Collaboration, open solutions, & innovation in Government

A new narrative is emerging in government innovation and it goes something like this: Truly great leaps in innovation are almost never possible with monolithic, proprietary approaches to software development, and many small innovations, when taken together, often lead to large, game-changing paradigms.

"When it comes to the questions of innovation, one of the most profound things that we have seen in the world of open source [software] is the power of incremental innovation versus the traditional big-bang theory of innovation," said Michael Tiemann, vice president of Open Source Affairs at Red Hat.

Nick Skytland, the program manager for NASA's Open Innovation Program, said his agency is currently working on a digital strategy that is an extension of the Open Government Initiative. And while a large part of that strategy is focused on optimizing data and services for mobile devices, "we're really interested in the concept of mass collaboration," said Skytland.