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Edwin Torres
"I was able to use my skills in a way that had a direct impact on my community and the public."
I am a software engineer at 18F, a technology consulting organization that works with other federal agencies to improve the user experience of their services.
18F has been a remote work-friendly organization for years and I am the first person to work full-time from the Caribbean archipelago.
Before joining 18F, I worked as a consultant for the Puerto Rico Department of Education where one of my responsibilities was to redesign the Puerto Rico School Report Card. Fortunately, six months earlier, I was a consumer trying to use this same report card but its design prevented me from getting any useful information from it. Knowing the obstacles faced by parents when trying to use this report card to understand the performance of their children's school, I was able to tackle this project in a way that had a direct impact on my community and the public. This project led me to learn about the civic tech community and about organizations like 18F and the U.S. Digital Service.
Since I joined the civic service, I have learned from other public servants many ways to improve government services in areas like accessibility, ethics in new technologies, racial justice, and language transcreation. In turn, I’ve also had the opportunity to educate them on a topic I am very familiar with: the obstacles Puerto Ricans face when interacting with the federal government. For example, it’s common that territories don’t even appear on maps, drop-downs, and other visuals in the way that the states do. Having the opportunity to bring these issues to light and to improve digital services to the U.S. territories has been the highlight of my two years as a public servant.
