Fast Company’s recent article “Inside Obama’s Stealth Startup” provides a nice overview of how industry experts have been steadily joining forces to transform how the United States government is using technology to provide services to its people. One of the key elements of this strategy is open data and open source — there’s little or no stealth in this “startup.”

One of my proudest moments after I joined 18F was when we announced our open source policy. Developing in the open creates an unprecedented level of transparency and offers new potential to engage members of the public in the operation of our democracy.

Before that time, most projects from the Presidential Innovation Fellows and the new 18F team were open source, but each project required specific sign off by agency leaders for it to be open. Creating a policy dramatically streamlined this sign-off process. Working in the open saves time and money:

• streamlines communication
• increases code reuse
• reduces vendor lock-in

In 2013, the Open Data Executive Order set the stage for this work. By making it so that open data was the default expectation, it means that thousands of civil servants may provide open data as part of their process, without needing to get permission for each individual data set to be published.

It’s great to see industry press starting to take notice of this transformation happening inside the US Government. We’re really just getting started. If you want to read more, check out the 18F blog