Federal Chief Technology Officer Todd Park has a vision for changing the way American citizens interact with technology. We had an opportunity to discuss those initiatives with Park, who was appointed Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in 2009. Prior to joining HHS, Park co-founded Athenahealth and co-led its development into one of the most innovative health IT companies in the industry. Many of our questions came from XChange Events advisory board members.
Q: Please tell us about the digital government strategy—how will it help the American people, and what you are doing to drive that strategy forward?
Park: U.S. CIO Steve VanRoekel and I rolled out the digital government strategy in May, which seeks to do three things:
- Put government at citizens’ fingertips and literally bring government to mobile devices, and any device in general, that citizens are using.
- Buy technology in a certain way that gives bigger bang for the taxpayer buck.
- Move even more energetically and strongly in the direction of open data.
Q: Why is it important to make government data open and machine-readable?
Park: This is important because if you open up the data and make it machine-readable, it becomes easier able to power innovative digital government services. And, even more importantly, it opens the data in usable form so that all of the other “smart people” in the world—developers, innovators and entrepreneurs—can take our data and turn it into magic. They can turn it into new products or services that can improve American lives, help grow our economy and create jobs.
Q: What is one of the key initiatives that you are pursuing to catapult the digital government strategy forward?
Park: One of the key initiatives that is driving the digital government strategy forward is the open data initiatives program. This program seeks to not just liberate government data in machine-readable form, but also catalyze the development of an ecosystem of innovation that utilizes that data and educate innovators and entrepreneurs about that data. Through a series of meet-ups, code-a-thons and datapaloozas, we are able to celebrate the wide range of innovations that people are already pursuing.
Q: What is the Presidential Innovation Fellows program? How will it impact the state of our health care industry and the American government as a whole?
Park: The Presidential Innovation Fellows program is a program that we launched simultaneous with the digital government strategy. It’s a program that aims to bring together the amazing innovators from outside the government and the best innovators inside government. We then create agile teams that aim to deliver game-changing solutions in six months.
Q: At what point does the federal government start leveraging this country’s IT infrastructure and talent as opposed to developing its own?
Park: I think that moment is now. The central thrust of our approach with open data initiatives and the digital government strategy is that we shouldn’t build the tools that should be useful to citizens ourselves; we should open up that data so innovators outside of government can leverage our data to build useful services and applications with their infrastructure, technology, ingenuity and people.
So if we want to maximize the social return on taxpayer investment in government data, we know that we can’t just have the government build tools on it, but instead have everyone else build tools on the data to help the public.
Q: What’s your plan to deal with “Policy Lag” where the current federal policies have not kept up with the advancement of technology?
Park: Initiatives like the digital government strategy can close that gap dramatically. If you think about the implications of a move like open data, what we’re doing is future-proofing the U.S. government from a technology standpoint because we are saying, “we are going to open up our data and when the world evolves, it will utilize that data in a number of ways.” It allows our data to evolve and advance at the same speed that technology is advancing.
Q: Small businesses continue to struggle to get a fair share of the federal government IT pie. What are some actions the federal government is taking to enhance SMB opportunities?
Park: RFP-EZ. One of the features of the Presidential Innovation Fellows program is that it is both bringing in 20 people to be literal fellows, and it also is an opportunity for others to engage as well. You can sign up and provide input from wherever you are. We are looking for folks to join the networks to provide support and ideas to each of the projects. It gives small businesses, and anyone else, the opportunity to provide input and insight. To sign up you can go to white.gov/innovationfellows.
Q: If you could give our diverse IT executive audience one piece of advice, what would it be?
Park: There is immense innovation talent locked in your organization and the most important thing you can do as an innovation or IT leader is to unleash that talent and unleash that mojo. Embrace the power of the lean start-up approach to change management (an idea first established by Eric Ries). The final piece of advice is to embrace the power of open innovation and to embrace the idea of Joy’s law. It is to recognize that if you came up with lots of other people to get something done, you will actually deliver much better results, much faster with a much lower cost than if you try to do it all yourself.
Q: What is the day in the life of Todd Park as the CTO of the U.S.?
Park: Crazy and wonderful! About 80 percent of my time is spent functioning as the virtual CEO and leader of a set of high-priority initiatives and projects that I am responsible for leading the execution of, and delivering results. The other 20 percent of my time is being a senior adviser that provides council and ideas and other kinds of assistance on issues as they arise.
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