GSA digital government guru Gwynne Kostin receives yearlong fellowship

The head of digital government at the General Services Administration will start a yearlong fellowship with the Partnership for Public Service next week, the group said Wednesday.

Starting Oct. 13, Gwynne Kostin will work on the partnership’s “Ready to Govern” project, which aims to smooth the transition between presidential administrations come 2017.

“A lot of our programming we’re rolling out that we think is going to be useful for the transition, she’s going to be an instrumental part of in determining what the requirements are and making it easy to use, easy to digest,” said David Eagles, the partnership’s director of presidential transition.

Right now, Eagles said there are a half-dozen people working on the project, but that number will double by the end of the year. Currently, Kostin is the only federal government worker on the team, he said.

Kostin will join the organization under a Intergovernmental Personnel Act fellowship, which allows feds to take on temporary assignments outside their agency. As part of the program, Kostin will continue to receive her salary through GSA.

Kostin has a long history in government. Before her current post, she served as director of mobile for GSA’s Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies. Prior to that, she was director of new media for the Department of Homeland Security. Kostin received the D.C.’s Top 50 Women in Tech 2015 award from FedScoop earlier this year.

“I know it sounds corny, but it really is important for me to make the world a better place,” Kostin said at the time.

A spokesman for GSA said in an email Kostin would return to the agency at the end of her fellowship.

“She’s definitely a rock star,” Eagles said. “She’s big in this digital space. And it’s important that we connect with these transition teams with all the information that we have. And she’s going to be a big part of that.”

The news about the Kostin fellowship was originally reported by Nextgov.

Watch Kostin talk to FedScoop about mobility in government in the video below.