Open Government Data Spurs Entrepreneurship and Jobs

Our goal, as Presidential Innovation Fellows working with open data, has been to find, unlock, and promote the next wave of government data -- the next GPS -- that innovators can use to kickstart entrepreneurship, fuel new tools and apps, and create jobs.

When we joined the government last August, we were assigned to six different agencies, but we came up with three common goals. First, we sought to release government data in open formats that are easy to understand and easy for innovators to use. Second, we encouraged Federal agencies to treat open data as a core deliverable and as a default, not just as a nice thing to do after data have already been collected and analyzed. Third, we worked to highlight and stimulate new uses of these liberated data by private-sector companies, entrepreneurs, and non-profits.