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Office of Science and Technology Policy Blog

  • Celebrating Digital Learning Day

    Posted by Matt Gaydos on February 2, 2012 at 5:21 PM EDT

    Yesterday we joined over 17,000 teachers, nearly 2 million students, and 38 states in celebrating the first-ever Digital Learning Day—an opportunity to highlight and learn from the exciting ways teachers are utilizing technology to strengthen education in America.

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  • Happy Birthday, Startup America!

    Posted by Tom Kalil and Doug Rand on February 2, 2012 at 1:28 PM EDT

    One year ago, President Obama called for an all-hands-on-deck effort to accelerate the success of entrepreneurs across the country.  One year later, Startup America has made major progress on three fronts:

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  • “Equal Pay App Challenge” to Help Close the Gender Pay Gap

    Posted by Hilda Solis and Aneesh Chopra on February 1, 2012 at 8:00 PM EDT

    Ed. note: This is cross-posted from Work in Progress, the official blog of the Department of Labor

    Yesterday, we celebrated the launch of an open innovation initiative to eliminate the gender gap in pay. Working together with the National Equal Pay Enforcement Task Force, we commenced the “Equal Pay App Challenge” – a national competition to develop software applications, or “apps,” that leverage public data to promote equal pay for men and women. 
     
    Last Tuesday in his State of the Union address, President Obama recognized that “an economy built to last is one where we encourage the talent and ingenuity of every person in this country.” “That,” the President emphasized, “means women should earn equal pay for equal work.”
     
    In America, women make up half of the workforce and two-thirds of our families rely on a mother’s wages for a significant portion of their income. Yet, women, on average, make less on the dollar than men, and the gap is even greater for women of color and women with disabilities.  Lower pay not only means less economic security for women, but also for the families that depend on them.  

    The President is committed to closing the pay gap once and for all.  The first bill he signed into law, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, helps women who were victims of pay discrimination recover their wages. The President then created an inter-agency Equal Pay Enforcement Task Force to crack down on equal pay law violations. And yesterday’s announcement is yet another way the administration is working to accomplish this goal.

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  • Startup America Partnership Releases One-Year Anniversary Videos

    Posted by Phil Larson on February 1, 2012 at 1:43 PM EDT

    One year ago yesterday, President Obama launched the Startup America campaign, an all-hands-on-deck effort to accelerate the success of entrepreneurs across the country.  The President celebrated the first birthday of Startup America by sending Congress a set of proposals to help boost the startups and small businesses that create so many jobs in this country. 

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  • Public-Private Standards Efforts to Make America Strong

    Posted by Aneesh Chopra and Patrick Gallagher on January 31, 2012 at 4:12 PM EDT

    Standards—agreed upon parameters such as the size and shape of electrical outlets, the number of threads per inch on machine bolts, or the tolerances allowed for various medical tests—are critical to American competitiveness, technological innovation, and global trade because they facilitate manufacturing, speed delivery, and enable the widespread use of countless products and services in the market today.  Standards also play a key role in public safety, as a new report described below makes clear.

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  • Your Comments on Access to Federally Funded Scientific Research Results

    Posted by Chelsea Martinez on January 30, 2012 at 4:58 PM EDT

    In November, OSTP issued two Requests for Information—one on Public Access to Peer-Reviewed Scholarly Publications Resulting From Federally Funded Research and the other on Public Access to Digital Data Resulting From Federally Funded Scientific Research. Today we are posting the public comments for those two solicitations and encourage you to take a look at what scientists, citizens, publishers, scientific societies, libraries and other stakeholders had to say.

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