Earlier this year, the President launched an initiative to build a 21st century platform for government. It requires federal agencies to make key services available to mobile users and to release important government data in ways that will allow citizen developers and entrepreneurs to turn them into new products, services, and jobs. “I want us to ask ourselves every day,” he said, “how are we using technology to make a real difference in people’s lives.”
Here at the White House, we’ve been working to meet that expectation. We’ve expanded our mobile program and, now, built a one-stop resource for those who want to take advantage of the tools provided by the White House technology program. It’s called /Developers and includes a breakdown of all of the open data and open source software that we’ve released to date.
Digital Government
On May 23, 2012, the President issued a directive entitled “Building a 21st Century Digital Government”. It launched a comprehensive Digital Government Strategy (pdf/html5) aimed at delivering better digital services to the American people. The strategy builds on several initiatives, including Executive Order 13571, Streamlining Service Delivery and Improving Customer Service, and Executive Order 13576, Delivering an Efficient, Effective, and Accountable Government.
Data.Gov
As part of President Obama’s pledge for greater governmental transparency, Data.gov was launched in 2009 with 47 datasets of government information that was previously unavailable to the public. The motivation was that this data belongs to the American people, who should not only have theinformation, but have the ability to use it. It was hoped that by tapping the collective knowledge of the American people, we could leverage this government asset to deliver more for millions of people. Today, there are more than 375,000 datasets available, which have been downloaded 2.9 million times. More than 1,250 governments apps have been developed using this data – 103 of them are for mobile usage. Citizens have used the data to develop 236 apps.
Open Data
We’re making government data freely available in machine-readable formats so that innovators and entrepreneurs can turn them into new products, services, and jobs. The feeds below provide access to data and content produced by the White House.
- RSS Feed: Blog
- RSS Feed: Press Articles
- RSS Feed: White House Schedule
- RSS Feed: Photo Gallery
- RSS Feed: Video
- RSS Feed: LIVE Video Stream
Open Source
We believe in using and contributing back to open source software as a way of making it easier for the government to share data, improve tools and services, and return value to taxpayers. Below are a few of the projects that the White House has contributed back to the open source community.