President’s Chief Technology Officer announces new round of Innovation program
President’s Chief Technology Officer announces new round of Innovation program
When President Obama has trouble saving a document to his network drive, well let’s just say, he doesn’t call Todd Park. Park is the Chief Technology Officer of the United States, and his job is — shall we say — a bit more large scale:
“The U.S. Chief Technology Officer is a position that President Obama created when he came to office. It’s really about creating and executing projects,” explains Park. “One of the initiatives is something called the Open Data Initiatives program. This is a program that essentially seeks to liberate data, in machine readable form, from the vaults of the government as fuel for entrepreneurship, innovation and scientific discovery.”
To help tackle the job of releasing all this new information as well as other big projects, the government launched a program last summer to bring in a group of techies from the business world as so-called Innovation Fellows.
“We have been tremendously excited by the success of round one of Presidential Innovation Fellows program, and so we are very excited today to be launching round two,” says Park. “We’ve actually identified a set of game-changing projects to apply technology to do massive public good. We are going to market with those projects and then seeking the best people on the planet to come and serve in government working on those projects.”
Park’s team will be accepting applications for the next six weeks. You can read more about the Presidental Innovation Fellows program here.
There’s a lot happening in the world. Through it all, Marketplace is here for you.
You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible.
Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.
