Feds: You Don't Need Permission To Innovate

Many front-line federal workers have long expressed their frustrations about working in an agency or office culture that stifles innovation. But government is now entering a new era where feds no longer have to file a memo to their boss with a new idea, only to receive the dreaded response, “But we’ve always done it this way.”

Enter the third phase of the Digital Government Strategy: where cultural walls are kicked down in favor of collaboration, interoperability and openness. This is happening as agencies open up their data through application programming interfaces, or APIs, not only to private sector entrepreneurs but also to their own front-line employees, Aneesh Chopra, former U.S. chief technology officer and now advisor on the board of API company Apigee, told Wired Workplace last week.