FAST Interns are a part of the FAST team from day one and share in the successes of their team. We get real-world experience and spend our time working on valuable and challenging projects. We work alongside other FASTies and government employees to determine the necessary functions of the software to implement changes and develop solutions to complex problems. This process includes meeting with government employees to determine needs, working as a part of a team to develop and execute a plan, and following through with testing of the solutions that the team has created. Every day includes new challenges and responsibilities which makes the job interesting and rewarding. – Nick, FASTie since 2013
As Implementation Consultants, our job is to translate the client’s needs into technical solutions–which is a lot of fun for those up to the challenge! This means we work in two realms simultaneously. The first involves understanding the client’s overall goals, as well as their day-to-day business practices. We carefully gather this information through presentations, design sessions, and live demonstrations. Then we use all the business knowledge we gather about the client’s business practices and get down to the problem-solving. Integrity, flexibility, and good communication skills are key to becoming a well-rounded Implementation Consultant. Helping our clients transition from out-of-date and inflexible systems, to a robust, dynamic FAST system is an amazing experience. – Michael, FASTie since 2013
Data Analysts work every day with clients, teammates, and technology to configure solutions that meet the needs of the business users. Within the Data Warehouse, we build data layouts that turn raw data into a format that is useful to our clients. We keep the information up-to-date, verify the quality of the data, and maintain associations between related data. Once the data is collected and properly warehoused, we use Discovery and Analytics to write scripts and algorithms to evaluate the potential of the data use. We seek out trends or insights that our clients can leverage to guide policy and help them decide how to make their day-to-day work more effective. It is rewarding to identify opportunities where data collection and analysis can make a significant impact on client operations. We save our clients hours upon hours of aggregating historical records from various sources because we can put the important information in front of them right away. – Karly, FASTie since 2014
Technical Team members work to support functional development teams while ensuring all tiers of the application are running efficiently and securely. By proactively monitoring Production and Development environments, we address performance issues using database tuning techniques and work with developers to refactor their code. Using a variety of tool sets, we troubleshoot issues both internal and external to the application in order to improve processes. We provide consultation to other project team members regarding the application architecture. We are ultimately responsible for the integration and maintenance of the product on all tiers, including automation of tasks and implementation of new product features. We are problem-solvers who are constantly learning and while we face a variety of challenges, we also get to enjoy a wide range of successes. – Lucas, FASTie since 2011
The Conversion Team is exposed to many areas of FAST’s product while coordinating the extraction and loading of data. Our ultimate task is to provide our clients with the data from their legacy systems that they will work with in their new FAST system. Fulfilling this task is both challenging and rewarding. Daily efforts include managing client relationships, coordinating team dependencies, .NET coding and performance tuning for the conversion process, and heavy use of SQL creation, testing, and tuning. It’s incredibly rewarding to extract data from multiple legacy systems, transform it to meet modern-day needs, and then load it into a state-of-the-art system for our clients. – Ryun, FASTie since 2005
The Training Coordinator position is a truly dynamic role. We collaborate with all project members, both FAST and client, at a number of levels. In a typical day, we meet with clients and colleagues, work with business team members to better understand the system, and coordinate training for all agency staff before the new FAST system goes live. We also get the opportunity to use our skills and talents to guide our clients through the process of testing their new system. It is immensely rewarding to drive the efforts that transition users from their legacy system to their new FAST system and to see the looks of accomplishment on their faces when all the pieces finally fall into place for them. The relationships we build with both FAST colleagues and client counterparts last long after we move on to a new project. – Katie, FASTie since 2011
