Presidential Innovation Fellows

The Presidential Innovation Fellows program is a competitive fellowship program that pairs top innovators from the private sector, non-profits, and academia with top innovators in government to collaborate on solutions that aim to deliver significant results in six months. It was established in August 2012. The program focuses on measurable results and infuses innovation from private industry and has support from a broader community of interested citizens.^[1]

For 2012, in the first round, there were over 700 applicants for 18 fellowships.^[2] The second class included 43 fellows ^[3] from over 2000 applicants.^[4]

Background

U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park described the program: "This new initiative will bring top innovators from outside government for focused “tours of duty” with our best federal innovators on game-changing projects. Combining the know-how of citizen change agents and government change agents in small, agile teams that move at high speed, these projects aim to deliver significant results within six months."^[1]

The webpage on the program explains it this way: The Presidential Innovation Fellows program pairs top innovators from the private sector, non-profits, and academia with top innovators in government to collaborate on solutions that aim to deliver significant results in six months. Each team of innovators works together in-person in Washington, DC on focused sprints while being supported by a broader community of interested citizens throughout the country. What makes this initiative unique is its focus on unleashing the ingenuity and know-how of Americans from all sectors.^[5]

Fellows have been colloquially referred to as "PIFs". Contrasted with other similar Fellowship programs, the program has been described by former fellows as having a unique positioning; "many fellowships are all about just 'getting' the fellowship, you don't actually do anything. PIF is about DOING the fellowship, that's why everyone has to move their life around... there is no glory in being selected... the glory is in doing something... this is one thing I like about the PIF program."^[6]

Relationship to other Presidential fellowships and federal programs

White House Fellows

The Presidential Innovation Fellows program is, in many respects, highly similar to and modeled after the White House Fellows program, although fundamentally distinct and separate. Both programs are non-partisan programs. Similarities to the White House Fellowship, established several decades prior as a non-partisan program, include:

• a highly competitive application process recruiting from well-accomplished private sector talent
• goal to give the Fellows first hand, high-level experience with the workings of the federal government and to increase their sense of participation in national affairs
• an education program consisting of roundtable discussions with renowned leaders from private and public sectors
• aim to continue to work afterward as private citizens on their public agendas

The White House Fellows program is focused on preparing future leaders using special assistant roles to top-ranking government officials. In contrast, the Presidential Innovation Fellows are predominantly placed into leading highly-accelerated tactical and technical projects, with many of the projects rapidly delivering new functioning systems, processes, and software applications using principles derived from Lean Startup methodology.

Presidential Management Fellows

The PIF program is distinct and separate from the Presidential Management Fellows Program, the latter of which focuses primarily on recruiting recent graduates as citizen-scholars as a pathway to Federal employment.

HHS Innovation Fellows

The inception of the Presidential Innovation Fellows program was roughly contemporaneous with the creation of the Department of Health and Human Services HHS Innovation Fellows program, which is different in structure and focus, but also aims to bring external ideas and expertise to HHS's own innovation process.^[7]

Projects

• MyUSA / MyGov (2012, 2013)
• Open Data Initiatives (2012, 2013) : Accelerating and expanding efforts to make government information resources more publicly accessible in “computer-readable” form and spurring the use of those data by entrepreneurs as fuel for the creation of new products, services, and jobs.
• Blue Button for America and MyData Initiatives (2012, 2013) : Empowering the American people with secure access to their own personal health, energy, and education data. The Blue Button specifically refers to the movement to help Americans access their own digital health data, alongside standards and interoperability work for additional open formats, namely Blue Button+, that build upon Meaningful Use regulation-related standards for electronic health records.
• RFP-EZ and Innovative Contracting Tools (2012, 2013) : Making it easier for the government to do business with small, high-growth tech companies, and enabling the government to buy better, lower-cost tech solutions from the full range of American businesses. Following the inception of this project, bids received through the system were 30% lower on average than prior bidding systems; during the pilot period, 270 small businesses were also attracted that had previously not entered the world of federal contracting.^[8]
• The 20% Initiative (Better than Cash) (2012)
• Disaster Response & Recovery (2013) : Collaboratively building and “pre-positioning" needed tech tools ahead of future emergencies or natural disasters in order to mitigate economic damage and save lives.
• Cyber-Physical Systems (2013) : Working with government and industry to create standards for a new generation of interoperable, dynamic, and efficient “smart systems” – an “industrial Internet” – that combines distributed sensing, control, and data analytics to help grow new high-value American jobs and the economy.
• Innovation Toolkit (2013) : Developing an innovation toolkit that empowers our Federal workforce to respond to national priorities more quickly and more efficiently.
• 21st Century Financial Systems (2013) : Moving financial accounting systems of Federal agencies out of the era of unwieldy agency-specific implementations to one that favors more nimble, modular, scalable, and cost-effective approaches.
• Development Innovation Ventures (2013) : Enabling the US government to identify, test, and scale breakthrough solutions to the world’s toughest problems.
• VA Modernization Team (2013) : Helping to amplify the ways which the Department of Veterans Affairs uses technology to better serve our nation’s veterans.^[9]

Alumni

The Presidential Innovation Fellows Foundation was formally incorporated in 2014. It exists to serve as an alumni group for all former Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIF) and to serve as the fiduciary agent for nongovernmental contributions for the support of the PIF program. The purposes include: furthering the mission of the Presidential Innovation Fellows program of bringing the principles, values, and practices of the innovation economy into government in order to tackle the Nation’s biggest challenges and to achieve a profound and lasting social impact; providing a conduit for nongovernmental support of the PIF program and its mission; and serving as an alumni association for PIF fellows, providing an avenue for PIF fellows and their networks to continue contributing to solving challenges of national concern.

Some alumni of the program have gone on to other innovation roles, primarily in technology-related areas, in both the private sector as well as in public sector roles at federal, state and local levels, as well as advisory roles such as sharing scientific and technical expertise at President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) workshops.

Presidential Innovation Felllows Alumni

2012^[10]

• Phil Ashlock
• Ben Balter
• Adam Becker
• Nick Bramble
• Danny Chapman
• Kara DeFrias
• Greg Gershman
• Clay Johnson (technologist)
• Dmitry Kachaev
• Ian Kalin - Chief Data Officer of the U.S. Department of Commerce^[11]
• Raphael Majma
• Nathaniel Manning
• Marina Martin - CTO of the U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs^[12]
• Matt McCall
• Karl Mehta
• Ryan Panchadsaram - Deputy CTO of the United States
• Dr. Henry Wei
• Jed Wood

2013^[3]

• Sarah Allen (software developer)
• Rob Baker
• Tom Black
• Chris Cairns
• Dave Caraway
• Adam Dole
• John Felleman
• Derek Frempong
• Garren Givens - Program Director, Presidential Innovation Fellowship^[13]
• Greg Godbout - Executive Director and Co-Founder of 18F^[14]
• Justin Grevich
• Hillary Hartley
• Scott Hartley
• Sean Herron
• Michelle Hertzfeld
• Claire Holroyd
• Nayan Jain
• Jacqueline Kazil
• John Kemp
• Kin Lane
• Erin Maneri Akred
• Diego Mayer-Cantu
• Dain Miller
• Geoff Mulligan
• Beverly Park Woolf
• Joe Polastre
• Dr. Robert L. Read
• Sokwoo Rhee
• Adam Riggs
• Martin Ringlein
• Alison Rowland
• Mollie Ruskin
• James Sanders
• Jason Shen
• Aaron Snow
• Vidya Spandana
• Amos Stone
• John Teeter
• Matthew Theall
• Raphael Villas
• Ben Willman
• Charles Worthington
• Scott Wu

2014^[15]

• Sarah Brooks
• Rachel Harrison Gordon
• Andrea Ippolito
• Julia Kim
• Robert Sosinski
• Julia Winn
• Jeff Chen
• Christopher Daggett
• Ben Getson
• Christopher Goranson
• Tyrone Grandison
• Dan Hammer
• Maia Hansen
• Timothy Jones
• E.J. Kalafarski
• Jeff Meisel
• Susannah Raub
• Bosco So
• Alan Steremberg
• Gajen Sunthara
• Dr. Clarence Wardell III
• Ashley Jablow
• Mikel Maron
• David Naffis
• Denice Ross
• Lea Shanley
• Christopher Wong

Fellows involved in the Rescue of Healthcare.gov (2013-2014)

Following the initial round of the Presidential Innovation Fellows program, in 2013, several recent alumni of the program including Ryan Panchadsaram were called upon in an ad hoc team to assess the situation and restore the functionality of the Healthcare.gov site for health insurance enrollment, led by U.S. CTO Todd Park as well as former Google engineer and eventual Administrator of the U.S. Digital Service, Mikey Dickerson. ^[16]

Notable alumni holding government posts

• Ian Kalin - Chief Data Officer of the U.S. Department of Commerce^[17]
• Marina Martin - CTO of the U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs^[18]
• Ryan Panchadsaram - Deputy CTO of the United States

Trivia

• The eagle in the logo of the Presidential Innovation Fellows is identical to, and a zoomed-in version of, the eagle in the Seal of the President of the United States.
• Both the original and mid-2013 logos were designed by Danny Chapman, a fellow from the 1st Class.
• The 18 stars represent the inaugural class of 18 fellows.

References

External links

• Presidential Innovation Fellows website
• Presidential Innovation Fellows Team Members
• Presidential Innovation Fellows Foundation