New Report Explores Early Innovation Fellowship Programs and Government Employment Outcomes

A new report found that Innovation Fellowship Programs need to do more to keep graduates in government jobs, once they’ve completed their “tour of duty.”

The report from researcher Sarah Schacht used data collected while she was at the Beek Center for Social Impact + Innovation and reviewed three such programs designed to bring workers into public interest technology and innovation: Code for America (reviewed from years 2011 to 2019), Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIFs) (2012 to 2019), and Fuse Corps (2015 to 2019).

These early programs created early demand signals and pathways for technologists to work in the public sector. 

Overall, the report found that just 17 percent of fellows studied (76 of 438) continued to work in government two jobs after completing their fellowship.

The Presidential Innovation Fellows had slightly better rates (20 percent) than Fuse (17 percent) and Code for America (16 percent). PIFs also had the lowest rate of unemployment.

Code for America produced a higher rate of fellows going into the private sector while Fuse Corps had the most eventually distributed set of post-fellowship jobs. Fuse Corps also appeared to have a higher rate of government consultants who became fellows and continued consulting during and after their fellowships.

About 20 percent of fellows became vendors to the government within two years.

The research was gathered using self-reported data, LinkedIn, public resume websites, and other sources. The government does not track this data.

The report also notes a “surprising number of former fellows who simply weren’t publicly traceable online within a year after their fellowship.”

The tech programs were modeled after Teach for America and are so-called “tour of duty” programs where participants take on an assignment for a short period of time, usually a year or two.

Why Fellows Aren’t Staying

As for why fellows are not staying in government, the report proposed a few theories:

·         Marketing- Programs are marketed as “tour of duty” so participants may be using them as a career break or career pivot, rather than a long-term move.

·         Timing- Fellows who want to stay in government start their job hunt too late and are unaware that the process should begin about six to eight months before the fellowship ends.

·         Technology- Fellows may be using the program to take advantage of open-sourced code to launch their own businesses and become vendors to the federal government.

·         Super-hero mentality- Government work can be exhausting, frustrating, and emotionally draining and the search for the best and brightest is also exhausting.

The report closed by starting that more research is needed on this subject, especially as the government works to scale up its tech workforce. Evaluating the impact of fellowship programs will be important as the government moves out on a wholescale effort to onboard staff with key skills and experiences from a variety of sources, including fellowships.

It also issued recommendations including:

·         A cool-off period before fellows can become government vendors

·         Ensuring that the programs meet racial and socio-economic diversity standard

·         Better integrating training and hiring standards with the programs

“As a sector, PIT should produce training and employment programs which avoid the attrition rate of other tour of duty model programs like Teach for America,” stated the report.