“Professionalizing & Enriching the Congressional Internship and Fellowship Experience”
April 29, 2021
Travis Moore
Founder and Executive Director of TechCongress, Co-Founder of #CongressToo and the Congressional Staff Alumni Council.
Chairman Kilmer, Vice Chairman Timmons, and esteemed members of the committee: Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today.
I am the Founder and Executive Director of TechCongress, a startup nonprofit dedicated to building 21st century government with technology talent. We place computer scientists, engineers, and other technologists as tech policy advisors to members of Congress through our Congressional Innovation Fellowships.
Technology is reshaping society— and Congress and its work— in fundamental ways and with increasing speed. But Congress is still largely a 19th century institution. While technology has transformed the country and the economy, the way Congress addresses problem solving, and recruits and retains talent, has largely not changed.
As is frequently cited in Washington, personnel is policy. Yet many of the brightest and most creative problem solvers in this country— with the lived and relevant experience necessary to tackle the huge challenges we face— simply can’t make it through the front door.
Congress needs new, creative approaches to sourcing expertise and solving problems. Fellowships can be a core part of that solution.
I founded TechCongress because I needed it when I was a staffer. In 2013, the House was voting on the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act. This was a tough vote for my then-boss, Rep. Henry Waxman.
To make an informed vote recommendation, I was trying to understand a few complicated technical concepts— what is Personally Identifiable Information? And what did it mean for DHS or the private sector to anonymize data?
I’m sure all of you and your staffs have been in that exact situation— you have a tough vote in front of you, and you’re trying to understand a complicated concept so you can make the best decision.
I searched for staff within Congress that could help me work through my questions. But I found there weren’t staff on Capitol Hill with the necessary tech expertise to help me. As a result, I went outside the building, to a tech company lobbyist, for advice.
In the words of venture capitalist Marc Andreesen, software has eaten the world. As a consequence, every issue before Congress is a tech issue, yet, at my best estimate, out of the nearly 3,500 legislative staff in Congress, there are fewer than twenty with backgrounds and training in technology.
Why aren’t there staff with tech backgrounds working in Congress? It’s not for lack of supply. We had 865 technologists apply to our programs over the last year, some of whom were willing to take six-figure pay cuts to work in Congress. Importantly, those candidates also come from communities vastly underrepresented in Congress— including underrepresented people of color, women, and veterans.
The core staffing challenge for Capitol Hill is that the pipelines that feed staffing roles have remained exceedingly narrow, and not evolved to meet the needs of the institution and the country. If you're a technologist that wants to serve your country in Congress, there’s no clear entryway for you.
I got my first internship with Rep. Waxman in 2004 because my dad, who had worked in the Senate, opened my first door. Many others make it into the Hill because they worked on or volunteered on campaign staffs.
These are the predominant pipelines to jobs in Congress. And these pipelines privilege a very narrow set of people at the exclusion of huge swaths of talent— including many technologists— that don’t have the connections to make it in the door or the resources to survive that first unpaid internship or $28,000 annual salary.
Our other witnesses today have developed important solutions for the earlier career stages of the pipeline of talent to Congress. But we also need methods for experts with professional experience and specific, relevant skill sets to come to Congress laterally.
Fellowships can help solve that problem.
And here’s the good news: our fellowships are making progress and piloting creative solutions and building tech capacity in Congress, while supporting the incredibly hard working and under-resourced staff on Capitol Hill.
First, Congress is hiring technical staff, including a number of our alumni. We are proud to see this incremental progress, and we need much more.
Second, Congress is creating tech talent pipelines for itself. Sens. Cotton and Shaheen authored the Technology and National Security Fellowship in the 2020 Defense Authorization bill. This fellowship is a joint program between the Department of Defense and Congress, modeled on TechCongress, and its first full cohort of recent STEM grads will arrive on Capitol Hill this fall.
Third, we had a team of fellows that were able to pilot the bipartisan proposal from Leader Hoyer and Leader McCarthy for a Congressional Digital Service with this very Committee. We are so grateful for your hosting of our team. We are proud of their contributions to address some of the digital capacity gaps in Congress that were made urgent because of COVID-19.
Fourth, fellowships are building bipartisan working relationships. We’ve had great ideological diversity in our program, and fellows— because of their shared experience and training at the beginning of our programs— end up being frequent collaborators in an institution where bipartisan relationships are increasingly on the wane.
But we can do more. I’d like to highlight a few recommendations for how Congress can better invest in and support fellowship programs.
First: Congress should expand the two fellowship programs it already funds and operates: the Technology and National Security Fellowship and the Wounded Warrior Fellowship Program. Because so many veterans have significant technical expertise from their time in military service, expanding these programs would have the dual benefit of meeting the need for both national security and technical talent. In Fiscal Year 2019, 57% of discretionary spending went to the Department of Defense or the Veterans Affairs budget, yet according to a 2019 study from HillVets, only 1.6% of the workforce of Congress has served in the military. I’m proud that nearly a quarter of our fellows to date are veterans, and we need more representation from the veterans community on Capitol Hill. In addition, Congress should encourage domestic authorizing committees, including Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means, Homeland Security, Financial Services, and Veterans Affairs, to follow the lead of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees and create parallel fellowship program pipelines for STEM grads to enter those relevant agencies and Congress.
Second: Congress can improve how it supports fellows and fellowships, thereby helping mid-career individuals with lived and relevant experience find permanent work in Congress. Congress can help by:
Creating a fellows and detailees registration system with the House Clerk or Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) that is regularly updated and publicly available, which would include sponsoring offices and fellows and detailees’ areas of expertise so that Congressional staff can better identify expertise within Congress. It should identify all Congressional fellows that are paid for by outside sources, whether by the government or the private sector. It should include the original source of those funds and any pass-through entities, the funding amount, and where the fellow is placed.
Creating an annual mandatory registration system for all fellowship sponsors and programs with the House Clerk or CAO. The Clerk or CAO should then develop a publicly available memo with general information about Congressional fellowships and points of contact for fellowship programs. Right now, aside from an infrequently updated memo from the Congressional Research Service, there is no comprehensive list of Congressional fellowship programs, and there is no publicly available list.
Applying post-employment Ethics rules that apply to Congressional staff to Congressional fellows as well, including prohibiting fellows from lobbying the office in which they served for one year after the end of the fellowship.
Encouraging the Ethics Committee to designate a staffer as the point of contact for fellowship-related questions and making that staffer available to answer questions from fellowship program staff, and posting that individuals’ contact information on its website. Currently, Ethics Committee staff are frequently unwilling to talk to or field questions from fellowship programs directly.
Establishing programs to better support fellows and fellowship programs including the following:
Encouraging the Congressional Research Service to develop a standardized set of trainings on Congressional procedure and key legislative skills targeted to incoming fellows. These trainings should be posted online and also made available to the public so that citizens can gain a better understanding of the inner workings of Congress.
Creating a fellowship speaker and networking series, modeled on the Congressional Summer Intern Lecture Series or in partnership with said series, to allow for greater professional development for fellows and connection between fellowship programs.
Developing a module in the newly-created Staff Academy for Congressional staff to assist them in interviewing, training, and onboarding fellows. This module could include sample interview questions and FAQs about working with fellows. Fellows may need to be managed differently than staff that began their career in Congress, and fellows frequently have deep expertise in a particular area and could be utilized as a shared resource across Capitol Hill.
Ensuring Staff Academy courses are made available to interns, fellows, and detailees.
Working with the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to create a pipeline of detailees from termed positions in the Executive Branch who are reaching the end of their term. Congress and OPM should also clarify that a detail to the Legislative Branch would pause the timer on an Executive Branch employee’s term while they serve in Congress, incentivizing the employees to pursue details and incentivizing the agency to allow them.
Allowing personal offices and committees to sponsor security clearances for fellows. If this would not be appropriate for some kinds of sponsoring organizations, Congress should establish appropriate criteria for fellowship programs or other sponsoring organizations to carry clearances.
Working with OPM to create a well-lit path for fellowship programs and Congressional fellows to enter into other pipelines for federal service. For example, Congress should consider giving a Legislative Branch fellow expedited consideration as a Presidential Management Fellow (PMF) or Presidential Innovation Fellow (PIF) contingent on a substantive and detailed reference from the Chief of Staff of a personal office or Staff Director of a Committee or Subcommittee.
Establishing, with OPM, an open-house and digital portal for incoming Presidential Management Fellows to learn about opportunities to serve with Committees in Congress. Although PMFs are eligible to serve with Congressional Committees, the process is opaque and few are aware they are eligible for a rotation in Congress.
Encourage Legislative Branch support agencies— including the Clerk, CAO, Parliamentarian, and Legislative Counsel’s Office— to engage with fellows generally, such as quarterly open houses or focused training sessions on topics relevant to similarly focused fellowship programs.
Clarifying Ethics rules to ensure offices are able to lend resources necessary for interns, fellows, and detailees to carry out their duties— including in a virtual environment or during telework— which include a desk, stationary, badge, laptop, phone or other necessary items.
Developing a talent pipeline to recruit data scientists to work in Congress in order to collect and analyze statistics on the diversity of Congressional interns and fellows.
Funding internship and fellowship programs for technical staff, including data scientists, developers, and user experience designers (UX/UI), to serve with institutional offices, like the Clerk, CAO, Office of Diversity and Inclusion, and Ombuds.
Initiating a study of existing Congressional staff to map the current pipelines for jobs in Congress. The study should ask respondents to identify the first role they had in Congress (i.e. Intern, Staff Assistant, Legislative Correspondent, etc.), how they discovered said role, their corresponding salary or stipend, and if they experienced any financial hardship during their early years of their careers in Congress.
Investing in licenses and making available to member offices and committees recruiting tools, like the platform Handshake, to reach early-career candidates from Historically Black Colleges or Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic Serving Institutes (HSIs), Tribal Colleges or Universities, Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), community colleges, and rural schools.
Prohibiting or strongly discouraging offices from posting anonymous job announcements—postings which fail to identify the member or committee who is hiring for said role. This practice is by definition exclusionary and badly out of sync with hiring best practices. Anonymous job postings make it nearly impossible for anyone without a pre-existing network in Congress to identify roles that might be a good fit for their skills and abilities.
Investing in licenses for Human Resources tools, which include features to anonymize candidate review, a common best practice for inclusive hiring, and making said tools available to member offices and committees in order to streamline staff and intern hiring.
Investing in technology tools that can improve the language of job postings to be more inclusive, like Textio, so that Congress can attract a more diverse range of applicants for internships and staffing roles, consistent with modern hiring best practices.
Creating a centralized job board for all member offices, committees, and legislative support offices post open applications. This job board should be open and machine readable and with an Application Programming Interface (API).
Utilizing comprehensive diversity, equity, and inclusion resources, like the playbook from Project Include, when reviewing Congressional staff and intern hiring and retention practices.
Finally, I would like to conclude by saying that the COVID-19 pandemic has raised considerable challenges to the nation, but has not diminished the desire of technology professionals to serve their country. From our view, COVID has in fact increased interest in working in Congress. People do this work because they want to make a difference, and the pandemic has been an awakening for a massive number of individuals that want to devote their careers to serving the public. Because ultimately, our greatest resource as a country is our people.
Thank you again for having me, and for all the hard work of the committee to date. I look forward to questions.
Travis Moore is the Founder and Executive Director of TechCongress, which places computer scientists, engineers, and other technologists to serve with Members of Congress on tech policy matters through its Congressional Innovation Fellowships. Travis worked on Capitol Hill for six years and was the Legislative Director for Rep. Henry A. Waxman. Travis is the Co-Founder of the Congressional Staff Alumni Council and #CongressToo, a group of 1,500 former Congressional staffers that brought the #MeToo movement to Capitol Hill and spearheaded a reform overhaul signed into law in late 2018.