18F/18f.gsa.gov

---
title: "President Obama makes innovation fellowship program permanent"
date: 2015-08-18
layout: post
authors:
- deniseroth
- garren
- andre

tags:
- presidential innovation fellows
- digital services movement

excerpt: "We’re
immensely happy to hear that the president has issued an executive order
ensuring the Presidential Innovation Fellows program has a permanent place in our government."
description: "We’re
immensely happy to hear that the president has issued an executive order
ensuring the Presidential Innovation Fellows program has a permanent place in our government."
image: /assets/blog/pif/pif-group.jpg
---

We’re immensely happy to hear that the president has issued an executive order
ensuring the Presidential Innovation Fellows program has a permanent place in our government. The program began in 2012 as a pilot, and 18F was later founded by several former Presidential Innovation Fellows.
See the [General Service Administration's blog post about the announcement](http://gsablogs.gsa.gov/gsablog/2015/08/17/creating-a-culture-of-lasting-innovation-continuous-improvement/) below for more information.

>
*By Denise Turner Roth, GSA Administrator and Garren Givens, Program
Director, Presidential Innovation Fellows*
>
Today, President Obama [announced an executive
order](https://medium.com/@WhiteHouse/meet-the-presidential-innovation-fellows-194dec20442b)
that formally establishes the Presidential Innovation Fellows program,
and houses it within the walls of U.S. General Services Administration
(GSA). The program is made up of a diverse group of proven innovators
from around the country who serve as partners to policy and domain
experts already working within government.
>
While the program provides a unique experience for the men and women
selected, the primary objective is to create a more responsive
government; one that continually leverages the best principles and
practices to deliver better, more effective government programs and
policies. In technology, we refer to this as “continuous improvement” —
the virtuous process of designing, developing, and iterating based on
end-users, not government stakeholders.
>
In just a few short years, fellows and their federal partners have made
large gains on a number of complex challenges that impact millions of
Americans. They’ve done so by starting small, and iterating early and
often. In addition, fellows have relied on “validated learning” to drive
decisions about where to deploy resources, like time, effort, and
taxpayer money.
## Best Practices from the Private Sector
>
Among the best examples of the work coming out of the program are the
pilot and subsequent platforms the Fellows launched to improvement
procurement. Beginning in 2012, the first team of fellows launched a
pilot focused on making it easier for private sector to learn about and
compete for government contracts.
>
Critical feedback from this pilot showed that greater transparency led
to more competitive bids, benefitting both the agencies and the
taxpayers they serve. This led to the development of [several
platforms](https://18f.gsa.gov/rfpez/), now in beta, that build on these
learnings and are challenging us to think differently about how we
engage the private sector.
>
Each of these platforms was developed to minimize the upfront cost
necessary to evaluate effectiveness, and determine whether to invest or
iterate further. If successful, not only will we succeed in ensuring
agencies have access to the best possible services and solutions at
competitive prices, but small and medium-sized technology companies will
be better positioned than ever to compete for the huge sum the federal
government spends on information technology.
## Leveraging the Power of the People
>
Another powerful strategy focuses on crowdsourcing solutions, where
government acts as a platform on which entrepreneurs, startups, and the
private sector can build value-added services and tools on top of
federal datasets supported by federal policies. Taking this approach,
fellows and their federal partners have spurred the creation of new
products and services focused on education, health, the environment,
social justice, and much more.
>
For example, fellows worked with the Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS) to launch the [Blue Button
Initiative](http://www.healthit.gov/patients-families/blue-button/about-blue-button),
which is helping Americans across the country gain secure, online access
to their own healthcare information. Now, more than 150 million
Americans can use Blue Button-enabled tools to access at least one
source of their personal health data from the nation’s top pharmacies,
health providers around the country, insurance companies, and labs.
## Improving Digital Services Across Government
>
To date, the Presidential Innovation Fellows have played key roles in
establishing both [18F](https://18f.gsa.gov/), an innovative consulting
and agile delivery team, and the [United States Digital
Services](https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/digital/united-states-digital-service),
a team built to improve the infrastructure and user experience around
some of the most important services. All are working to reinvent the
transactions that affect us in our everyday lives, such as accessing
healthcare and benefits, securing and managing student loans, and
applying for citizenship.
>
These teams have attracted almost 200 new innovators and technologists
to government to help catalyze the change they’d like to see. And on the
ground, agencies like the Department of Commerce, the Department of
Veterans Affairs, the Environmental Protection Agency, and many more,
have built their own teams. All are working to inculcate these values
into their government through recruiting, training, and of course,
delivery. To make it last, we must turn our focus on retaining great
talent that can help develop our existing federal workforce of
passionate bureaucrats into champions of innovation and reinvention.
## Innovation as a Shared Service
>
In placing the Presidential Innovation Fellows program at GSA, the goal
is to capitalize on the agency’s experience in delivering shared
acquisition and IT services across the entire federal government and arm
great innovators from inside and outside government with the tools
needed to improve the lives of the people we serve. This work is never
done.
>
And this, we hope, will be the true legacy of the Presidential
Innovation Fellows program; that the notion of continuous improvement
will not be limited to services we create and provide, but will extend
to government itself; that we will continue to evolve to meet the
challenges and opportunities relevant to our time, and that we will
strive to always represent our best self – built on the most innovative
thinking, in service to the needs of the people.

If you’d like to join the team, you can [learn more about the PIF
program and apply here](https://presidentialinnovationfellows.gov/).