Bringing Tech Talent to the Halls of Congress: Q&A with Travis Moore

Public interest technology practitioners have myriad opportunities to get involved and change the world. One such opportunity—as a TechCongress fellow—takes candidates right to the top, placing them with offices in the United States Congress. Recently, PIT UNiverse editor-in-chief Karen Bannan sat down with the organization’s founder, Travis Moore to discuss what TechCongress is, why it matters, and how people can apply to be part of the next cohort. The current application period for the Congressional Innovation Scholars program ends on February 5, 2021. Here are his answers, which were edited slightly for length.

Q. Tell us a little bit about TechCongress. Why did you launch it, and what does it do?

Travis Moore: I started tech congress because I needed it when I was a congressional staffer. It was founded in 2015, and the first class of fellows started at the beginning of 2016. Technology touches every committee jurisdiction and every issue before Congress, and we need people in the building that understand technology and how it's reshaping society.

TechCongress places computer scientists, engineers, and other technologists as fellows in Congress. They work directly for a member of Congress or a congressional committee on the tech policy issues of the day—be they disinformation or encryption or privacy or election security. Fellows lend their technical expertise to technology policy in Congress.

What does it take to be a TechCongress fellow?

We select on four key criteria. One is technical ability. If you've done a degree program in a technical field, you're certainly well qualified. The second thing we select for is tech translation skills, because very often you're going to be needing to explain to a member of Congress—how does a cell phone store and receive data, or what are the implications of the Solar Winds breech—and need to be able to put that in layman's terms, so tech translation skills. The third thing we select for is people that work really well on teams. Congress is an incredibly collaborative and social place, so we look for entrepreneurial, team-focused problem solvers. The fourth thing that we look for is the candidate’s vision for how they can use the platform we're going to give them to fundamentally reshape the arc of their career. We want to see a vision for how this program is going to be a career catalyst. Six weeks into the program, [a fellow] might be advising Speaker Pelosi or Majority Whip [John] Thune on a tech policy issue. It's a massive, massive platform so we want to know how you're going to use that to become the leader that we need you to be bridging tech and government.

There are three fellowship programs, the National Innovation Fellowship, the Congressional Innovation Scholars Program and the Congressional Digital Service fellowship. Can you explain what the three fellowship programs are and who is best suited for each?

Our Congressional Innovation Fellows Program is our mid-career pipeline to Congress. It was our first fellowship. The fellows in that program have a minimum of six years of professional experience, but sometimes upwards of 20. The Congressional innovation Scholars Program, which is the program that we're recruiting for now, is our early career pipeline. We are looking for anyone with generally two to five years experience—professional experience—or someone who recently finished or who is enrolled now in a graduate program, so master’s or Ph.D.

These two programs, the Congressional Innovation Fellows Program and the Congressional Innovation Scholars program, are identical in substance. The only difference between them is the duration of the program.

The Innovations Fellows Program is three months longer than the Scholars Program, and the stipend is higher for the Innovations Fellows Program because it is mid-career. The rest is all the same. You get the same training. You go to work for similar caliber members. We have innovation scholars serving with Senator Warren, Senator Paul, the Senate Commerce Committee—so top top echelon of members. And their impact, frankly, is just as great. It’s a really tremendous opportunity for someone early early in their career.

The Congressional Digital Service fellowship was a one-time fellowship that we launched last year to address some of the urgent digital capacity gaps in Congress. Things like, how does a congressional committee that's used to inviting witnesses into a big hearing room and asking them questions in person move to a remote environment? How does an institution that up until March, in order to introduce a bill, required you to literally print out your bill on a piece of paper and walk it through the corridors of the Capitol and drop it in a wooden box... how do they adjust when nobody's in a building anymore? We won't be renewing that program, because the goal of the program is to build proof of concept for a thing that everyone in Congress already agrees should exist, which is a Congressional Digital Service. But we, as an organization, can carry the political risk and do the wayfinding of figuring out what that should look like. And so that's what we're doing.

You talk about how these fellowships can change the trajectory of a career. Can you give us some examples of past fellows, what they accomplished, and where they are today?

We set out to fundamentally reshape the arc of [a fellow’s] career. We want them to become the leaders and the bridgers who can speak to and understand both the technology sector and government. And we have absolutely done that. One of our first fellows was a deputy assistant secretary at the Commerce Department. We have another who's the policy director for the joint Artificial Intelligence Center at the Department of Defense. We have another who is a senior advisor to Senator Wyden—they stayed on the Hill. We have others that have gone back to tech, but they've gone back in leadership roles rather than just being a cog in the engineering wheel. They're shaping strategy and policy for their companies. One of our 2018 fellows is working on diversity inclusion at Microsoft. Katherine Pratt, who was our first Congressional Innovation Scholar, is at Microsoft, and she's working on the AI ethics team there. Eric Mill, one of our fellows from last year, is the head of security for Google Chrome.

What we find is that, increasingly, at tech companies—because their footprints are so large and are really so much of the infrastructure we rely on as a society—that senior roles are policymaking roles in many ways at companies. And so we need people that understand ethics and trade offs, and how we should think about designing products in the public interest. We've seen fellows go back to tech, but in really, really impactful and important ways.

How many applications that you get each year and how can someone elevate their application to the top?

We get typically 200 to 300 applications per cycle. A couple things for those that are thinking about applying. First and foremost, I'm going to come back to this: What's your vision for the leader and the bridger that you want to be, and how are you going to use your time in the program to get there? So maybe you want to start a think tank that is focused exclusively on AI, ethics, or disinformation. Or maybe you want to work with startups to help them understand the policy and regulatory environment. Maybe you want to go work in the White House and be the CTO of America or the deputy CTO of America. How are the skills that you're going to get working in Congress and leading tech policymaking—how are they going [to help you do that]? The other thing that we really look for is your ability to translate tech. A lot of people in [successful] applications do this really well. They translate tech through a story or through metaphor. You know, maybe [they’re] talking about privacy and privacy implications and comparing the digital world to the physical world. If you're describing network security and IP addresses, you'd say an IP address is like a phone book. The best fellows work in story and in metaphor and really help to break down what are complex topics for people who aren't technically literate, and can also point to the implications of why an issue matters. For instance, why we should care about ethics as it's applied to artificial intelligence or the datasets that artificial intelligence is built on?

Any final words for potential candidates in the PIT-UN audience?

Even if you've never considered working in government or in politics, they should apply. Because the scale of the impact that you can have working in Congress is like no other. You are going to go work directly as essentially a senior adviser to a member of the United States Senate, a committee chair in the House of Representatives, maybe the Speaker of the House, maybe the majority leader in the Senate. Recently, we had a fellow that authored broadband funding in the latest Cares Act response—many billions of dollars in broadband funding which are going to serve underserved communities that will literally change tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of lives. Because now, in especially low income communities, that money is going to be used for broadband deployment. And no kid will have to go to McDonald's, or Starbucks to get to WiFi during COVID. The scale is unlike anything. It's unparalleled in the private or public sector.

We had a fellow who organized the first hearing in Congress on facial recognition. We have a fellow who drafted and introduced the first bipartisan bill on facial recognition. We had a fellow that revealed that foreign intelligence services were setting up fake cell towers right across the street from the White House and spying on government officials. We had two fellows who teamed up and [created] a tech congress program for the Department of Defense. And that program is now bringing in 20 to 30 recent STEM grads to help the Department of Defense think about defense innovation policy. The scale is unparalleled.

The second thing that's related: You may have a view of government as a bureaucracy where there are 18 layers between you and the decision maker. That may be true in some governments, but it is not true in Congress. Congress is an incredibly entrepreneurial place. Every office is basically a startup. It's 535 small businesses so you have a direct line to the member, and when you earn the trust of the member, you can do extraordinary things. Congressmembers want you to be entrepreneurial. They want to introduce that first bill on facial recognition; they want to be first to market on that. Congress is an extraordinarily entrepreneurial place where you can have a massive, massive impact really, really quickly, because it's so small.