily Fong: “Entering Civic Tech: A Student’s Guide” (2018). Link
Will Slack: “Comparing USDS, 18F, and PIF” (2021). Link
Erie Meyer: “So you want to serve your country: A (biased) guide to tech jobs in federal government” (2020). Link
Elizabeth Goodman: “How to work for better government…without working for the government” (2020). Link
I love Brian Whittaker’s project, Humans of Public Service. I firmly believe that humanizing the work of government and showcasing wonderful public servants is a key step in building trust and recruiting diverse talent. Two other organizations that have been inspiring to follow are Upsolve and Propel.
The Biden-Harris administration’s focus on “customer experience” (CX) and life experiences has been a refreshing, positive vision for what technology can enable in government—from the perspective of everyday Americans. You can read the president’s executive order on CX and dive into the current work happening across government. In October 2023, President Biden signed an executive order on artificial intelligence that included a lot of great policy changes as well as a call to action through a National AI Talent Surge.
For Harvard students
Your mileage may vary (and things may change) but these were helpful resources and opportunities when I was first exploring civic tech as a student. Even if you’re not a Harvard student, maybe your school has similar centers and resources. Worth exploring!
Institute of Politics grants and funding
Cheng Fellowship (Social Innovation Accelerator)
*A note about vocabulary — by force of habit, I tend to use “civic tech” and “public interest tech” interchangeably, but others have written more about the subtle yet key differences between the terms.