US CTO seeks to scale agile thinking and open data across federal government

US CTO seeks to scale agile thinking and open data across federal government

Todd Park is looking for Presidential Innovation Fellows to help government work better.

by Alex Howard

"We're looking for a few good men and women"

In the context of the nation's new digital government strategy, Park announced the launch of five projects that this new class of Innovation Fellows will be entrusted with implementing: a broad Open Data Initiative, Blue Button for America, RFP-EZ, The 20% Campaign, and MyGov.

The idea of the Presidential Innovation Fellows Program, said Park, is to bring in people from outside government to work with innovators inside the government. These agile teams will work together within a six-month time frame to deliver results.

The fellowships are basically scaling up the idea of "entrepreneurs in residence," said Park. "It's a portfolio of five projects that, on top of the digital government strategy, will advance the implementation of it in a variety of ways."

The biggest challenge to bringing the five programs that the US CTO has proposed to successful completion is getting 15 talented men and women to join his team and implement them. There's reason for optimism. Park shared vie email that:

"... within 24 hours of TechCrunch Disrupt, 600 people had already registered via Whitehouse.gov to apply to be a Presidential Innovation Fellow, and another several hundred people had expressed interest in following and engaging in the five projects in some other capacity."

To put that in context, Code for America received 550 applications for 24 fellowships last year. That makes both of these fellowships more competitive than getting in to Harvard in 2012, which received 34,285 applications for its next freshman class. There appears to be considerable appetite for a different kind of public service that applies technology and data for the public good.

Park is enthusiastic about putting open government data to work on behalf of the American people, amplifying the vision that his predecessor, Aneesh Chopra, championed around the country for the past three years.

"The fellows are going to have an extraordinary opportunity to make government work better for their fellow citizens," said Park in our interview. "These projects leverage, substantiate and push forward the whole principle of liberating data. Liberate data."

Presidential Innovation Fellows: Open Data Initiatives | The White House

Presidential Innovation Fellows: Open Data Initiatives | The White House

The Presidential Innovation Fellows will pair top innovators from the private sector, non-profits, or academia with federal government employees to collaborate on game-changing solutions that aim to deliver significant business results in just six months.

Open Data Initiatives

Stimulate a rising tide of innovation that utilizes government data to create tools that help Americans better navigate their world, whether it’s finding the right health care provider, identifying the college that provides the best value for their money, saving money on electricity bills through smarter shopping or keeping their families safe by knowing which products have been recalled, and much more.

Stay updated, follow @ProjectOpenData on Twitter.

Description

The Open Data Initiatives program aims to “liberate” government data and voluntarily-contributed corporate data to fuel entrepreneurship, improve the lives of Americans in many tangible ways, and create jobs. As a model, decades ago, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration began making weather data available for free electronic download by anyone. Entrepreneurs utilized these data to create weather newscasts, websites, mobile applications, insurance, and much more. Similarly, the government’s decision to make the Global Positioning System (GPS) freely available has fueled a vast array of private sector innovations ranging from navigation systems to precision crop farming, creating massive public benefit and contributing significantly to economic growth. More recently, the Health Data Initiative, launched by the Institute of Medicine and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 2010, has opened growing amounts of health-related knowledge and information in computer-readable form from the vaults of the government and publicized the availability of these data to entrepreneurs and innovators. Hundreds of companies and nonprofits have utilized these data to develop new products and services that are helping millions of Americans and creating jobs of the future in the process.

for more details, see http://www.whitehouse.gov/innovationfellows/opendata