Chopra: Cost of 'Data Liberation' Projects Negligible

Federal Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra downplayed the cost of open government programs, June 2.

"The marginal cost of initiatives like Blue Button are negligible. I mean, not even rounding errors in the operating budgets of agencies," said Chopra at an industry event in Falls Church, Va. hosted by Accenture and Bisnow.

"They do not need new line items of billion-dollar programming that has congressional new investments. All of the data liberation activities have been done in this administration within existing operating budgets, where folks have basically allocated a higher operating value use, which is in this case liberating data," said Chopra.