I like to think there's somebody watching this announcement (based on their own request) and pouring themselves a cold one, getting ready to train their whole department on some niche aspect of FreeCAD that will save millions, with this approval out of the way.
(Millions of dollars maybe, but also maybe just millions of seconds, you never know)
Then step 2 of the plan is to direct some grant money toward development of some $picky_CAD_folks_features[] which will also prove beneficial for some kids somewhere,
...who will go on to help create the next generation of really awesome CAD tools and designs that benefit all kinds of people.
But, that's just one version that seems like it could happen, to be sure.
EPA | Director of Science and Information Management | $176k+ | Onsite but mostly remote, 1-2 days/week in Durham NC or Cincinnati, OH (your choice).
This position oversees the management of the software, hardware, networks, and lab technology EPA scientists use to protect human health and the environment. The office is ORD, which is the research branch of EPA.
I work for the US EPA, speaking in my personal capacity.
We have a Github, but in a lot of ways it feels kind of like an archive. Does anyone have feedback on how it can be made more useful? We have all the authority to be good OSS community members.
Maybe if we were to prioritize like general purpose libraries instead of just our super domain specific projects?
Make sure every repository has an informative README. There are a ton of templates and generators out there, most are pretty good (if you find or create one that is especially useful for your agency, consider promoting it internally).
Now comes the 'next level' stuff.
If a project would be useful in an academic context, perhaps include a blurb on attributing a citation for it.
There are a lot of folks out there looking for projects that will accept their contributions so they can build up some cred. Populate projects' issues with stuff you can tag as a good-first-issue, and your projects will start showing up in various aggregators (be judicious about selecting projects to do this for, you don't want issues and PRs languishing without being incorporated for lack of maintainer interest or time, that just looks worse).
For projects that really are just being thrown over the transom, mark them clearly as such and invite friendly forks.
Try to imagine who might find a particular project useful. Write that up as an example and incorporate it into the README or other documentation (eg. I imagine that anything related to stormwater runoff may be useful to civic planning departments, or perhaps environmental advocacy groups). Blog/tweet about the use case (your agency's comms team may be helpful here).
I'm not sure what EPA can do to make it more useful. My personal example is the USEPA/USEEIO modeling framework [1]. My agency uses a pricey and rigid proprietary modeling framework. When I suggested USEEIO as an extensible cost-effective alternative I was met with resistance that it is free and mustn't be any good and definitely not defensible in court. Classic .gov thinking. I think DoD prioritizing open-source along with the work of USDS/GSA at digital.gov needs to diffuse to Senior Execs at other agencies to shift the paradigm. Unfortunately it feels like this is a decade out. Thank you for pushing OSS in .gov and to your peers at EPA for USEEIO.
Speaking from experience, convincing management is a long-haul process.
It is needs to be repeatedly brought (but gently).
Forward links to success stories, provide counter arguments to FUD (but again, gently!)
I say gently because it's easy to create enemies by making people look bad, and that's a no-no, you have to gradually wear down the old consensus and build a new one.
The usual stuff; Do everything in public in the community. Make your public GitHub the place you do internal deployments from, so that you ensure everything deployed internally is public. Contribute back to your dependencies' upstream projects with bug reports/triage, patches, test cases and reviews. Contribute back to the distros you use, with bug reports, packaging updates, patches, testing etc. As well as funding US EPA developers to do this work, fund the most important projects you use through donations or support contracts or whatever else is available.
Re general purpose libraries, definitely consider splitting projects up into separate libraries, and switch the domain specific projects to using those libraries.
EPA | IT Cybersecurity Specialist | Durham, NC (telework & possibly full time remote) | $113-147k
EPA’s mission is to protect human health and the environment.
EPA deals with sensitive information, for example criminal investigations for polluters, and the business secret formulas for cleaning products which are evaluated for safety. EPA also has systems that must be online during radiation or environmental emergencies.
We are seeking cybersecurity professionals to aid keeping our systems secure.
New policy has allowed hiring of fully remote employees. Please ask the recruiter in the listing or during your interview.
I have have enjoyed working at the EPA (US Government) as an IT Specialist.
The good parts are working with people passionate about their jobs, on things that truly matter. Work life balance and management trust is very high.
The bad parts are there as well: outdated technology, lots of committees, long processes to do certain things. Pay is less then I could get in industry.
Mixed bag: Not a "fast to fire" environment. Ethics/values are very high but that doesn't automatically mean good management. You need to meet and work with a lot of people.. but people are very open to collaborating.
I have heard that the government in a way is supposed to be the "model employer"; kind of being an example to others in terms of diversity/inclusion, time off policies, benefits, etc. And I think is that sort of true at least at this agency.
I have many of the same experiences within an agency of the USDA. It's certainly not fast paced, and you really have to have some experience to what different "IT Specialist" positions do at this branch vs. this other branch, etc... but I really do enjoy my current position as an IT Specialist / Systems Analyst and it has a very modern feel versus my previous gig with a different govt component. One of the unsung benefits to government work is the ability to network and get experience with entirely different 'fields,' so to speak, and potentially pivot (e.g. Development to Networking or Cybersecurity) without necessarily undertaking a new degree program etc.
Sounds perfect :) People are always asking on HN, "how do I do a tech job that helps people rather than doing evil stuff". What better example than this. And comes with other perks like work-life balance too.
EPA | Software Engineer | Duluth, MN; Durham, NC; or Cincinnati, OH (your choice) | Telework for now, hybrid next year | $77k - $124k | US Citizen Only | https://epa.gov
Help analyze chemicals to ensure human health safety and protect the environment at the EPA.
Center for Computational Chemical Toxicology uses both wet and dry lab approaches to identify which chemicals are safe including evaluating the impact of PFAS.
Work you'll be doing: NLP, Machine Learning, R, Python, SAS, Perl.
https://www.science.org/content/article/blow-environment-epa...