If you're a software developer who wants to take your special skills and help your country,

what should you do? Join the military? That's a good option for some, but it might not be a good

fit for you personally. In the United States, we have a very interesting civil option that's

quite new, the United States Digital Service. This service was created by President Obama to

fix broken government software system, such as the rocky start to the

healthcare system. Developers and designers can serve in the service for as little as three months

or as long as four years, and they get paid roughly market rates. It's an interesting

model indeed, and I'm excited to have David Holmes from the U.S. Digital Service here to talk

about their projects and how they're using Python to make the

government work for the people. This is Talk Python to me. Episode 219 recorded June 19, 2019.

Welcome to Talk Python to me, a weekly podcast on Python, the language, the libraries, the ecosystem, and the personalities.

This is your host, Michael Kennedy. Follow me on Twitter where I'm at M. Kennedy.

Keep up with a show and listen to past episodes at TalkPython.fm,

and follow the show on Twitter via at Talk Python.

This episode is brought to you by The Local Maximum Podcast and Rollbar.

Please check out what they're offering during their segments.

It really helps support the show.

Hey, everyone.

Before we get to the interview, I want to quickly tell you about a new course we just launched. It's our first major Flask course, and it's called Building Data-Diven Web Apps in Flask and SQL Alchemy. This one's a deep dive into Flask. We cover things like routing, models, templates,

databases and migrations, and even deployment and security. And we do all of this in the

context of building a clone of the piPI.org website.

Check it out over at training.tokbython.fm.

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