Caitlin Gandhi, Director, Digital Corps, United States

1. How do you use technology/policy to improve citizens’ lives? Tell us about your role or organization.  

I am proud to be the co-founder and Director of the U.S. Digital Corps (USDC) fellowship program because of the incredible impact that our fellows have had for the American people. 

We founded USDC with the underlying belief that strengthening the federal government’s technology workforce is the key to improving the effectiveness and efficiency of government service delivery - ensuring that people get the support they need from their government at the time they need it and in a way they can use it. USDC was established in 2021 at a time when only 3% of the federal IT workforce was under the age of 30 and only 26% of the workforce identified as women. We set out to bring in those just starting their technology careers with a wide range of perspectives and experiences to complement the senior technologists already hard at work and to help build out the full technology teams needed to build and deliver key government services.  

A bit about USDC:  The U.S. Digital Corps (USDC) is a two-year, full-time, paid fellowship for early-career technologists to serve across the federal government. Fellows have the opportunity to convert to a permanent, full-time position upon successful completion of the program.  

It was important to us to ensure that fellows had continuous support and development through their early years in government as well as have a pathway to long term federal employment so that they can sustain their impact over time. 

We hire Fellows in five broad skill tracks: software engineering, data science and analytics, product management, design, and cybersecurity. USDC Fellows make a difference in high-impact areas in government including public experience, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence. 

Our fellows work on projects that span the technical needs of our agencies and bring in cutting edge skills from their recent educational programs to bear on some of our nation’s toughest challenges.  

USDC Fellows are hired into a vibrant cohort-based community that represents the diversity of the United States. The Digital Corps supports in person, hybrid, and remote opportunities. 

When designing and delivering technical solutions for a set of users that span all of the backgrounds and experiences of the American people, it is critical that our technical workforce be reflective of our users.  

We also know that starting a new career is a time when you need extra support. We are building a thriving community of practice for early career technologists that will sustain them in the first few years, but also create a governmentwide fabric of support as they join future USDC alumni in public service, as well the vibrant civic tech community inside and outside government.   

In June 2024 U.S. Digital Corps graduated its inaugural cohort of Fellows with a two-year retention rate of 97% in federal service, and 95% of graduates staying on in career civil service positions across 15 different agencies. This far exceeded our expectations and I firmly believe it is because our fellows experienced every day the positive impact they can have for others by directing their technical talent toward missions such as improving key life experience moments, or deepening understanding of pandemic impact, and improving the delivery of multilingual voting information.  

Based on the incredible work that our Fellows have achieved, USDC has been able to grow. We have now welcomed three cohorts of Fellows bringing in over 150 early career technologists working on projects across 20 federal agencies, and our team is looking forward to welcoming our fourth cohort of Fellows in August 2025. 

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2. What was the most impactful project you worked on this year?  

 
USDC Fellows are really hitting their stride, as evidenced by some of these great projects that delivered over the past year:  

• Piloting a peer navigator service to improve access to public benefits for expecting parents
• Improving the delivery of multilingual voting information with a content management system for vote.gov
• Applying AI to increase speed and accuracy for human rights reports
• USDC Fellows supported the creation of an AI-powered data collection management tool (DCT) to help scan and fact-check internal reports, including mandatory congressional reports on international religious freedom and human trafficking. The DCT has shown it can save State Department employees 30,000 hours each year.
• Evaluating emerging technologies and global cyber posture  
• Building a culture of customer experience across government 
   

Personally, I am grateful to have had the opportunity to serve on the White House AI & Tech Talent Task Force at first representing GSA and our Technology Transformation Services Fellowship programs - U.S. Digital Corps and Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIF) and later in the year by moving into a temporary role at the White House’s U.S. Digital Service (USDS) as a Senior Advisor and the Task Force’s Coordinator. As part of the Task Force, PIF and USDC led the charge on a governmentwide AI Talent Surge that was part of the Artificial Intelligence Executive Order 14110.  

With a goal of hiring 100 new AI & AI enabling technologists into service by summer, combined, PIF and USDC received over 2,500 applications for AI and AI-enabling roles in the two weeks after EO 14110 was issued, indicating significant interest in these roles from the public and a large talent pool eager to bring their skills to government through specialized fellowship programs. Due to the strength of their applicant pools and the high volume of critical AI projects across the U.S. Government, PIF and USDC far exceeded initial AI hiring commitments and now collectively support close to 200 active fellows working across dozens of agencies. 

3. What was one unexpected learning from 2024? 

Something our GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan has said a few times that really sunk in for me this year, and I’m paraphrasing, was about how being part of an organization as large and complex as the federal government is that its like being on a really big ship and sometimes you’re along for the ride but every once and a while you get a chance to steer. The opportunity to create the U.S. Digital Corps was that opportunity and, if I might add on to this analogy, what I learned in 2024 is that when you are steering a big ship sometimes the approach that has the most staying power is a series of small turns that, when maintained, can significantly affect the ship’s direction over time.  

In 2024 I really started to see some of the, at the time, small decisions and investments that we made at the inception of USDC have huge impact and pay-off. Things like prioritizing resourcing to support creating a fellow community that has become one of the most important things that our fellows cite when they reflect on the value of the USDC fellowship or continuing to share (ad nauseam I’m sure for some of our friends and stakeholders!) our learnings about what it takes to attract and retain technical talent to government and then seeing so many of our ideas and those of all the other voices across government reflected in recent Administration policy memorandums and guidelines - and encouraging their adoption across government.  

4. What’s a tool or technique you’re excited to explore in 2025? 
 

I’m hoping to bring more data and behavior modeling to how we think about our tech talent strategy. What can we better quantify and project about the conditions that are required for tech talent to do their best work and how can we systemize those approaches.  

5. Everybody’s talking about AI today – give us your hot take on AI and what it means for the public sector.  
 

As a lifelong lover of math, the logic and the way it can help provide shape to ideas and trends, I’m excited to see the way that people across all sectors, both personally and professionally, are embracing artificial intelligence enhanced decision making and concept exploration. Using AI responsibly in the public sector has incredible potential to make the services that people rely on from their government more helpful, higher quality, and delivered in more efficient and dynamic ways.  

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6. What are your priorities for 2025?  
 

Exploring ways to ensure that tech talent programs such as USDC are sustainable cross-government complements to other talent sourcing and support mechanisms—including increasing agencies’ ability to recruit, hire, and retain talent directly.

Doing more user research—with our fellows, our partners, those in the community who are impacted by our work—to continuously improve the USDC Fellow and agency experiences.

Taking an ‘adventure trip’ and making more memories with my small children now that they can walk more than a mile or two at a time :) 

7. What advice do you have for public sector innovators?

Civic tech is an incredibly supportive community. If you have a big idea, or a small one, start talking about it. This community is so generative, you’ll walk away with 4 new ideas, 7 things to read, and several truly substantive offers to help you on your way.  

8. Who inspires you today?

My parents remain my biggest source of inspiration. Both my parents are career state and local government civil servants who dedicated their work lives to making things better and safer for those around them. And, they are fearless when it comes to fighting for what you believe in and pushing for what matters. They give me courage to try for things that feel out of reach and model the quiet strength it takes to lead.