By Nancy Wang
When Megan Smith was asked to leave her comfortable life as a high-ranking executive at Google in Silicon Valley, she jumped at the opportunity.
“This is a place to do extraordinary service,” says Smith, the Chief Technology Officer of the United States, who was tapped for the position in September 2014 by President Barack Obama. “American people are very service-oriented people, including the technical Americans.”
She’s just one of many tech-savvy professionals who have transitioned from lucrative private sector jobs to work in public service in the nation’s capital, answering the Obama administration’s plea for help in fixing how the federal government interfaces with the public.
There is an increasing need for information technology development across all levels of government agencies to reduce cost and increase efficiency, Smith says, and that challenge attracts talent.
“We need to use the best American technicians and ingenuity for all the sectors of our country,” says Smith, who was an engineer and a leader in technology management and philanthropic work at Google. “We need to spend a lot less money, which is what the technology has been able to afford us to do, so the CIOs are incredibly interested in coming here.”
Mikey Dickerson, another former Google talent who is now the administrator of the recently created U.S. Digital Service, said working on government technology projects is the most important work he has ever done. Dickerson was part of a team brought in to help clean up the problems after the launch of healthcare.gov.
“I had seen first-hand how we can make a real difference when we bring the best talent to our toughest problems,” Dickerson wrote in a recent White House blog post. “Knowing what I knew, it would have been disgraceful not to try.”
Former Deputy Chief Technology Officer Nicole Wong says serving in the White House was a no-brainer for her. Wong was a highly respected information technology and law expert in the private sector and served in legal and technology executive positions at both Twitter and Google.
“Serving the president at this moment in history, a moment of growth of technology and the power of technology and also a moment of having a president who really loves science and technology and is interested in engaging in it, is an opportunity impossible to pass up,” says Wong, who recently returned to the private sector.
It’s difficult to quantify how many workers have moved from the private sector to technology jobs for the federal government because it’s not something the U.S Office of Personnel Management tracks. But anecdotal evidence suggests numbers are hearty, and growing.
One U.S. General Services Administration digital services startup, called 18F, feels a lot like a Silicon Valley office, complete with lots of whiteboards and post-its detailing future plans. It was founded in 2012 to recruit technology workers, and the buzz there is palpable.
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“When you think about the great place that needs change or when you think about healthcare.gov, which helped millions of Americans, many people want to come and be able to make the government more efficient,” says Jennifer Tress, 18F’s director of hiring operations.
Operating as part of 18F, the Presidential Innovation Fellows program selects around 30 designers, developers, entrepreneurs and executives from a pool of more than 1,000 candidates mostly from the private sector to work on high-profile federal initiatives each year.
The flexibility and freedom within the program also appeals to many people from the tech sector, often because people can decide how long they want to stay in government.
“People can come up for three months, six months or for a variety of times,” Tress says. “It’s amazing how many people can come on board for that.”
“When we are hiring folks we try to empower them as entrepreneurs-in-residence,” says Presidential Innovation Fellows director Garren Givens. “When they are working on a particular issue or problem statement they are sort of operating as co-founders.”
That also allows people to target a passion area.
One of this year’s Presidential Innovation Fellows, Rachel Gordon, is working with the VA, trying to solve important issues such as health care for veterans.
“I have benefited tremendously from being given pretty open-ended problems and try to break it down into bite sizes and trying to solve them,” Gordon says. “When I started the PIF program, I was kind of on my own, learning how to identify various pieces of puzzle and put them together in the most effective ways. Sometimes I can get people to listen just with my enthusiasm.”
Gordon, who was previously manager of mobile analytics at The New York Times, said many people who join the Fellows program end up staying in the public sector when they see the impact their work has on people’s lives.
“I was on a two-week research tour to visit the veterans that our program would affect,” Gordon says. “Now, every time I work, I see the veterans’ faces and their stories. I feel the need to help.”
While talented workers pour into the government’s digital service programs each year, many challenges still exist in connecting the corporate and federal worlds of work culture.
“I think that in Washington, in policy-making space, sometimes for good reasons, that decision-making process is not agile,” Wong says. “Sometimes the stakes are so high, the scale of the types of changes you want to make is so vast, not allowing [the process] to be at the same pace as putting out a piece of software. On the other hand, I think there are spaces where it can accelerate.”
Gordon, who has been working on multiple in-house qualitative and quantitative analysis projects for the VA, says sometimes it is challenging to introduce new ideas to a government agency.
“There are polices deeply rooted in inefficiency that have been in place for a while that we not really sure what was the reason to put it in there in the first place,” Gordon said. “People don’t feel the need to change.”
While the differences are noticeable, some people are surprised to find similarities when they actually get into the work.
“There are differences in languages and rhythm and how things get done,” explains Nuala O’Connor, president and CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology and the former chief privacy officer at the Department of Homeland Security. “I think the mindset to do meaningful work goes across the private sector and government agencies. I think, at the end of the day, people want to feel good about the work they do and feel like they contributed in a positive way to their organization — no matter what their organization is.”
Looking forward, Smith says she believes the recruitment and marketing efforts will pay off, heightening awareness for tech professionals that government service is a viable option. Wong, the former deputy chief technology officer, returned to the private sector in August 2014 but says she is hopeful that the collaboration between CIOs and the government can continue.
“Government needs to find more ways to encourage people in the tech sector because we do want to give back, but don’t have the options in how to do that,” Wong says. “And for the tech sector, they need to show up. We can’t expect any changes unless we show up. We need to be proactive. Find the things that bother us and come to help make them better.”
