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."

Making a Difference: Innovation Pathway and Entrepreneurs in Residence

Interview with Todd Park Chief Technology Officer of the United States

Prior to becoming Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. in March 2012, and prior to that, CTO at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 2009, Park co-founded three companies that developed web-based and telehealth solutions for doctors and consumers.

Q – Since you joined HHS, what have you learned about making innovation happen in the government?
I’ve learned that a lot of the same rules that drive success in private sector innovation also apply in the public sector.  The philosophy I used extensively in the private sector boiled down to what Eric Ries calls “lean startup” — the whole idea behind lean startup being  that you want to engage customers early and rapidly prototype solutions in collaboration with them in order to achieve maximum success.

We have successfully applied lean startup principles at HHS across a range of key initiatives.  We’ve emphasized the need to rapidly prototype solutions, engage customers in f those solutions as soon as possible, and then quickly and repeatedly iterate those solutions based on working with customers, until we arrive at both an optimal understanding of what customers really want and a solution that delivers what they want.

more...
http://blogs.fda.gov/fdavoice/index.php/2012/04/making-a-difference-innovation-pathway-and-entrepreneurs-in-residence/

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Todd Park, CTO of Health and Human Services is hosting his third annual Health Data Initiative aka Datapalooza

Third Time’s the Charm!

Sven Patrick Larsen at Pixels & Pills - 18 minutes ago

He’s at it again! Todd Park, CTO of Health and Human Services is hosting his third annual Health Data Initiative aka Datapalooza and this year promises to be the best one yet. In addition to Todd, other P & P favorites like Tom Goetz and former US Senator Bill Frist will be discussing how to utilize [...] more »

Todd Park Was Right…Now What? Getting our heads in the cloud

From The Health Care Blog

Todd Park Was Right…Now What?

© THCB 1995-2012

By JOHN HALLOCK

In March of 2005, I staffed an interview between Todd Park and Steve Lohr of The New York Times in the cafeteria of the old New York offices of the “Grey Lady.” At the time, Park was heading a very small web-based start-up company that was trying to convince medical groups – and on that day, a leading national technology business reporter – that web-based “cloud” technologies would become mainstream in the healthcare IT industry and were the only logical means to get the hundreds of thousands of independent U.S. doctors and their small offices to go digital...

http://thehealthcareblog.com/blog/2012/03/15/todd-park-was-right%E2%80%A6now-wha/