Busy, Busy week

Since I came onto my engagement at the GAO in its beginning stages, things had started off a bit slow. However, last week was particularly busy for our team as we are entering the design phase of our project. Our engagement relates to higher education endowments. We have really been focusing on finding good data sources for information, and most importantly, assessing their reliability. The GAO generally does audits of government agencies/programs, and basically has a protocol for everything that happens during a project. Part of this set of protocols is having an entrance conference with the agencies the GAO is auditing. Our project is not an audit, but we still have to entrance conference with the agencies that will have a role in the project.

We ended up having 2 entrance conferences and an additional interview last week. Between these and the mission team picnic, the week was incredibly busy and went by very quickly. It was pretty exciting to leave the building and interview other agencies, mainly because it was a nice change of pace from the background research. These meeting were also quite informative. After each interview we also have to write up a record of what happened, because everything that is mentioned in a GAO report has to be verified with a source. These interview write-ups can be challenging since it's not easy to catch everything that is being said, particularly in long interviews. It is also difficult to summarize all of the information in a useful way, since the goal of the write-up is just to convey the main points, not to transcribe the whole interview. Not only do you have to summarize the meeting effectively, but you also have to format it properly so that all of the information is easily understood and organized well.

Aside from the interviews of last week, we are continuing with the background research/literature review. However, this is taking somewhat of a backseat as we are also working on our project design which is becoming our top priority now. So far I am enjoying this phase of the engagement. My internship ends in a few weeks, and I will be sad to miss the actual implementation of our project design. However, my supervisors have said that I may be able to come back from time to time for important project meetings so that I can have a sense of what happens after I leave.

Midpoint of Internship

This blog has gotten off to a bit of a late start, and I am now about halfway through my internship with the GAO. I think that I was in the somewhat unique position of coming onto an engagement just as it was starting. Unlike some of my fellow interns who jumped right into the middle of the project, I've been given the opportunity to see what the beginning stages of the GAO process is like. Since my supervisors had not previously done research on the topic of our engagement, I did not feel like I was already behind and had a lot of catching up to do, which took away a lot of the stress of starting the internship.

The main task at hand has been to gather as much background information as possible to help our team become comfortable and knowledgeable about the topic so that we know how to effectively design the project and ask the right questions when we go out and do interviews. In the past couple of weeks I have been busy organizing a background paper. Based on my preliminary research and text of the mandate that we are answering, I developed an outline for the paper. I've also gotten the opportunity to sit in on meetings with the requesters/clients and help conduct interviews to aid us in data gathering. More recently, the biggest undertaking has been an extensive literature review. I must admit that this is not the most exciting part of the job, but overall I think the project itself is very interesting, and I like that I have been able to perform a broad range of tasks.

Introductions...

As an Masters of Public Policy student, I am interested in areas of social policy and international development.

Currently, I have a summer internship with the Government Accountability Office. I am working as an analyst on a project with the Strategic Issues team. So far it has involved a lot of research and some writing. This is a good experience because the job is interesting and is giving me a taste of what government work is like. Previously I interned at a small nonprofit and an international NGO. I'm still trying to figure out my career aspirations. I hope that eventually I'll be able to do research/policy analysis on social welfare and economic development issues, either in the public or nonprofit sector.

I grew up in Columbus, Ohio and went down to Chapel Hill to get my BA at the University of North Carolina (go Tar Heels!). While there, I majored in political science and minored in public policy. I realized at UNC that I loved working with data and learning how to analyze policies, which is what inspired me to pursue graduate studies in the field. My most fulfilling experience in college was spending a semester in Cape Town, South Africa. I got to research migrant worker rights at my internship with the Institute for Democracy in South Africa. I also fell madly in love with Cape Town, and hope to go back sometime soon. When I'm not doing school related activities (which can be rare), I love to hang out with friends, listen to music and go to concerts, discover good food, read, and travel.