Outgoing Chief Technology Officer Talks Open Innovation

February 8, 2012 By IdeaConnection

The outgoing chief technology officer of the United States has given a lengthy interview to The Atlantic, where amongst other topics he talks about the Open Government Initiative, open innovation and the prospects of collaboration to solve the big issues of our time.

Aneesh Chopra is the first American Federal Chief Technology Officer of the United States (CTO) and the post was created by President Obama following a campaign promise.

In a statement released by the White House, the President was effusive in his praise of Chopra’s achievements:

“Aneesh found countless ways to engage the American people using technology…His legacy of leadership and innovation will benefit Americans for years to come, and I thank him for his outstanding service”.

In the interview, published this week, Chopra spoke with The Atlantic’s Nancy Scola:

The White House’s Open Government Initiative focuses on three areas: transparency, participation, and collaboration. Can you rate the progress that has been made on each thus far?

I’m the wrong person to grade them, but I will rank them. That might be safer. We’ve seen great results in transparency, and we have absolutely delivered. It’s never enough, for sure, but I’m very pleased with our experience opening up data. We’ve seen wide-spread adoption of publishing data [in the executive branch].

I’m, ah, excited about the prospects of collaboration, because so much of the open innovation story is built on collaboration and the idea that to solve the big challenges of our time, we’re going to have to tap into the expertise of the American people. In the markets where we’ve focused, we’ve seen results — they just haven’t scaled across government.

And on participation, the arrow is trending up. There were a lot of regulatory and administrative burdens that made it very hard to take advantage of social media and other techniques, but we’ve spent the last year and a half minimizing the barriers.

You can read the full interview here.


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