U.S. tech team tries to attract developers to government, pledges to use open data

The CTO and CIO of the U.S. government have announced a new digital roadmap for the U.S. that encourages the further use of open data, and tries to inspire developers to work for the government.

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“We have an opportunity to make this country shine,” U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park said along with Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel (pictured) today at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York.

Both men spoke about their goal of improving the government’s digital initiatives as well as attracting talented developers to their cause.

The new roadmap is centered on 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

One of the more interesting aspects VanRoekel noted was that the government would create no more .gov websites because there are already so many. He also said the government plans to focus on building everything on the web using HTML5 standards for broader and easier access to information by more people.

The government’s official document on its Digital Government Strategy broadly sets out to accomplish the following three things:

Enable the American people and an increasingly mobile workforce to access high-quality digital government information and services anywhere, anytime, on any device.

Operationalizing an information-centric model, we can architect our systems for interoperability and openness, modernize our content publication model, and deliver better, device-agnostic digital services at a lower cost.

Ensure that as the government adjusts to this new digital world, we seize the opportunity to procure and manage devices, applications, and data in smart, secure and affordable ways.

Learning from the previous transition of moving information and services online, we now have an opportunity to break free from the inefficient, costly, and fragmented practices of the past, build a sound governance structure for digital services, and do mobile “right” from the beginning.

Unlock the power of government data to spur innovation across our Nation and improve the quality of services for the American people.

We must enable the public, entrepreneurs, and our own government programs to better leverage the rich wealth of federal data to pour into applications and services by ensuring that data is open and machine-readable by default.

Photo credit: Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat