On Tuesday, U.S. President Barack Obama unveiled his final budget proposal to Congress. The 2017 fiscal budget calls for, as it relates to technology, $19 billion for federally-focused cybersecurity improvements and $152 billion in R&D for a variety of tech and science-centric initiatives—including investments aimed at self-driving car and clean energy infrastructure. And while the yearly budget, in reality, typically serves as a political tool to launch negotiations rather than to fund actual projects, this document reveals where President Obama believes America must make investments in the future. As such, the President's mention of "start-ups" is especially interesting given its context.
On page 101 of the "Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2017," you can find the reference to startups. The reference is introduced in relation to investments made to increase access to publicly available data "assets." This includes but is not limited to intellectual property, open source demographic data and scientific knowledge acquired by the government through projects enabled by R&D funding.
"The Budget continues to invest in efforts to open up Government-generated assets ... through these efforts, the Government empowers citizens and businesses to increase the return on our investment with innovation, job creation, and economic prosperity gained through their use of open Government data and research results. The use of this data and scientific knowledge has impacted the private sector, including fueling innovative start-up companies and creating American jobs," the 2017 budget reads.
This quote is then followed by an acknowledgement of the Obama administration's push for "open data and data governance," which can be seen via Project Open Data and Data.gov, among others. Interestingly, as of January 1, Data.gov has featured more than 188,000 datasets related to topics including education, public safety, health care, energy and agriculture programs.
According to the budget, the President hopes to "encourage community innovators to create web tools and mobile applications by connecting local and national public data in one location."
In the future, it appears that Obama hopes to see an increase in the number of U.S.-based startups who leverage data provided by the federal government. But it remains unclear exactly what data will be prioritized for access or how this data will exactly translate into potentially helpful civic technology. One example, however, that the budgets brings to light is the use of U.S. Census Bureau data to find "urban areas with the highest social media activity."
