Thinking About Getting Into Government IT? Read This First.
So you want to apply your technology skills and straighten out your local government’s open data office, or help your state update their back office systems, or join the feds to streamline their day to day work, but what does it take to make an impact?
I started working on government contracts during my first job out of college at a multinational civil engineering company, doing data collection for the New Jersey Department of Transportation and NJ Transit. After leaving for a job with Philadelphia’s Office of Innovation and Technology as a GIS analyst I eventually became a systems engineer at OIT supporting the GIS community citywide. Since leaving I’ve been at a small Washington, DC based firm that specializes in government IT, working with federal, state, and local clients. Here’s what I’ve learned so far.
How To Get a Job: “Govies” vs Contractors
When it comes to getting a government job, there’s two ways: direct government employees (“govies”) or contractors brought on to fill a manpower or skill gap. Most of the time, if you’re an on-site contractor, you’ll feel like a valued member of the team with clients. Problems can begin however when contractors get too comfortable and try to make decisions that only govies are entitled to make, or operate without proper oversight. Contractors are there to advise and complete contracted work, and it’s also incumbent on them to understand the laws, regulations, and rules which apply to the organization they’re working for. This should be part of onboarding for government employees in some capacity.
Contractors are often paid better than government employees, however they usually won’t see the great benefits such as better healthcare and a pension that govies receive. Another issue with being a contractor is overlapping contracts within a single organization, where multiple clients have to be kept happy without favoring one contract over the other, which can often be a awkward situation. Alternatively, contractors can take a break from a project if they feel frustrated and have got a diversified work portfolio, something harder to do as direct government employee.
You choice of whether to go for a direct government or contractor position really comes down to your risk tolerance (contracts aren’t forever), desire to be a decision maker (govies make the decisions), and long term plans (the higher contractor salary vs the better government benefits and retirement packages).
What You’ll Learn on the Job
The first thing you’ll learn in a government job is that it doesn’t run like a business, and it shouldn’t. Don’t get me wrong, there’s lessons to be learned from the private sector about project management, budgeting, and technology, but there’s no profit motive. Success is measured in the number of inspections completed, increases in the efficiency of garbage pickups, and the amount of citizen requests that can be completed via apps and automation instead of waiting on a bureaucrat.
It’s slow. When more resources are needed, you typically need to go through a cumbersome procurement or contracting process, sometimes having to wait until the next fiscal year for funding. And you want to replace an application? You can’t just flip a switch and turn the old one off, potentially interrupting critical services for constituents. It took me a full year to shut down three web servers hosting REST services as I hunted down the apps using the services and replaced them with ones hosted in a SaaS platform.
Get ready for the COTS (commercial off the shelf) vs FOSS (free open source software)/custom debate ad nauseam. It’s a decision that comes down to available resources. Would it be really cool create a totally custom, in-house app with open source tools and zero vendor lock in? Yes. Is that approach sustainable over the long term? Only if you’re in a larger, well funded organization. It may be possible in a smaller organization with a high degree of technical ability and low staff turnover, but that’s unlikely in my experience. The level of technical debt is just too high, often times higher than the cost of purchasing enterprise software from a vendor.
After you’ve had the COTS vs FOSS/custom debate for the thousandth time (it happens with every new hire or leadership change), get ready to do some politicking to sell your decision, because silos and territorial behavior abound. Budgets are finite and everyone’s fighting for the biggest slice they can get. Negotiating skills and the ability to compromise are key to getting anything meaningful done, and coming to a meeting prepared will often be the difference between success and failure. Keep in mind that government work is political though, and sometimes the best plan or most logical argument fails purely due to politics. It is what it is sometimes, you just have to live to fight another day.
But the trade off for dealing with all of this? Government is a great place to learn new skills. Some of the most forward thinking innovators I’ve worked with were in government, whether it was an old boss speculating in 2017 that blockchain technology could help solve tangled property titles, or current clients looking to be on the cutting edge of cloud and geospatial technology. Government jobs are reasonably secure, so it’s often easy to convince your employer to pay for more training or career development, since you become a more valuable asset.
Four People You’ll Meet in Government IT
Getting anything done in government requires navigating many strong personalities, but there’s four very common ones in my experience. Learning how to work with each personality type will boost your odds for success drastically.
- The Lifer
The Lifer’s been in government for a long time, whether it’s because they love the work or they’re holding out for the full pension. They’ve been through leadership changes, technological advances, and organizational shakeups, and they’re still there day after day, doing what they do. An old boss once told me, “You might not understand what some of these guys do day to day, but that one time a year you need them? You need them.” The Lifer holds invaluable institutional knowledge about systems, processes, and office politics. They will laugh off your naïve enthusiasm for finding efficiencies and improving processes, but they’ve got their complaints and problems you can help solve. You must respect the Lifer. - The Civic Hacktivist
The Civic Hacktivist didn’t go to school for technology. They started playing with open data 10 years ago and have been looking for their next tech high ever since. They have deep ties to the local civic tech scene and participate in hackathons, which is where they got some attention in the local press. This gained them an opportunity to work for the government and bring their “expertise” to bear, but they don’t know enough about tech to know what they don’t know. Not the most proficient programmer, architect, or long term planner, they know just enough to be dangerous, and without supervision they are. The Civic Hacktivist is driven to improve government for citizens and tends to view things from that perspective, with the PR savvy and charisma to draw press attention. Subscribes to the “move fast and break things” ethos and won’t stop talking about open source. - The IT Professional
The IT Professional knows what they’re doing when it comes to information technology and usually have formal training or schooling. They don’t live and breath good government, and every day they go to work hoping nothing goes wrong with the infrastructure, networking, or security. They spend a lot of time propping up legacy systems (and sometimes even get to upgrade or migrate them!), and they understand the importance of minimal downtime and continuity of operations. The IT Professional is the backbone of government, making sure the systems work for everyone else to do their work and prevent things like ransomware attacks. They are supremely undervalued and their concerns often go unheeded, only catching blame for systemic failures and never praise for their behind the scenes toil. They know open source but prefer to work with enterprise grade software (think Oracle, Windows, IBM). Often at odds with the Civic Hacktivist. - The Politician
The Politician declares broad public mandates to “do better” without doing their homework regarding cost or timelines. They avoid failing projects like the plague, but will step in for a photo op in the miraculous event that something succeeds. The Politician is the opposite of the Lifer, they come and go with leadership changes and are typically willing to embrace change immediately.
Figure out how to negotiate amongst and meet the needs of all of these coworkers and you just might make some progress with your pet projects when the time comes.
What does it take to make a successful career in government IT?
In a word: flexibility. You’re going to run into constant roadblocks, whether budgetary, technological, or manpower related. It also doesn’t hurt to familiarize yourself government projects that failed and why. I’d recommend James C. Scott’s “Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed”. Scott skews mildly anarchist and his focus is on nations, but he makes great observations regarding centralized government project planning. There’s a tendency for projects being driven from the top to overlook or disregard the complexity of systems. I believe this can be applied at a smaller scale to government IT, by bringing systems thinking and partnership building approaches to your work.
With some patience, people skills, and luck you’ll be make great progress bringing government into the late 2010s!
