“You don’t have to work decades for the federal government to have an impact. That’s one idea behind the Presidential Innovation Fellows program, operated by the General Services Administration. Now the program has a new director. Rebeca Lamadrid joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin...” “Tom Temin: And do these people tend to be IT types of people? Or are they also business innovators, for example? Rebeca Lamadrid: Great question. They actually come from multiple disciplines. Actually, when we recruit our fellows, we focus on five key areas. One of them is software and cloud infrastructure. Product management is another one, design and experience, data strategy and AI and digital transformation and strategy. So it’s not solely it focused. Tom Temin: Because I heard one agency executive just the other day at a conference say he really prefers the term business digital transformation, as opposed to IT modernization, because IT is only the enabler. So is that part of the idea here? Rebeca Lamadrid: That is certainly part of the idea. It is larger than IT, it is about the modernisation of technologies. And it is also focused on people. And it’s that this innovators that have all this different types of experiences can come and do this important work in federal government...” Read the full interview here. Source: GSA has a new person in charge of the Presidential Innovation Fellows program – By Tom Temin, May 10, 2022. Federal News Network.