SI - Accessing and Presenting Data Public Policy Analysis

PPIC’s Summer Intern Program provides an opportunity for undergraduate and graduate students interested in a public policy career to work in a policy research environment. Intern projects are proposed by PPIC staff members and designed around a specific set of tasks and deliverables that can be accomplished within the term of the internship. Please complete your application by February 9, 2026.

We expect to make final selection decisions by mid‑April.

Eric McGhee, Hans Johnson

Understanding California’s Future (UCF) is an initiative at PPIC dedicated to tracking important developments and trends in the areas of demography, housing, governance, and climate change. One of the key features of the initiative is a commitment to nimble, responsive, and accessible analysis and presentation of data. Given the wide range of topics within UCF, it can be challenging to stay on top of all the data sources and ensure we have a properly formatted version of each ready in a timely manner for influencing policy conversations.

The goal for the summer project is to help produce the next version of a tool for automating the acquisition, extraction, and formatting of publicly available data sources. Prior versions of the tool were implemented in Python as a Jupyter Notebook and helped staff retrieve fresh releases of datasets from sources like the California state demographer and the U.S. Census. Some pieces of the tool have already been migrated to an interactive web‑based form.

The summer intern will work to debug and migrate the remaining parts of the tool, and will explore new data that might be added.

Candidates will be able to adapt the existing project to a new environment, make it more usable for research staff, expand its functionality to new sources of data, and document their work for future revisions of the tool. The intern will also work with the project directors to identify new data sources and explore the best way to present information from them.

The intern will benefit from working with project directors who are established policy analysts with decades of experience and who can teach the intern about data analysis in a policy environment.

Produce the next version of a tool for automating download and sharing of newly released public data.

The intern will work with project leaders to:

• Migrate existing pieces of a Jupyter Notebook tool to an interactive environment using a Python‑based framework such as Flask or Streamlit that can support form‑based interactions via HTML output
• Identify important new data sources and understand their value
• Work creatively to develop new ways of presenting critical information
• Leave a well‑documented project that can be extended in the future

The intern will be a member of the Understanding California’s Future policy group, will participate in intern program events, and will present a summary of this work to PPIC staff at the end of the summer.

The intern for this project should possess:

• Strong experience with and understanding of Python, HTML, and CSS, or similar
• Some experience with data analysis and data visualization
• Ability to work independently, handle feedback well, and change direction when necessary
• Training in economics, political science, demography, public health, public policy, sociology, or urban planning a plus

Interns are offered the opportunity to participate in the collegial atmosphere of PPIC through daily interaction with all aspects of the institute. They are invited to join the staff in their regular meetings and to attend PPIC’s outside events, including the institute’s public affairs programs and research briefings. PPIC offers access to the Institute of Governmental Sciences library at the University of California, Berkeley, allowing interns to work with many important databases, journals, and statistical datasets.

The intern program also includes a discussion of California state policy by PPIC’s government affairs staff.

Each intern’s project will include an initial meeting…