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the county’s principal human resources analyst and the one who came up with the idea for Career PathFinder. “Users evaluate the jobs presented based on popularity, salary, salary difference from starting job, number of current employees holding the job and reviewing the job descriptions. Users select the job they are most interested in pursuing next on their career path.”
For Career PathFinder 2.0, the team plans to add information on credentials — such
as professional certifications, licenses or degrees — so that users can see what kind of training they might need for a position. Shartzer said there are also plans to make training videos available so people can obtain some of those credentials or develop a strategy for pursuing them.
Lisa Garrett, the county’s director of personnel, said Career PathFinder is innovative because it not only shows people how to reach a certain career goal, but also encourages them to consider paths they might not have thought of. “Sometimes we don’t see things as possibilities,” she added, “but then [we] see it and think, ‘So can I.’”
PROJECT: Code.gov
General Services Administration
The U.S. government’s
codebase
When Code.gov launched in November 2016, there was no search function. That didn’t much matter, however, because there were just 45 projects.
Today, there are more than 4,000 projects to explore, and they are fully searchable thanks to an Elasticsearch back end. A powerful application programming interface and a data harvester encourage modern software development practices. In addition, the platform helps agencies comply with
the Federal Source Code Policy and avoid duplicative expenditures by reusing existing code that could meet their needs. It also identifies and protects code that is exempt from reuse due to national security or other concerns.
The latest data schema even includes
the developer hours each project required, which means Code.gov can calculate the resources agencies save each time a project is reused.
And at a time when the government is desperately trying to tap into private-sector technology talent, Code.gov provides a unique recruiting tool by making it simple for coders to find open-source government projects where their contributions can make a difference.
PROJECT: Cyber Direct Commissioning Program U.S. Army Cyber Command
Hacking the challenge of
tech talent scarcity
Like every organization, the military has had to contend with a dearth of in-house cybersecurity talent. The Army Cyber Command’s solution is a direct commissioning program that plucks technical experts from the commercial sector.
The program launched late last year
and in May produced the first two direct commissioned officers from a total of 249 applicants. The second set of applicants has already been reviewed, with five individuals entering the program in June. Eventually, officials plan to move officers through the program four times a year.
Direct commissioning programs have long been used to recruit physicians, attorneys and chaplains into the military, so it seemed like a natural tool for targeting another type of talent that is in high demand but unlikely to emerge organically from the Army’s ranks.
After its successful pilot run, Army Cyber Command plans to continue the program with a few changes, including a student loan repayment program that provides up to $65,000 during the officer’s initial three- year term.
PROJECT: Federalist
General Services Administration
A better way to build
websites
Federalist first surfaced as an 18F experiment in 2015, but after emerging from the beta phase last summer, the project hit its stride. It now serves not only as an express lane for agencies seeking a speedy and cost-effective web presence, but also
as a proving ground for any number of transformative digital practices.
As a service for hosting and maintaining websites, Federalist makes a persuasive case. It runs on a cloud infrastructure that has been certified under the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, manages HTTPS certificates on behalf of customer agencies and can deliver 1 million page views for just 39 cents.
Its larger impact, however, might be in showing agencies that there’s a better way to develop websites with version control on the back end, easy builds of static pages for quick downloads, starter templates that are device-agnostic and Section 508-compliant, and an open-source technology stack.
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