New presidential fellows zoom in on VA

The third class of Presidential Innovation Fellows includes 17 men and 10 women, half a dozen of whom will work on projects at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The 27 fellows will target three areas of focus -- open data, platforms and crowdsourcing -- at 11 agencies. But there is a particular emphasis on the VA, which has suffered a rash of IT-related problems in the past few years.

In the previous PIF class, four of the 43 fellows worked on various projects at the VA. The VA named former PIF Marina Martin as its chief technology officer in July 2013 and announced a new VA Center for Innovation in February 2013 to lead innovation efforts and establish more partnership opportunities with the Entrepreneur in Residence and fellows program.

The PIF program is supported by the General Services Administration's 18F program, and PIFs will work alongside the U.S. Digital Service during their fellowships.

"Over the next 12 months, these innovators will collaborate and work with change agents inside government on three high-impact initiatives aimed at saving lives, saving taxpayer money and fueling our economy," PIF Program Director Garren Givens and U.S. Deputy CTO Ryan Panchadsaram wrote in a GSA blog post.