White House Looking for Coding Innovators

From the White House Blog:

Throw Your Hat in the Ring for Round 2 of the Presidential Innovation Fellows Program

Todd Park and Steven VanRoekel,  February 05, 2013   09:00 AM EST

We are happy to announce that applications are now being accepted for Round 2 of the Presidential Innovation Fellows program!  You can apply here.

Launched last year, the Presidential Innovation Fellows program recruits top innovators and entrepreneurs from the private sector for 6-12 month “tours of duty” in government to help develop innovative solutions in areas of national significance. Our 18 inaugural Fellows arrived last August, teamed up with top government innovators, and have been doing extraordinary work on five projects:

• Open Data Initiatives have unleashed data from the vaults of the government as fuel for entrepreneurs and innovators to create new apps, products, and services that benefit the American people in myriad ways and contribute to job growth.
• RFP-EZ has created a new online marketplace and built tools that make it easier for innovative small tech businesses to bid on government contracts, while also making it easier for government contracting officers to identify the bids that offer the best value for taxpayers.
• Blue Button for America has moved personal health records ahead significantly by giving millions of veterans and other Americans massively improved, secure access to their own health information. 
• Better Than Cash is working with an array of foreign and non-governmental partners to transition “the last mile” of international development assistance payments from cash to electronic mobile money, resulting in increased funding transparency and more impact for American taxpayer dollars.
• MyUSA (formerly MyGov) has reimagined how citizens can interact with government, developing a prototype of an online system that allows people to more easily find and access the information and services that are right for them from across government.   

Throughout the Federal Government, in every agency where Fellows have been working, we’ve been thrilled to see the exciting advances they’ve been achieving in concert with their government teammates. So we are excited to announce that the program is extending and expanding—and that we are ready to welcome applications for our next round of Presidential Innovation Fellows. 

In addition to seeking applicants to work on the next phases of the Open Data Initiatives, MyData Initiatives (including Blue Button for America), RFP-EZ, and MyUSA projects, we are also inviting applications from those who would like to help launch the following new projects:

• Disaster Response and Recovery will collaboratively build and “pre-position” critical tech tools ahead of future emergencies or natural disasters in order to mitigate economic damage and save lives.
• Cyber-Physical Systems will work with government and industry to create standards for a new generation of inter operable, dynamic, and efficient “smart systems”—an “industrial Internet”—that combines distributed sensing, control, and data analytics to help grow the economy and new high-value American jobs.
• 21^st Century Financial Systems will work to move the financial accounting systems of Federal agencies out of the era of large-scale, agency-specific implementations to one that favors more nimble, modular, scalable, and cost-effective approaches.
• Innovation Toolkit will develop a suite of tools that empowers our Federal workforce to respond to national priorities more quickly and more efficiently.
• Development Innovation Ventures will help enable the US government to identify, test, and scale breakthrough solutions to the world’s toughest problems.

We are looking for incredibly talented, entrepreneurial people from a diverse array of backgrounds and with a wide range of experiences. Many of the Fellowship roles require coding and other tech skills, but not all do. We are also looking for gifted and accomplished change agents with skills in user experience design, product management, project management, business development, operations reengineering, and more.  In a nutshell, we are looking for people who can help make big things happen rapidly to advance the public good.        

So please throw your hat in the ring and apply to be a Round 2 Presidential Innovation Fellow! This is an opportunity to take a journey that will allow you to make an impact on a massive scale. The first step is to apply here.

To learn more about the Presidential Innovation Fellows program and apply to be a Fellow, please visit: WhiteHouse.gov/InnovationFellows

Todd Park is the US Chief Technology Officer and Steven VanRoekel is the US Chief Information Officer.