Gadgetory

in today's hot tech economy you might think every high-tech employee earns a pretty paycheck many do but Jacob Solomon isn't one of them he's a recipient of a fellowship from Code for America a SAN francisco-based nonprofit organization often described as a Peace Corps for geeks Solomon says he was excited to learn he'd been selected for the competitive program at least initially and then the reality set in that this is a year of public service and not a year of making money in tech in San Francisco for the year the fellows received 35 thousand dollars a meager amount especially in San Francisco I applied for really the opportunity to do meaning for the 28th fellows chosen form small teams and are assigned to local governments around the u.s. to solve challenges Silicon Valley style let's approach this as a start-up would let's do this quickly let's do this in an agile creative innovative way and not take three or four years to solve the problem but actually come up with some ideas that might change the conversation in three months six months using web technologies Code for America has spread Civic innovation from the gulf coast to the east coast one of the programs that we did our first year in city of Boston fellows took about three months to build this web application that helped parents find the right public school for their kids we were told if it had gone through normal channels it would have taken two years and cost about 2 million dollars Solomon is working with San Francisco's Human Services Agency to increase enrollment in benefits such as medical food assistance and job resources but the idea of offering no wrong door to human services so client could walk in to any building call any phone number and they would get funneled through the system in a way that works for them so they end up in the right programs in the end a tall order but the fellows are already prototyping possibilities at this career center every job posting is printed on paper Solomon and his team quickly mocked up this mobile application that offers online job boards we're getting what we hope is a product that significantly increases enrollment of our clients increases efficiencies and our internal operations and makes the client experience better and we're getting it for about two hundred thousand dollars a small price to pay for a big technological leap forward in San Francisco I'm see me das cnet.com for CBS News