A New Dawn, A New Day... And I'm Feeling Good

Since my previous post a lot has happened. We have gotten an amazing apartment in Silver Spring, Maryland (a suburb just North of D.C.), I have accepted a position at the Government Accountability Office as a Analyst for the Health Care Team, and our furniture and stuff has arrived earlier than expected. Heather has also had some good luck with the job search. After interviewing she was offered a position that she turned down because it wasn't a good fit with her interests. It is nice to be in a position where we don't have to settle for things. Looking over the piles of boxes in the dining room, it is nice to think that in a couple weeks we will have our apartment in a semi-permanent state. However, the chaos is also nice. Opening boxes and remembering things you haven't seen in over two years (we left a lot of stuff in Logan when we went up to Vancouver) is nice.

Our apartment is in a great area; walking distance to nearly everything we need. After living in Vancouver we have come to appreciate being in walking distance to things, and the improved quality of life that it provides. Being able to walk next door to the library, walk a couple blocks to amazing restaurants, groceries (including the best Thai market I have been to) and two movie theaters (one of which is an AFI theatre), and few blocks to the Metro makes it an ideal place for us. At first I thought the area was quite gentrified. However, now it seems to me that it is more of an urban renewal. The area is extremely diverse and many of the projects are focused on making the community more inclusive and accountable as opposed to more divisive and exclusionary which is found in many similar projects nationally. I look forward to seeing the plans unfold around us and possibly playing a part at some point. 

I start at the GAO in a couple weeks and I am really looking forward to it. The job seems like a perfect fit. The GAO provides oversight, advice, and recommendations to Congress for the creation and improvement of public policy in a variety of areas. In a 2006  audit it was found that every dollar spent on the GAO led to 105 dollars of savings for the U.S. government. With a budget of 500 million dollars, it means the GAO saved the U.S. government 50 billion dollars. However, saving money is far from the only charge that the GAO is given. In the area of health care it is responsible for synthesizing academic knowledge and suggesting appropriate public policy based upon it. This means interviewing experts in the field and identifying (and even carrying out) relevant studies to ascertain answers to the needs of Congress. From the three hour interview I had, a few things became clear about the GAO, all of which I am extremely excited for. The first is that the organization is very flat hierarchically. The research teams are organized in groups of 4-6 people with the four primary levels of workers: analysts, senior analysts, assistant directors, and directors. These team members have regular contact and meet frequently as the research process moves forward. There is not a significant chain of command in the team, it is fine and expected that the analyst can go straight to the director if they have a question or have found relevant information for them. This seems to create a real sense of collegiality among those who interviewed me. 

Another exciting thing was the intellectual rigor with which the reports are written. In the interviews and on their website they emphasize the importance of using quality sources and having significant oversight to make sure the points based on those sources are appropriate. The senior analyst that interviewed me focused on this point and said that there are rounds of revisions that focus on tying the document back to the sources in order to have the report be as strong as possible. This is because parts of each report are likely to become public policy or will be used to reform current policy. This is a level of influence I was not expecting to have in my first career position. It is particularly exciting because as an analyst you are given a part of the report which you are largely responsible for. This autonomy with accountability sounds exciting and I look forward to seeing it in practice. It seems like a great place to start my career. A career, what a scary and exciting proposition.