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Office of Science and Technology Policy Blog

  • Safety Data Jam connects Tech Innovators with Public Safety Officers

    Posted by Todd Park, Brian Forde, and Jo Strang on June 8, 2012 at 11:08 AM EDT

    Government data are being released in unprecedented quantities as part of the Administration’s commitment to increase transparency, public participation, and collaboration. A lot of these data have to do with public safety and can be found at the recently launched Safety Data Community — Safety.Data.gov. The liberation of government datasets is important in itself, but  data are truly powerful when used in the development of informative apps. Last month, OSTP and the Department of Transportation co-hosted a Safety Data Jam at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building that brought together 40 leaders from technology, public safety, and government communities to discuss public safety challenges and to brainstorm creative new solutions that leverage open government safety data. Our goal was to come up with novel ways to help people make informed decisions about their safety and the safety of others.

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  • What It Means to be a Presidential Innovation Fellow

    Posted by Doug Rand and John Paul Farmer on June 7, 2012 at 4:09 PM EDT

    The new Presidential Innovation Fellows initiative, announced at TechCrunch Disrupt last month, will pair top innovators from the private sector, academia, and non-profits with top innovators in government to work together to deliver game-changing solutions for the American people. The first five missions include creating common-sense tools for public participation, liberating government data to fuel job growth, giving everyone secure access to their own health information, streamlining the government contracting process for high-growth startups, and getting more bang for our foreign aid buck. 

    What is it like to be a Presidential Innovation Fellow? One team of intrepid innovators has been piloting this model to create new solutions at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the Federal agency responsible for administering visa programs. This Entrepreneurs in Residence (EIR) team is mid-way through a focused sprint to streamline existing visa pathways for immigrant entrepreneurs interested in coming to the United States to create jobs in our country.

    Paul Singh is one of these entrepreneurs in residence. As a partner at 500 Startups, a seed-stage investment fund and startup accelerator in Mountain View, California, he describes the experience this way:

    One of the common things we run into [at 500 Startups] is a lot of our foreign entrepreneurs just have trouble coming into the country – even for short-term things like 90 days just to raise money. And my observation was that the real challenge was that the folks at the tip of the spear – the guys that actually interview these startups at the consulate, and the people that actually open these immigration forms at the federal processing plants – they don’t really know what startups look like. And again, it’s not because they’re inept; it’s because the rulebooks they have were designed in the ’90s, and then before that they were written effectively in the ’50s and ’60s. So I think we can all agree that startups just look different today.

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    Learn more about Immigration, Technology

  • Green Button Momentum

    Posted by Nancy Sutley and Todd Park on June 7, 2012 at 11:30 AM EDT

    To make it easier for business and consumers to save energy and money, we need to make it easier for them to understand how they use energy. That is why the Obama Administration partnered with the utility industry and issued a challenge to them to make it easier for electricity customers to get secure online access to their own household or building energy-use in a consumer- and computer-friendly format, called “Green Button.”

    In addition to empowering consumers and business to make informed decisions, Green Button data can fuel new products and services.  By putting customers in control of their own energy data, they can choose which private sector tools and services can help them manage or upgrade their own household or building energy performance.

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    Learn more about Energy and Environment, Technology

  • Advanced Materials: Giving Soldiers a Decisive Edge in Combat

    Posted by Reed Skaggs and Cyrus Wadia on June 6, 2012 at 10:57 AM EDT

    The science of advanced materials is increasingly providing the technological foundation for protecting our Nation’s warfighters.

    Ballistic-resistant materials can deliver superior protection at a fraction of the weight of conventional materials.  Advanced electronics can augment a warfighter’s own observational capabilities by “seeing” and “hearing” through obstacles, offering persistent awareness of the enemy. At the same time, linked sensors can provide real-time information that military members can share across a network.  

    In support of these and related goals, the Army is aggressively pursuing The Enterprise for Multiscale Research of Materials. The program, part of the Administration’s Materials Genome Initiative, is aimed at shaping the next generation of Army materials while also accelerating their time-to-market.

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    Learn more about Defense, Technology

  • Brainstorming With Energy Data

    Posted by Nick Sinai and Monisha Shah on June 5, 2012 at 6:01 PM EDT

    Staff from the White House and the Department of Energy recently participated in an “Energy Data Jam” in Silicon Valley—part of the Administration’s new Energy Data Initiative. The program brought together some of America’s most innovative entrepreneurs, software developers, CEOs, energy experts, and policy makers to take think creatively about how to leverage the growing volumes of publicly accessible government data to spark new private-sector tools, products, and services while rigorously protecting personal, proprietary, and national security information.

    Building on the success of the Green Button initiative—which is providing consumers with secure access to their own energy data and has facilitated the voluntary release of energy-use data in computer-readable form to encourage private-sector innovation—the Energy Data Initiative aims to harness the power of energy data through a combination of technology and ingenuity.

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    Learn more about Energy and Environment, Technology

  • Making It Easier for Veterans to Get Quality Advanced Manufacturing Jobs

    Posted by David Hart on June 5, 2012 at 4:25 PM EDT

    Speaking at Honeywell’s Golden Valley facility in Minnesota last week, the President announced a new initiative that will help thousands of U.S. military members obtain portable, industry-recognized credentials that will help them land quality jobs in advanced manufacturing and other fields after they leave the service.

    The initiative will help address two closely related problems. One problem—highlighted by a recent study by Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute—is that more than 80 percent of manufacturers perceive a moderate to serious shortage of skilled production workers, such as machinists, craftspeople, and technicians. The other problem—recently highlighted by the President’s Advanced Manufacturing PartnershipSteering Committee—is that while veterans and separating service members are a “great resource”to help fill those skills gaps, many of them have trouble conveying their skills to potential civilian employers.

    In part that’s because the military has its own system of classifying occupations and accomplishments, which can result in resumes full of military jargon. Credentialing criteria can also vary between the military and civilian sectors. As a result, many of America’s returning heroes miss out on opportunities to get well-paying, high-skill jobs in manufacturing—a sector that has added half a million jobs in the past 26 months, the strongest growth in manufacturing since 1995.

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    Learn more about Economy, Innovations, Technology, Veterans

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