Presidential Innovation Fellows

The Presidential Innovation Fellows program is a competitive fellowship program that pairs top innovators from the private sector, non-profits, and academia with top innovators in government to collaborate on solutions that aim to deliver significant results in months, not years. It was established in 2012 and has operated continuously since then. The program focuses on generating measurable results, using innovation techniques from private industry such as Lean Startup, Design Thinking, and Agile Development.

The highly competitive program features an acceptance rate in the single digits. In the inaugural round in the summer of 2012, over 700 applicants competed for 18 fellowships. The second class included 43 fellows selected from over 2000 applicants. The third round consisted of 27 fellows selected from over 1500 applicants. The Presidential Innovation Fellows program and the fellows themselves are commonly referred to by the shorthand “PIF” (pronounced “Pif”).

In 2015, President Barack Obama issued an Executive Order making the Presidential Innovation Fellows program a permanent part of the U.S. federal government.

The Presidential Innovation Fellows program was founded by former U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park, former U.S. Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel, former Department of Veterans Affairs Chief Technology Officer and White House Fellowship alumnus Peter L. Levin, and former White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Senior Advisor for Innovation John Paul Farmer. Park served as the executive champion for the program and Farmer as its founding director.

Around the time of its founding, Park said the new program "will bring top innovators from outside government for focused "tours of duty" with our best federal innovators on game-changing projects. Combining the know-how of citizen change agents and government change agents in small, agile teams that move at high speed, these projects aim to deliver significant results within six months." On the White House blog, Farmer wrote, “The first five missions include creating common-sense tools for public participation, liberating government data to fuel job growth, giving everyone secure access to their own health information, streamlining the government contracting process for high-growth startups, and getting more bang for our foreign aid buck.”

Those interested in the program were invited to visit a webpage that explained the program in the following terms: The Presidential Innovation Fellows program pairs top innovators from the private sector, non-profits, and academia with top innovators in government to collaborate on solutions that aim to deliver significant results in six months. Each team of innovators works together in-person in Washington, DC on focused sprints while being supported by a broader community of interested citizens throughout the country. What makes this initiative unique is its focus on unleashing the ingenuity and know-how of Americans from all sectors.

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