The Fall 2022 Innovation Internship Program has ended, and we are proud of the achievements of this cohort! The interns at Business Innovation & Technology (BIT) spent their Fall term working with Jeffco employees across several departments to research emerging technologies, explore new uses of existing county technologies, develop prototypes, and create business cases.
About the Fall 2022 Cohort
We had eight interns this fall from University of Denver, University of Colorado – Denver, and more! They worked on technology projects across various parts of the organization including Finance, Parks and Conservation, Fleet, Facilities Management, and BIT.
Making an Impact at Jeffco
Jefferson County Innovation and Digital Transformation interns lead technology and business process improvements within our local government.
- Morgan Haskett, University of Denver, worked to secure funding from the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act for transformational projects. Morgan partnered with Parks and Conservation, Fleet, and Facilities to apply for a Charge Ahead Colorado Grant which will support the installation of electric vehicle charging stations for both public and private use in the county. The grant, if awarded, will set the foundation for electrification of the county’s fleet as well as for publicly available chargers at popular trailheads!
- Nicole Dudas, University of Colorado – Boulder, engineered a prototype automation, using robotic process automation technology, to build Windows servers. She worked closely with the Systems team to recreate the steps that a human takes to build out a server. This bot is anticipated to save hundreds of employee hours every year and help the team respond more quickly to other requests.
- Veronika Dombayeva, University of Colorado Denver, worked with Jefferson County’s cybersecurity team during October Cybersecurity Awareness Month to deliver new gamified cybersecurity awareness programs, track participation, and document lessons learned and opportunities for improvement. Employees engaged in this year’s content over 4,000 times to develop and refine the skills needed to keep Jefferson County’s information safe!
- Alex K. investigated how county staff might leverage biometric authentication to access county equipment to increase efficiency and improve security. He provided leadership with a legislative analysis, vendor analysis, next steps, and recommendations for the county to pursue a pilot with employees.
- Matt Krzewinski, University of Denver, worked on two Power BI projects this fall to help teams extract insights from data. His work helped BIT determine the feasibility of implementing improvements to its internal cybersecurity dashboard. He also developed a prototype dashboard to better understand recruitment trends so that hiring managers can maximize their recruitment efforts.
- Cara Lachenmayer, University of Denver, continued to work with the Strategy, Planning and Analysis team to evaluate how Jeffco could use Power BI to transparently display financial information to the public. This semester she was able to create a process to more efficiently extract and transform financial data to be displayed in Power BI. By leveraging technology that the county already uses, Cara’s project has the potential to save the county approximately $36,000 per year.
- Carly Raskin, University of Denver, worked on several projects this semester, but was primarily responsible for evaluating how the county might leverage Internet of Things technologies to improve efficiency and service delivery. She identified potential use cases such as sensors to efficiently manage trash removal, parking management solutions, and wildfire prevention technologies. She will continue her internship in Spring 2023.
- Christopher Seven, University of Denver, continued his work on Low-code/No-code technologies and conducted research on how the county might leverage blockchain technologies to improve county services and record management. He finished his internship in October after over a year at the county helping to pilot robotic process automation.
We thank our interns for their time working at Jeffco this fall. We are proud of their growth and the impact they have made at Jeffco. We also appreciate our project sponsors, Andrea Niedziela (SIF), Jill Fraser (BIT), Philip Pappas (SIF), Adam Waltzman (BIT), Marty Hartley (BIT), Andy Corbett (BIT), Bruck Makonnen (BIT), and Daniel Collins (BIT) for providing challenges for our interns to tackle. And lastly, thank you Katie Gathright and Marlin McDaniel for running the fall program.
Future Opportunities with the Innovation Team
Business Innovation & Technology offers Innovation Internships every fall, spring, and summer and we are currently recruiting for Summer 2023 (Application Link)! We also offer year-long paid fellowships targeted at recent graduates. If you are interested or know someone that would like to be a part of our future programs, please contact the Innovation Team.