obama

This afternoon, First Lady Michelle Obama spoke at a White House event about the importance of supporting and retaining women and girls in STEM careers. 

“If we’re going to out-innovate and out-educate the rest of the world, we’ve got to open doors for everyone,” said Obama.  “We need all hands on deck, and that means clearing hurdles for women and girls as they navigate careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).” » Read more

The date on the tombstone - September 15. Open gov that was shouted from the rooftops on Obama’s first day died last week with barely a whisper - far from the headlines. The Senate approps subcommittee slashed $11 million from the House allocation, already $15 million under FY2010 funding. Transparency advocates like Sunlight are openly mourning the passing. But, the real question here is, does anybody really care? » Read more

Gene Quinn's recent post titled "What Happened to the Obama Open Source Initiative?" criticizes, in turns, open source software, Scott McNealy, the Obama administration, and "business newbies" who want to use the open source software model. » Read more

I loved this year's State of the Union address for the collaborative tone of both the President and the members of Congress.  While many were skeptical of the idea, I was especially pleased to see the effect of the mixed-party seating at the State of the Union, proposed by Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado. » Read more

Yesterday, U.S. President Barack Obama addressed members of the Indian parliament and announced a U.S.-India Open  Government Dialogue. Addressing a rare joint session of the Indian Parliament that brought together the two different houses -- the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha -- Obama said that as the world's largest democracy and the world's oldest one, India and the U.S. will work together on the initiative.
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The following article is largely based on a talk by Andy Pethan and Colin Zwiebel, "State of Open Data in Education," at the LinuxCon 2010 education mini-summit.

What happens when you open data?

Six months ago, the MTA in New York released a dataset under GTFS, a format for transporation timetables. Timetables themselves aren't very interesting. What is interesting is what you can do with the data. » Read more

America held its first billion-dollar political race in 2008 – DVR use soared (no surprise there). A new lineup of over-produced ads and under-researched hit pieces have yet to hit primetime, and accountability advocates are already worried about November. » Read more

Market confidence is a valuable commodity in tough economic times. And governments will try just about anything to inspire some.  Recapitalization--bailouts--for struggling sectors is one approach.  Another (less deficit-inducing) solution seeks to inspire confidence through a sizable dose of transparency. Bank stress tests are beginning to figure prominently in the later effort.  Stress tests measure how well financial institutions perform under financial "what if" scenarios.  » Read more

Dave Cole, Senior Advisor to the CIO of the Executive Office of the President, presented an awesome keynote to more than 3,000 attendees at DrupalCon San Francisco 2010 on April 21. His keynote was about open source in government, and he talked about how whitehouse.gov has become a platform to foster citizen participation. Although I found the technology part interesting, it was the philosophy and open source principles that Dave talked about that are enabling the executive branch of the United States government to be more open and transparent. » Read more

In the discussions around some of my previous articles, I've noticed a trend: we seem to be focusing on cultural changes that need to be made for the open source way to be effective in contexts beyond technology. » Read more