Developing effective internships within public sector organizations.

Almost everyone agrees that, in theory at least, there should exist a symbiotic relationship between organizations and the interns they occasionally hire. With a perfect internship program, the organization receives an enthusiastic, reasonably experienced human resource, generally without much financial obligation or long-term commitment, and the intern receives valuable work experience, topnotch professional contacts, and, perhaps, an opportunity to secure longer-term employment with the sponsoring agency.

In practice, however, the agency-intern relationship is far from simple and is filled with potential pitfalls and frustrations that lead many public managers to avoid, rather than promote, these kinds of commitments. The lack of clarity surrounding expectations on the part of each party can often make both the intern and the organization uneasy about entering into an agreement of many months' duration. Or, from the public manager's standpoint, given the chronic strain of organizational pressures and demands, the idea of taking on and supervising an intern may seem like a colossal misuse of time and energy. In short, public managers are not automatically cheered by the prospect of securing an intern or, having got one, are not always certain how best to use the potential resource.

For the last 18 years, the authors of this article have been directors of a highly successful internship program sponsored and funded by the West Virginia Legislature. The Judith A. Herndon Legislative Fellows Program involves the placement of a small number of highly trained university students with both legislative agencies and committees, as well as with state and local governmental agencies in the state's capital city of Charleston. As program directors, we have interviewed and spoken with numerous agency heads and supervisors about the agency's role in establishing effective agency-internship collaboration. Organizations seeking to effectively use interns have many questions, including how and where to contact universities and other sources of interns; how to recruit, train, and evaluate interns; and what are the legal and financial obligations where interns are involved. A large and growing literature speaks to many of these issues. (1)

This article focuses on another set of critical concerns for organizations seeking to benefit from an effective intern relationship: What are the agency's responsibilities if interns are going to be productive contributors to the work of the organization? After a brief description of the Herndon program and its objectives, the article summarizes some of the specific things agencies can do--and avoid doing--to maximize the productive impact of an intern's services to the organization.

The Herndon Legislative Fellows Program

The Herndon internship program is an internship sponsored by the West Virginia Legislature. The internship was begun as a pilot project by the Joint Committee on Government and Finance in May 1980, and it was established as a permanent legislative program by House Concurrent Resolution No. 35 in April 1981. The primary goal of the program is to offer 10 carefully selected undergraduate students from institutions of higher learning in West Virginia the opportunity to participate in the operation of the state's legislature and administrative agencies.

The four-month Herndon internship consists of two segments. For the first two months of the internship--coinciding with the 60-day regular annual session of the West Virginia Legislature--students serve as chief legislative aides to individual state senators and delegates, with five students being assigned to the Senate and five to the House of Delegates. Although the duties of individual fellows vary, all the students are introduced to and develop a basic understanding of the politics of legislation, the operations of legislative committees, constitutional restraints on the legislature, legislative rules, parliamentary procedures, constituent services, and executive-legislative liaison and relationships.

The interns are called upon to perform all of the functions typically associated with chief legislative aides--from the mundane acts of photocopying, filing, and answering telephones to the more substantive tasks of drafting bills, doing constituent service, writing speeches, meeting with lobbyists, presenting and defending bills before committees and subcommittees, and building coalitions for and negotiating on behalf of their mentors' legislative proposals. As one of the interns accurately put it, "We do everything but vote."

Following the 60-day legislative session, each fellow is assigned for two months to a nonlegislative administrative position within the executive branch. The second-half assignments are selected and designed primarily with each student's long-term career ambitions in mind. Students considering law school or legal careers might be placed in the Attorney General's office or on the staff of a state supreme court justice. On the other hand, a journalism major might work for one of the local television stations or newspapers in the capital city, and students with an interest in criminal justice might be assigned to the state's Division of Corrections or one of the regional jails.

The training and skills of the students selected for the Herndon internship program--highly computer literate, skilled in legal and other types of research and presentations, experienced in collaboration--coupled with their native enthusiasm, make them prime recruits for agencies willing to spend the time and energy necessary to cultivate their potential contributions. As one city manager noted in another study, "Wherever they work, interns help to infuse a tremendous amount of energy into our regular staff. As a former intern myself, I saw not only an obligation to extend internship opportunities but to recruit some of the top people in the state to our city government." (2)

Agency Responsibilities for Ensuring the Effectiveness of an Internship

We interviewed many agency sponsors and supervisors to determine the agency's responsibilities for maximizing interns' contributions to agency goals and objectives. These issues have also been explored separately by Stone, Somerick, and Furness. (3) While there is no simple set of rules to follow to guarantee the successful integration of interns into agency life, the comments received from agency supervisors and the interns themselves suggest some general principles of which agency managers should be aware.

Appreciate the Huge Variety and Complexity of Tasks Interns Can Perform for an Agency

All too often, agency personnel have an overly narrow, confining view of an intern's capabilities. "Every agency has significant, mission-critical jobs that capable interns can handle--or at least participate in," one state agency executive related. "Unfortunately, agency personnel often fail to consider involving interns at this level of significance." With just a little imagination, interns can be put to work on many things the agency or supervisor has not had the opportunity to investigate, including

* Researching, comparing, and organizing what other states, courts, or legislatures have done with respect to the issue or problem being examined.

* Creating and distributing surveys and compiling, tabulating, and analyzing the data received.

* Preparing necessary groundwork and supportive background details for initiatives the agency may be seeking to develop.

* Brainstorming, together with other staff, about how the intern might use his analytical skills to investigate new or different ways of cataloging and presenting agency data gathering requirements, or establishing more effective means of obtaining client/customer feedback and program evaluation information.

Advice from Susan Tull, assistant director of the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkley is worth noting in this regard: "Don't use interns as gofers. They have something to contribute. They bring some value to the organization." (4) As an outsider, the intern is not blinded by the "We've always done it this way" syndrome, and for every unrealistic suggestion that may be offered, the intern is equally likely to generate the germ of an idea or approach that could be turned into an innovative program initiative. Consider just a handful of tasks the most recent group of Herndon interns were called upon to perform during their 4 months of service:

* Developing from start to finish a performance audit for the Performance Evaluation and Research Division of the West Virginia Legislative Auditor's Office and presenting the findings and agency recommendations to the appropriate oversight committee of the legislature.

* Conducting legal research comparing different state code provisions concerning child abuse and neglect and drafting an outline of necessary provisions for a proposed bill the intern's host agency sought to have introduced during the legislative session. The intern then arranged meetings between different government agencies, selected interest group representatives, and agency personnel to develop strategy for pushing the proposed legislation.

* Dealing with every imaginable issue of constituent service in the absence of the intern's legislator. This involved cataloging the nature and significance of the constituent's request, handling irate and belligerent demands from angry citizens, acting as ombudsman with different state agencies to redress constituent problems, and interpreting and explaining the legislator's position--and likely "wiggle room"--on issues with constituents, lobbyists, and representatives of the governor's office during receptions, prayer breakfasts, and cloakroom discussions.

* Conducting tours of media facilities, writing scripts for the legislator's weekly television program, dealing with the media, organizing and monitoring the legislator's schedule, and answering mail.

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