Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Chopra: Balancing Open Gov't, Security

White House Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra and Defense Department Deputy Chief Information Officer David Wennergren on Tuesday stressed the importance of agencies embracing transparency while maintaining a focus on network security. During speeches at an open government conference, the pair emphasized the goals are not mutually exclusive. "We cannot have an either-or scenario," Chopra said, citing several recent examples of federal projects that accomplish both objectives. Wennergren said that risk avoidance doesn't work in the Web 2.0 world since "relentlessly sharing is what the future is all about."

"The more you block access, the more secure you feel. The less bad stuff gets in, the less good stuff gets out," he said, calling such a scenario a self-inflicted denial of service attack. Chopra also spoke about the Obama administration's aim to fundamentally change the culture across government "not just by words and regulatory activities" but also by facilitating what he called "frictionless platform generation." Early examples of this include wikis, blogs, and peer review platforms already launched by a range of agencies. Additionally, Chopra lauded DoD's information portal DefenseSolutions.gov, calling it a case study in how agencies can embrace technology and their user communities.

Much of Chorpra's comments were focused on the big picture -- how the United States can remain an "innovation machine" amid increasing global competition and rapidly changing technologies. The upside, he said, was that venture capitalists have begun showing success again by churning out innovative new companies. The downside is that the U.S. rate of growth across a number of innovation indicators -- like higher education attainment and the number of highly skilled scientists and researchers -- lags behind other countries. He cited a recent analysis by Rob Atkinson at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation as proof.