The Public Interest Technology Summer Fellowship (PIT-SF) programme, run by Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy, provided students with the chance to gain knowledge of how local, state, and federal governments operate for the third summer in a row.
The group of students—five from Princeton and 14 from other schools—worked for organisations like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Iowa Attorney General's Office for around eight weeks.
The fellows were invited to present their experiences at Princeton in August. The seminars were attended by about twenty people, including fellows from the 2020 and 2021 cohorts who were unable to visit the campus during the first two years of PIT-SF due to COVID restrictions.
PIT-SF focuses on rising juniors and seniors who attend a school in the Public Interest Technology University Network and are interested in working on policy at the federal, state, or municipal level of government (PIT-UN). Stanford, Boston University, Columbia, Georgetown, Georgia Tech, Harvard, Ohio State, and Princeton are among the other institutions represented.
In order to give students hands-on experience working on topics including online child safety, crimes against the elderly, and cryptocurrency schemes, the PIT-SF programme was created to embed students with government organisations.
The programme begins with a boot camp organised by Mihir Kshirsagar, the director of the CITP Tech Policy Clinic, and Tithi Chattopadhyay, the executive director. A series of seminars with specialists in tech policy are then held.
An idea materialises:
The person who came up with the idea for the fellowship, Kshirsagar, said, "This absolutely has met every expectation I have." We specifically set out to provide college students with real-world, hands-on exposure in policy, he said.
The fellowship was based on public interest lawyer programmes that Kshirsagar, a former lawyer in the New York Attorney General's Office, was aware of. However, he claimed that "nothing like this existed" in the quickly expanding field of public interest technology, where regulators and policy makers are desperate for knowledge on concerns related to privacy and security in online data, social media, and digital advertising.
Kshirsagar prepared a proposal for the Washington, D.C.-based think tank New America with the support of Chattopadhyay and then-CITP Director Ed Felten, and was given a grant as part of the PIT-UN effort.
Emma Bearss, a student at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs who was given a job with the Federal Trade Commission's Division of Privacy and Identity Protection, expressed her admiration for her coworkers' dedication to doing good in the world.
Having an in-person type of experience has been incredibly satisfying, said Bearss, after spending the previous two years doing everything over Zoom.
She remarked that everyone was quite knowledgeable and concerned about these subjects. It has also been incredible to be in a room with just people who share same objectives and who are motivated to accomplish good.
Christopher Maximos, a rising senior at Stanford University majoring in political science, formerly thought that government agencies were the "institutions that get everything done." But as a product manager in the Mayor's Office of Technology and Innovation in San Jose, California, he was introduced to the workings of municipal government through the PIT-SF programme.
Maximos was tasked with conducting data analysis to determine ways to increase the number of qualifying residents participating in the city's underutilised childcare programme. He had firsthand experience with how his efforts aided eligible residents in obtaining the data they required to sign up and receive the assistance they required.
He remarked, "That is a concrete, fulfilling experience. "My work in municipal government truly showed me that I could make a difference. I actually had a chance to discuss my thoughts with the mayor.
Advice from professionals in policy
Leading professionals at the forefront of technology policy and regulation also shared their perspectives with the fellows. They comprised:
- Former SPIA dean Anne-Marie Slaughter is the CEO of New America and a member of the Advisory Council for CITP.
- Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the Federal Trade Commission, Samuel Levine
- Travis LeBlanc, a lawyer at the law firm Cooley, LLP, a member of CITP's advisory council, and Colin Doctorow, a special advisor to the Electronic Frontier Foundation are also members of the CITP faculty. Jonathan Mayer is an assistant professor of computer science and public affairs at Princeton.
- Erie Mayer, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's chief technologist
- Slaughter discussed with the students the difficulties in entering into the government sector. Mayer pushed them to learn a range of digital technology skills, such as conducting surveys, conducting interviews, and utilising web crawlers. Levine informed the pupils that government needs their knowledge.
Levine asserted that having IT talent on staff greatly improves the agency's capacity to respond to consumer threats. It's a fantastic way to use your talent to benefit others.
Prateek Mittal, the interim director of CITP, visited with the fellows as well, explaining his expertise as a privacy and security specialist and congratulating them on finishing their fellowships.
The actual world is rarely as easy as a classroom setting, he added in his advise. The real world is not usually organised. When a road forks, take the option that seems the most ambitious.
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