US CTO Todd Park: Obama...

President Barack Obama is famous for his affinity for his BlackBerry  and science fairs , but the tech love goes a lot further than that. Todd Park, the U.S. chief technology officer, today described the President as having a “very high geek quotient” with a “go go go” attitude when it comes to new tech initiatives — which, yes, he likes in and of themselves, but more importantly as a means to an end. The comments were made during a fireside chat at  TC Disrupt in New York , where Park along with U.S. CIO Steven VanRoekel also announced the government’s big plans for opening up its data and courting developers . “He is focused on how technology and data help you get the right healthcare for your family, pick the right college for your kid, help keep your kid safe, make the best decisions on save energy bill,” said Park. “It’s tech as a means to an end.” At the sidelines of the stage, Park told me that when he and VanRoekel proposed the whole idea of open data to the President, he got very fired up and wanted to act fast. “He loved it. The first thing he said to us was ‘Go, go, go!’” he said. But, yes, he is a bit of a geek, even still. On the subject of Obama and science fairs: “He hangs out five times as long as needed.” VanRoekel noted also that how technology is an important factor in how people should conceive of economic recovery going forward. “When you look at U.S. history, the majority of Fortune 500 companies were founded in bad economic times,” he said, and at the same time they have been marked by “inflection points” in technology that helped to catapult these companies forward. “We have an opportunity to seize that [model] again,” he said. As for the government itself, there is a general sense of risk aversion prevalent among of public servants when it comes to technology, VanRoekel admitted. That will play out especially with the proposed Data Act, which will put a lot of requirements on public servants. The two are trying to stem the possible tide of dissent early on with this: “I want to have conversations with Congress right now,” said VanRoekel, who wants to know: “What is the burden put on federal agencies in this process?” But Park added, “If you can figure out a way to release their mojo, they can do amazing things.” An interesting connection that he drew here was that public servants, by definition, are not motivated by money — something he said that he noticed characterized the best entrepreneurs when he was still in the private sector (he had a long carrer as a consultant at Booz Allen and also in health tech): “When I was in the private sector one characteristic that differentiated the best entrepreneurs from the others was that they were not in it for the stock options but for a mission, to deliver something that was helpful… Every entrepreneurial journey it turns out is like this.”

The 21st Century Gold R...

President Obama has a “high geek quotient” according to his senior technology advisor, Todd Park. Park and U.S. CIO Steven VanRoekel announced five major federal initiatives at TechCrunch Disrupt today, along with a call to entrepreneurs to join in a new gold rush of data that will be released in the coming months. Like how the GPS industry helped pave the way for iPhone apps, Park and VanRoekel hope to catalyze new industries in energy, education, security, and the nonprofit sector with the new open data guidelines. Additionally, they’re opening up an application process for an executive fellows program (apply here ; we’ll have a post soon with more details). The five major initiatives are as follows: 1. Expand the one-click download program of “ Blue Button ” to energy, education, security, and the nonprofit sector. Blue Button was an early open data initiative from Park’s previous job at HHS to allow federal medical recipients (Department of Defense, Veterans, and Medicare) to access their health information in an easy, one-click process for use with all of their doctors. A relevant recent extension of Blue Button for energy, “Green Button,” is already in use by iPhone app makers to give homeowners feedback on their energy use. Additional energy info will be coming soon in the hopes that savvy entrepreneurs can make profitable, socially-beneficial use of the new data. 2. Expand Blue Button itself to private sector insurance companies. Right now, only federal beneficiaries have access to the data, yet many Americans would also like an easy way to track their medical history and share relevant results between doctors. 3. A PayPal for foreign aid, the “20% Campaign.” The federal government has a nasty habit of losing crates of cash and foreign aid while paying security forces and contract workers in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Park and VanRoekel hope the new system can better track the money trail, and therefore reduce waste, fraud, and abuse. One study suggests that India could save billions with electronic transfers , and the savings could be just as significant for the U.S. 4. A small-business friendly process for securing government contracts, named RFP-EZ. Don’t have a DC-bureau or a cushy relationship with a senator? This program aims to give the small guy a shot at big contracts. Park argued in his talk that the government sometimes prefers savvy startups in Silicon Valley, who can save the government a lot more than the typical contractor. 5. MyGov, a user-friendly website to find government services. Currently, government services are organized by government need, not citizen, making many services difficult to find. These initiatives will roll out over the comings months and we’ll update our audience with relevant details.

U.S. Launches Digital R...

There’s all sorts of data that the government has, but very little of it is actually accessible by developers. But the U.S. Government is trying to change that: Wednesday at TechCrunch Disrupt, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park and Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel announced a new initiative within the government to open up data that was previously locked up in government documents and arcane backend systems. That will allow developers to create new applications and services based on that data. The digital road map is based on the following five ideas: Open Data as the new default Anywhere, anytime on any device Everything should be an API Make government data social Change the meaning of social participation With the launch of the new digital roadmap, the U.S. government is hoping to increase the way that users can access data in many different ways. It’s also designed to decrease inefficiency in government and to allow developers to build applications that the government would never have dreamed up. It’s also built around the idea that government data has to become less sprawling. As a result, it is going to stop building new .gov websites, and ensure that all agencies which already have a website need to have a /DEVELOPERS page. The government has also been pushing innovation by sponsoring meetups, hackathons, and “datapaloozas” through which developers can show off new apps that they’ve built. And here are the first five projects that Park and VanRoekel announced as part of the initiative: The launch of a portal called MyGov, aimed to be a user-friendly website for government services. The launch of the 20% Campaign, a way to move from cash payments to mobile payments overseas. Introduction of a program called RFP-EZ, which will let startups that don’t usually compete for government projects have access to them. The launch of Blue Button for America, which will let developers create apps to allow U.S. citizens to have access to their own health data. Open data for access from new industries, including energy, education, non-profits, and safety.

Twitter Back Up In Paki...

A temporary solution to the drama that unfolded this morning when Twitter was blocked in Pakistan — some believe over representations of the Prophet Mohammed and Twitter’s refusal to block these images; and some believe while it was testing an image filtering service. Whatever it was, the site is now back up –after an order from Prime Minister. Pakistan’s Express Tribune  is reporting that Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani made the decision after the site was down for the day on a mandate from the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority. But it is still not clear why the authorities shut down access in the first place. As we reported earlier today, some reports — still unconfirmed directly by any Pakistani authorities (we have reached out on this) — said that the government was concerned about images of the Prophet that were being tweeted as part of an activist campaign in support of the freedom of expression among Muslims and in Muslim countries. A move to quash sites that facilitate Muslim activism is not unprecedented , so it is very plausible here. However, others have raised an issue about whether it might be something else: they allege that authorities were testing an image-blocking service . In other words: potentially equally restrictive, but different from the specific Prophet drawing campaign. The whole event sparked off a huge amount of negative response both within Pakistan and further afield. In the country itself, more technically savvy / better equipped users were able to continue accessing the site: it still worked on the Opera Mini browser via the mobile internet, according to several reports. But otherwise, access across the country was denied. Since we still don’t know why accesses was denied in the first place, it’s hard to say whether the public outcry had a role to play here. Nevertheless, it’s a very encouraging sign when you see people coming together so quickly around an issue. We’ll continue trying to figure out what exactly happened and for those in Pakistan returning to the Twitterverse, welcome back! [Image: TakeBackPakistan , Flickr]

Sure, Draw Something. J...

Pictures of the Prophet Mohammad have always been a highly contentious issue — they’re not explicitly prohibited in the Qu’ran but many Sunni Muslims forbid the idea, while others do not seem to mind as much. Among the latter group are those who feel that banning such images is a restriction on freedom of expression. The issue at the center of the Pakistan-blocks-Twitter story today has been reported to be around a viral activist campaign that’s been running for the past few years to point attention to this. But as with the actual blocking of Twitter itself in Pakistan — there has been no official Pakistani government statement about what is actually behind the current Twitter block at the moment (here is a screenshot of an  alleged email ordering the block to ISPs  with no specific reason behind it) – it’s hard to pin down exactly what content was actually sent around that caused the block in the first place. And at least one group is raising the question of whether this blockage could be related to the government testing an image filtering service — something with wider-ranging implications. A Prophet-drawing campaign started on Facebook in 2010 with a specific page, Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, created in response to the TV show South Park getting some heat for depicting the Prophet. The EDMD page was eventually taken down; but not before resulting in a temporary Facebook block in Pakistan. This year, according to  Wikipedia , EDMD was specifically geared at sending pictures around via Twitter, to protest the arrest of Saudi poet/journalist Hamza Kashgari for writing “insulting” tweets about the Prophet. However, there are a number of Facebook pages that come up when one searches for “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” — not clear whether any of these are “official.” And at least one Pakistani blogger/activist (and, yes, dentist) Awab Alvi has raised the point that there may be no direct blasphemy accusation involved today at all. In a blog post Alvi explains: Ever since the reports emerged we have asked affected users to help  test the site  from their ISP connections and within minutes we had hundreds of reports  The traceroute shows a very interesting fact, the block is at the DNS level, the url is not resolving right from the get go… My gutt [sic] feeling is that PTA is just testing their URL Filtering system, we had reports of them testing some image servers on facebook last week, and it disappeared by the evening. PTA choose Sunday to avoid any legal backlash exploiting the courts day off…. …The civil society has to its credit  a stay order on the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority  preventing them from blocking websites obtained on 19th April 2012 which can be used against them. Once they get through these testing days I am sure it can be later used as and when needed. Though the argument presented by PTA is that it needs this technology to crack down on Terrorism related issue, but one may never know when it can be used for political censorship Regardless of what is really behind today’s Twitter block, the issue of not being able to easily access the social network clearly touches on a sensitive point in Pakistan around freedom of expression: watch #twitterban to see how people in Pakistan and elsewhere are responding to the story. We have contacted the Ministry, Facebook and Twitter to try to get more information on this.