Office of Science and Technology Policy

Latest Blog Posts

May 23, 2013 at 1:40 PM EDT

Agency Spotlight: Making Mobile Government a Reality

To keep pace with the rapid adoption of mobile devices and the breakneck speed of mobile innovation, President Obama charged agencies with releasing flagship mobile services and making data available in developer-friendly formats to accelerate the production of services and mobile applications. Twelve months after the President’s call for change, there has been great progress bringing mobile government to citizens’ fingertips. Today, on the one-year anniversary of the Digital Government Strategy, agencies are announcing the release of hundreds of new mobile services, datasets, and APIs, providing unprecedented public access to government data.
May 16, 2013 at 9:46 AM EDT

Introducing: Project Open Data

Technology evolves rapidly, and it can be challenging for policy and its implementation to evolve at the same pace. Last week, President Obama launched a new Open Data Policy and Executive Order aimed at ensuring that data released by the government will be as accessible and useful as possible. To make sure this tech-focused policy can keep up with the speed of innovation, we created Project Open Data.
May 15, 2013 at 4:26 PM EDT

Audacious Goals in Eye Research

The National Eye Institute (NEI) launched the Audacious Goals Initiative last year to drive innovation in vision research for the next decade and beyond. To encourage the broadest possible range of ideas and participants in this Initiative, the NEI held a prize competition to identify “Audacious Goals in Vision Research and Blindness Rehabilitation,” open to submissions from August through November 2012.
May 15, 2013 at 10:00 AM EDT

RFP-EZ Delivers Savings for Taxpayers, New Opportunities for Small Business

America’s small information technology firms are some of the most innovative in the world. And thanks to an exciting new pilot project called RFP-EZ, it is getting easier for them to address some of the Federal Government’s most pressing IT needs. And the results we are seeing from this program highlight what is possible when you unleash the power of American entrepreneurs.
May 14, 2013 at 2:35 PM EDT

Hanging out with “We the Geeks”

The White House is kicking off “We the Geeks,” a new series of Google+ Hangouts to highlight the future of science, technology, and innovation here in the United States.
May 10, 2013 at 4:50 PM EDT

Recap: A Big Day for Open Data

Yesterday, President Obama visited Austin, Texas, to kick off his Middle Class Jobs and Opportunity Tour. At Capital Factory, a local start-up incubator, he met with technology entrepreneurs and innovative companies that are helping grow our economy and create jobs by building new products and services. One of those companies, Stormpulse, uses freely available government weather data to help businesses protect themselves.
May 10, 2013 at 3:19 PM EDT

A Strategy for the Arctic, Informed by Sound Science

Today, the Obama Administration released the first-ever National Strategy for the Arctic Region—an approach to protecting national security, promoting environmental stewardship, supporting native cultures, providing for appropriate economic development, and strengthening international cooperation in the Arctic region.
May 10, 2013 at 12:56 PM EDT

Games Win Big in Education Grants Competition

Today, the U.S. Department of Education announced the final winners of this year’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract awards—funds that are reserved for entrepreneurial small businesses using cutting-edge R&D to develop commercially viable technologies to solve tough problems.

FEATURED TOPICS

OPEN DATA:
On May 9, 2013, President Obama signed an Executive Order directing historic steps to make government-held data more accessible to the public and to entrepreneurs and others as fuel for innovation and economic growth. That same day, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) published a landmark policy to help implement the Executive Order. Learn more:

White House Blog Post

Statements of Support

Project Open Data

Executive Order

Open Data Policy

2013 WHITE HOUSE SCIENCE FAIR:
On April 22, 2013, President Obama hosted 100 student innovators from more than 40 states for the third-ever White House Science Fair. The event was a celebration of amazing and award-winning student-achievements in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. The cohort of kids included app-coders, algae-growers, video-game designers, city-planners, roboticists, and rocket-scientists—most of them not yet old enough to drive. Learn more:

Videos from the Science Fair

President Obama's Remarks

Science Fair Fact Sheet

White House Blog Post

STEM EDUCATION:
On February 13, 2013, OSTP hosted the first-ever White House State of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (SoSTEM) event, where nearly 100 middle- and high-schoolers spent an hour asking STEM-centric questions to some of the Nation’s top S&T innovators. The event highlighted the Obama Administration’s ongoing work to expand participation of American youth in STEM studies and equip the Nation’s future innovators with the skills they need to succeed in STEM careers. Learn more: