Skills Wiki for New Government Hires

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Skills Wiki for New Government Tech Employees

A comprehensive set of resources to help new techies in government hit the ground running on day one.

Introduction

If you’re a new technology hire trying to orient yourself to working in the federal government, welcome! This wiki is made for you. It’s a knowledge base for new tech employees seeking to learn the skills they need to get things done in government.

Many federal agencies have developed rich guides to government processes for new hires, from demystifying the budget process and navigating procurement to understanding government lingo and seeking mentors. This wiki compiles these sources, which are currently scattered across separate agency websites, into one place. Though this guide is geared towards new tech hires coming from the private sector, there are some resources that would likely benefit any new government employee.

Even after you get started, we hope this guide can be a useful reference on the job.

This guide was developed by the

Aspen Tech Policy Hub⁠

as part of the

USofTech⁠

collective. The primary authors of the wiki are former Hub staff Meha Ahluwalia and Maeve Sneddon, with support from Betsy Cooper and Maitreyi Sistla. The wiki was expertly designed by Sarah Frei. All credit for and rights to the sources below belong to the authors; attribution is noted beside each resource.

Organization

This wiki is organized into two main components. The first component,

Skills Wiki⁠

, compiles existing skills-building resources for new hires who are about to start in government. Our Skills Wiki is organized into 4 main sections:

Government Systems⁠

Government Norms⁠

Professional Development⁠

, and

Tech in Government⁠

The

Government Systems⁠

section includes resources to learn more about government-specific systems like budgeting, procurement, human resources/hiring, and IT/cybersecurity systems.

The

Government Norms⁠

section includes resources to learn more about norms and language that might be new for private sector employees, such as government acronyms, ethics rules, and communications policies.

The

Professional Development⁠

section includes resources on common government professional development resources, such as management and leadership trainings.

The

Tech in Government⁠

section includes resources that would be helpful for technologists in government, such as design or software development resources.

The main second component, our

Gap Analysis⁠

, identifies some areas for which we could not find readily available resources. We hope this gap analysis can help agencies and other organizations determine where additional resources should be created.

Next Steps

Click on the “Skills Wiki” button below to direct yourselves to our Skills Wiki database. Click on the “Gap Analysis” below to read more about what resources are missing.

⁠

Skills Wiki⁠

⁠

Gap Analysis⁠

⁠

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