Patent Law

As a follow-up to my July 7, 2009 post on the federal government's launch of the Data.gov website, J. Nicholas Hoover writes in the December 21, 2009 print issue of InformationWeek that the "site has grown from just 47 data sets when introduced in May to more than 115,000 today. And the recently launched federal IT Dashboard--a display of IT project status that corporations would do well to mimic--has not only given the public visibility into the performance of Uncle Sam's big-ticket IT projects, but put agency CIOs on notice that execution matters."

Mr. Hoover continues:

Data.gov, the government's public-facing data portal, has its conceptual roots in a data repository Kundra built as CTO of Washington, D.C., and the model has now been emulated by other local, state, and even national governments. The site has been one of the highest-profile IT efforts of the Obama presidency, though it, too, is in the early stages. So far, Data.gov contains mostly "geodata" on political boundaries--voting districts, for example--a mere drop in the bucket of government information.

Kundra's push to expand the amount and types of data on Data.gov requires overcoming ingrained practices. He says resistance to change in federal agencies and departments may be the biggest obstacle he faces in delivering on the president's IT-related priorities. "One of the most difficult parts is velocity, the speed at which we need to get things done versus the organic friction that exists," he says.

"He's built this infrastructure with the IT Dashboard and Data.gov. Now he needs to make them good and have solid execution," says Clay Johnston, director of Sunlight Labs for the Sunlight Foundation, a non-profit think tank pursuing open government initiatives.

Read the full article here.