Outgoing CTO Ruffles Some Feathers Praising Citizen Innovators

An event to mark federal Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra's last day in office Wednesday briefly turned into a debate about the nature of government innovation. Chopra spent most of what amounted to a farewell address at the Center for American Progress praising citizens who had launched new businesses or products with mashed up federal data, as well as those who had competed in government-sponsored competitions to build new applications related to health and the environment.

"Data liberation -- open data -- though it seems technical and wonky to many, the point of it is that it is an active ingredient in the jobs and industries of the future," Chopra said. "Our apps economy . . . consumes data. That's the fuel that drives those jobs. And we've got lots of it in every federal agency and we're releasing it."

At the end of the panel discussion, a questioner lashed out at Chopra, suggesting citizen innovations were a poor replacement for the innovations of federal employees who are being stifled by bureaucracy and an overreliance on contractors...