White House seeks unified system to manage interns

The Executive Office of the President wants to retire the mélange of different programs it uses to manage internship hopefuls into a single unified system, according to solicitation documents released Saturday.

The new system should at least be able to manage application materials from the roughly 3,650 people who apply for White House internships annually, according to the request for proposals, and ideally should be able to scale beyond that too.

Managers of the White House Internship program currently have to navigate between three online platforms, five websites and five massive spreadsheets to manage different portions of the application process, according to the RFP.

The new system must be offered on a software-as-a-service model, the internship office said, meaning the vendor would be responsible for hosting the system in the cloud and for maintenance and upkeep.

The new system should require applicants to register for an account and allow them to use the same account to apply for multiple internship postings, the program said. Applicants also should be able to save incomplete applications and return to them by answering validating questions.

The system should be compatible with Microsoft Windows and Apple’s OS X system, the RFP stated. The platform also should be customizable so that, for instance, the dashboard for admitted interns will include different information than the dashboard for applicants, the RFP said.