Tim O’Reilly’s Vision for “Gov as Platform”... and Geo

Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb details Tim O’Reilly’s efforts to change government’s relationship with technology. The goal: government as platform for innovation. Here’s the money quote from O’Reiily after a session with some “geohackers”:

This morning we did a call with the White House and some geohackers, talking about what’s wrong with government geodata now and how could it be fixed. The government people said we need to translate this into real projects that will appeal to politicians. ‘If you fix this kind of geodata then we’ll be able to provide this service - street safety, education attainment, public policy objectives,’ was what they wanted to hear from the hackers. It’s really about social innovation, building better tools for us as a nation to use technology to focus on real problems.