Highlights

The Better Government Lab and the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation, at the University of Michigan and Georgetown University, have launched an initiative to preserve and elevate lessons, expertise, and experiences from federal digital service delivery work. Through the Digital Benefits Network and the Digital Service Network, we are interviewing federal government digital service workers who separated from their role or who were placed on leave since January 2025.

The project goal is to understand the experiences of people who were recently working in these roles, including the impacts they made, headwinds and tailwinds they faced, the circumstances of their departure, and any unfinished projects they left behind. We believe the results of this work will catalyze future digital services efforts.

Interview findings will result in:
● A website highlighting key learnings and stories from this work
● Academic paper on major learnings, achievements, and challenges across a range of recent federal digital service projects.
● Recommendations through the Beeck Center’s Digital Service Network on how to improve digital service delivery work at the federal, state, or local level.
● An archive of digital service interviews for future digital service teams and researchers to learn from.