Roles Within The Community

We use particular language to describe some of the defined roles in our community. Here's where we break them down.

Base Team

Base Team is the name we give to our core team, or the folks that keep the lights on at Code for Australia. This is the team that finds opportunities and creates programs for people to join. Generally, they look after all things finance, sales, communications, people, impact and fun.

Fellows

Fellows are the incredible people that join us for our Fellowship programs. Fellows serve as agents for change, helping transform government from the inside out through 6 month projects. Fellows are mission-driven digital professionals with multi-disciplinary experience in software engineering, design, user experience or product management. To find out more about what it takes to be a Fellow, check out our Ambassador Guidebook here.

Associates

Associates are basically folks who have "graduated" from a Fellowship. They've wrapped up a project with us and have either gone onto another project, or been extended with the same Government Partner.

Government Hosts

Government Hosts are the very special people who create space for, and work alongside, our Fellowship teams within government. Typically these are the people who did a lot of work to get the Fellowship started and have signed up to work closely with Code for Australia for the duration of the Fellowship.

We prefer Government Host over client because we're looking to these individuals inside government to look after/host our teams for the duration of the Fellowship. This means things like:

• being willing to exercise their power to overcome any barriers

• being willing to use their authority to make design decisions when there is an impasse

• proactively supporting the Fellows and being available to work with them through thick and thin

Government Partners

When we say Government Partner we mean the specific government department/agency that we are working with.

We prefer Partner over client when referring to our friends in government, because we hope our time together is a genuine partnership rather than the traditional vendor - client relationship, which has a transactional feel to it. We are here to collaborate, not to transact.

Mentors

We have the incredible problem of having too many people wanting to be a part of Code for Australia, than we have places for them to work with us. Because of this, we have a strong community of talented mentors who are eager to use their skills in helping along those we work with.

Partners

This is the umbrella term we use for the many organisations (government and non-government) who've supported our work in one way or another - check out this article for what this looks like in practice.

We're lucky to have all sorts of folks partner with Code for Australia, sharing the power of their resources, people, time and ideas with us. Check out this page for a list of some of these incredible organisations.