Bring in the Nerds

There was a great piece in the Washington Post last week from Dave Steer, the Advocacy Director at the Mozilla Foundation, and Jenny Toomey, the Director of Internet Rights at the Ford Foundation that I wanted to highlight.   Mozilla and Ford have just launched their Open Web Fellows program, which is bringing technology talent into civil society organizations.  As they describe it

Unless we address the tech talent crisis, our ability to craft effective public policy will be at risk. As one member of Congress said during the Stop Online Piracy Act debate in 2011, it’s time to “bring in the nerds” who can explain the potential risks of ill-informed Internet policies.

I couldn't agree more.  While the current slate of tech-to-gov initiatives at the US Digital Service, 18F and Code for America are doing really important work to help government build better service delivery platforms and smarter tech infrastructure, technological expertise should be extended to help inform policymaking.  The Open Web Fellows program-- like Tech Congress-- will do just that, and take technologists and place them in policymaking roles at places like the New America Foundation, Public Knowledge and elsewhere.  

The first cohort of fellows started this month.  It's an exciting development for the technology-policy pipeline.  

On Tech Congress, from Rep. Polis

Rep. Polis, who founded several startups before his time on Capitol Hill, is (quite appropriately) one of the key leaders in Congress on technology policy.   These are his thoughts on Tech Congress and building the tech-talent pipeline into government. 

“Attracting more tech talent to public service should be a priority for all Congressional offices and government agencies. Professionals with a background in engineering and technology bring a unique perspective and approach to problem solving that is key to addressing the dynamic challenges facing policymakers today. As technology becomes intertwined with all areas of everyday life, it’s crucial that the people in charge of creating the rules to govern these evolving areas understand how they work.”

Shuttleworth Funded

Our first grant seems like an appropriate time for a first blog post.  We are officially funded!  Thanks to the Shuttleworth Foundation, and a flash grant from Seamus Kraft of the Open Gov Foundation, we have our first bit of money through the door.  Seamus has been doing really great work at OpenGov like hosting a series of Hackathons for Congress (Hack4Congress) and developing open source tools like the Madison Project to allow elected officials to more effectively engage with constituents.  

The flash grant is a pretty cool concept.  It allows Shuttleworth fellows like Seamus to nominate someone for an essentially no-strings-attached grant of $5,000 to concentrate on an idea that they might not otherwise have the resources to work on.  The only requirements:  to be transparent about how you use the money, and put their logo on your website for six months. 

Requirement number one, check. 

Requirement number two, here we go. 

Aside from taking a brief break in February, I've been more or less bootstrapping Tech Congress since January.  Thus far, I've spent about $12,000 building the organization-- mostly for living and office expenses, but also on a couple cross-country flights for meetings and events with stakeholders.  I estimate the Shuttleworth Foundation dollars will afford me about another seven weeks of expenses in San Francisco (this place is pricey!).  This includes costs like rent, a trip to Washington DC at the end of June for meetings, a trip to Phoenix, AZ in July for Netroots Nation and incidentals like PB&J sandwiches, my Squarespace site and Freshbooks accounting software.  It's enough to keep my head above water while I pursue other funding.  

I'll update the post as necessary to let you know specifically how I spend the grant dollars.  In the interim, big thanks to Seamus and the Shuttleworth Foundation, who are helping me keep working on building a bridge between the technology community and Congress by getting Tech Congress off the ground.