Office of Science and Technology Policy Blog

STEM at State of the Union!

We are thrilled that among the esteemed guests who will be sitting with the First Lady during tonight’s State of the Union address, three are outstanding leaders in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math). Through their accomplishments, these individuals personify a theme of longstanding importance to President Obama: the centrality of science, technology, and innovation to America’s ongoing global leadership.

Jack Andraka, a high school sophomore, won the 2012 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for his creation of a new method to detect early-stage pancreatic cancer.  Jack’s invention—a simple dip-stick that can test blood or urine for signs of the illness—is faster, cheaper, and 100 times more sensitive than today’s standard tests for pancreatic cancer. Jack is living proof that an innovator need not have a PhD or even a high-school diploma to change the world. He represents the promise of a new generation of scientists and researchers whose discoveries will help make the Nation stronger, healthier, and more resilient.

Open Government Data Spurs Entrepreneurship and Jobs

Freely available data from the US Government is an important national resource, serving as fuel for entrepreneurship, innovation, scientific discovery, and other public benefits.  In the 1970s, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration made weather data widely available.  In the 1980s, the Federal Government opened up access to data from Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites, which were previously for military use only.  These two decisions created a big positive effect in the lives of everyday Americans—just ask anyone who has recently viewed a weather report or obtained driving directions on a mobile phone.  What’s more, these decisions generated an infrastructure of public data that anyone in the world could tap into, for free, and use to generate new ideas and build new businesses.

Our goal, as Presidential Innovation Fellows working with open data, has been to find, unlock, and promote the next wave of government data—the next GPS—that innovators can use to kickstart entrepreneurship, fuel new tools and apps, and create jobs.

When we joined the government last August, we were assigned to six different agencies, but we came up with three common goals.  First, we sought to release government data in open formats that are easy to understand and easy for innovators to use.  Second, we encouraged Federal agencies to treat open data as a core deliverable and as a default, not just as a nice thing to do after data have already been collected and analyzed.  Third, we worked to highlight and stimulate new uses of these liberated data by private-sector companies, entrepreneurs, and non-profits.