Ex-Hill staffer aims to boost tech pipeline to Capitol Hill

WASHINGTON - Travis Moore thinks Congress has a tech talent problem.

Moore spent six years on Capitol Hill as a legislative and operations director in the office of former Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat. In that time, he encountered just a handful of staffers with backgrounds in computer science and engineering. It's not an educational pedigree that naturally leads one to politics, of course, but Moore believes it's a knowledge base that Congress sorely needs as technology plays a more prominent role in policy discussions.

That premise led Moore to Silicon Valley, where he is developing Tech Congress. The fellowship program aims to provide lawmakers with a pipeline of skilled technologists who can lend their expertise to the policy-making process. Moore raised nearly $8,000 on the crowdfunding site Indiegogo to develop the program through the summer and, if the pieces fall into place, the first Tech Congress fellows could arrive in Washington next January.

We asked him a few questions about the program recently.

Q: What is Tech Congress?

A: "Tech Congress is a technology policy fellowship for Congress. It connects technologists, likely folks coming out of computer science or engineering programs with an interest in policy, to relevant members in committees for a one-year placement. These folks will be operating just as fellows for other subject matters operate. They will be assisting on research, on writing questions for hearings, on writing reports."

Q: Why do you see a need for this?

A: "I was in a meeting where a staffer didn't understand that spectrum was a fixed, physical thing, and asked if we could create more spectrum. I think that there are some really fundamental gaps in knowledge. This is also something that through my conversations with folks at civil society groups and folks at tech companies, [they] have said quite clearly that they spend a huge amount of their time educating staff on very basic issues of how technology works."

Q: Was that your experience while working on the Hill?

A: "To be honest, I found myself sometimes in a position where I was, as a staffer, looking at issues and feeling that I didn't have a good enough basis of knowledge about how technology worked to be making an informed judgment, and there weren't resources to look to that I thought were very well-educated on these topics.

"There's a very good Ford Foundation report about this topic from 2013 ... There was a key quote that said something to the effect of, 'Many policymakers in Washington essentially are at the will of lobbyists and the advocacy industry.' They're not well-informed enough to sift through the recommendations that these folks are making, because they don't have the subject matter knowledge that's important to make those informed decisions."

Q: Describe the ideal Tech Congress fellow.

A: "They are coming out of a master's-level or graduate-level [degree program]. Some of them have work experience, some of them may not. It's folks that have this engineering and computer science background but they can apply it to policy, so they're an interdisciplinary type. One of the things that I want this program to be is flexible. The pilot will be small. It will be two fellows and we'll place them and we'll do intense measurement and data analysis. Much in the way tech startups operate out here [in Silicon Valley], we want to iterate and rapidly prototype. Technology is changing and it's going to change year to year, so this program needs to be flexible in the same way technology is flexible."

Q: Would someone with a tech background even want to work for Congress?

A: "That's a great question and that's a question that is commonly asked. I think there are a couple initiatives that show there is interest in this kind of thing. The recruiting from [U.S. Digital Service] and 18F [Digital Services Delivery] has been tremendous. Mozilla just launched a new Open Web Fellows program with the Ford Foundation that is very similar to what I want to do except they have a point of view ... and they're also placing people in civil society organizations. They had six slots to fill and they got 550 applications.

"The backdrop to a lot of this, and this is something that [Obama administration adviser] Todd Park talks a lot about, there is a desire out here to spend some time producing things and doing things that really, really matter. There's a perception that some of the work coming out of the tech industry is superficial in nature. There's a real desire to spend some time trying to do good work."

Q: There seems to be a revolving door between the tech community and the executive branch. Why doesn't that exist in Congress?

A: "At least part of the answer is that there aren't programs or institutions which are facilitating that. The Obama administration has made this a very big priority. Todd Park is out here recruiting people on the ground. He is all over Silicon Valley recruiting technologists to work for the federal government. One of the reasons it hasn't happened in Congress is no one has been working on it. No one has been trying to create that pipeline."

"Congress is just a black box. It's a really hard institution to crack. But people are so disillusioned with the institution both on the left and the right. My feeling is they have just sort of written it off entirely so the opportunities to improve it, either using technology tools or bringing in more expertise as it relates to tech policy, those opportunities are being missed."

Q: Would technologists find the environment stifling to innovation?

A: "I don't think so. I think that's a misconception. Congress is 535 small businesses. Congress is 535 independent offices that can operate as flexibly or as bureaucratically as the member wants them to operate. There is huge opportunity in Congress because all you need is one or two members that are willing to try out new things, and then I think you can prove the value and then those new ideas will spread organically because other offices will see that the new ways of doing things are really effective."

Q: What is the end goal for Tech Congress?

A: "It is proving the value, that this expertise is important to the policy-making process. For me, success looks like either a fellow on every A-list committee helping inform the policymaking or having proven the value to the extent that committees have a technologist on staff. Technology is already relevant to virtually every issue that comes before Congress, and in five to 10 years will be a core part of all the issues that come before Congress. Connected cars, drones, 3-D printing and the intellectual property ramifications for that, data security, cybersecurity, wearables and connected devices, the Internet of Things. All of these things have a core technology piece."