The American president Joe Biden follows in the footsteps of the Kennedy-founded Peace Corps, a volunteer organization in developing countries, or the Civilian Conservation Corps wanted by Roosevelt (which had a different purpose) and creates the US Digital Corps, based on a program that will award a sort of two-year research grant for technology talents.
The initiative is intended to IT engineers and cybersecurity experts, data scientists, designers and other high-profile figures (but just out of universities) to be deployed in the various branches of the numerous federal agencies: the idea is to increase the quality of services, starting with those related to the coronavirus emergency up to those specific to each institution, and the security of the IT sphere.
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“We have great opportunities for tech talents to fill fixed-term roles in the federal administration,” he explained Nick Sinai, famous investor in the hi-tech sector and former deputy head of technology under Obama – but we had not yet concentrated on recruiting resources early in their careers: Digital Corps could change that. “These young graduates could for example end up in the ranks of DDS, the service of US digital defense, arm of the Department of Defense, del 18F, i.e. the digital services agency, or in other areas such as Presidential Innovation Fellows. Or maybe the US Digital Service, the elite agency that Obama wanted in 2014.
The new Biden’s battalion of experts it will refer to the Technology Transformation Services, in turn a branch of the powerful General Services Administration, in turn in relation to other offices such as that of budget, personnel, obviously cybersecurity, science and technology policies. Also trying to bring the concerns of some of these bodies and administrations back to the top digital security, violated too many times in recent years. Just think of the great hacker attack discovered last December, the one journalistically known as SolarWinds, the Texan company that was the main entry point of the complex espionage operation: over 250 networks involved between federal agencies and large companies.
We will start with 30 people who will be able to submit applications in the autumn, deployed starting from 2022 in 5 agencies: the aforementioned GSA, the Department for Veterans Affairs, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid and the Office for Consumer Financial Protection. Hot fronts, between health, finance and assistance to those who fought in the dozens of war scenarios of the past, even recently. Then it will go up in number. And in addition to the curriculum and studies, concrete skills will count more for enrollment. It is no coincidence that these digital recruits will be fished by different training programs, apprenticeships, bootcamps and courses reserved for non-graduates, in order to make the squad as diverse and versatile as possible. Among other things, only 3% of those who work in US federal technology fields are under 30 and women are just 26%: the idea is therefore also to rebalance these imbalances in the workforce.
“To deliver top-notch services, agencies need to have the right mix of talent as existing staff retire,” he said in a statement. Clare Martorana, federal chief information officer with a background in the world of healthcare: “Digital Corps is a forward-looking solution that will create a profound test bed for technological modernization and digital transformation across the federal government and reach the objectives of the Biden administration to advance federal IT and cybersecurity. “
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It is unclear how much members of the new Digital Corps (which has also an account Twitter official), but the point is not that: rather, the government wants to attract the best resources to itself, even if perhaps for a limited period of time. Enough not to burn them for the very rich market of private giants, always thirsty for new, brilliant minds, but enough to add a significant flagship to their path. If it is true that the White House often faces challenges lost from the start in terms of recruiting (in a way not unlike many public administrations, unable to grant salaries comparable to private ones), on the other hand many young people want to work on national problems such as climate change and IT security, rather than serving the umpteenth Facebook feature O by Google.
“The debut of the Digital Corps comes at a time when more and more tech-savvy people want to contribute to the public good,” he said Jen Pahlka, ex vice CTO federale and founder of Code for America – Many are disappointed with the opportunities offered by tech giants and want to do things like ensure people get food assistance, securing benefits for veterans or speed up refugee visas in the United States“.
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