John and Federal CIO Vivek Kundra at the White House Champions of Change event, June 10, 2011.
Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the White House’s Champions of Change event, which celebrated thought leaders and entrepreneurs from inside and outside government who are helping to solve some of our nation’s biggest challenges. The event also celebrated the 2nd anniversary of Data.gov, a website that enables the public to participate in government by providing downloadable Federal datasets to build applications, conduct analyses, and perform research.
The event recognized 16 “Champions of Change” – developers who built innovative applications utilizing federal, state, and local government datasets. Among the 16 Champions included: Jill Seman, creator of MomMaps; Leigh Budlong, creator of Zonability; and Conor White-Sullivan, creator of Localocracy. The event also featured speeches by Aneesh Chopra, Federal Chief Technology Officer, and Michael Strautmanis, Deputy Assistant to the President and Counselor for Strategic Engagement to the Senior Advisor, and Vivek Kundra (above photo), then Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO).
During the Data.gov anniversary celebration, Federal CIO Vivek Kundra presented me with the “Leader of the Apps Award” for having the largest number of apps published and accessed on Data.gov. As it turns out, our 116 published apps have been accessed 75,518 times, more than twice as much as the next highest person on Data.gov. My contribution took place back to 2009, when I was working at the Department of Defense, Office of the CIO, as part of a Science and Technology Policy Fellowship with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. We certainly didn’t set out to win an award, but I so proud to find that people have found our work to be particularly useful.
Below, I’ve posted a picture a me and Jeanne Holm, Data.gov Chief Evangelist and NASA Chief Knowledge Architect, and the Leader of the Apps award. In a future post, I hope to share some of the official photographs and video from the event.
John and Jeanne Holm, Data.gov Chief Evangelist and NASA Chief Knowledge Architect, at the White House Champions of Change event, June 10, 2011.
The Data.gov Leader of the Apps Award
June 16, 2011
government, Washington DC