'Baddest' Innovation Fellow Goes To GitHub

He’s been called the "baddest of the badass innovators" by federal CTO Todd Park, and after a successful six months as a Presidential Innovation fellow, Ben Balter is taking a job with the open software collaboration platform GitHub.

GitHub announced the move March 6, two days after Balter’s first day on the job, which will entail government outreach and helping spur the federal government’s adoption and promotion of open source code and collaboration in the open-source community. Github’s description was more succinct: Balter will help "government to do all sorts of governmenty things well, more awesomely."

Balter, who will remain in the Washington, D.C. area, said the federal government is shifting from casual user of open source tools to "an active participant," and said part of his job will be to help continue that expansion...