Tech Matters: Using tech for positive social change

This has been a really exciting week in Washington, DC, with the focus of today's 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. It's hard to imagine a world without the ADA, which was passed during my first year in the disability field. It became a model of civil rights legislation for people with disabilities, and I'm sure paved the way for the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. Last week there was a strong technology focus in the events: I was invited to an event at the White House (actually, the Old Executive Office Building) to hear from senior leaders from the Administration make announcements and talk about the power or technology to help people with disabilities. Kareem Dale, the President's senior disability advisor, was the master of ceremonies, and he got the federal CTO and CIO , an FCC Commissioner, the Assistant Secretary of Commerce overseeing the broadband program, and a senior federal procurement policy guy there. Ka...

Last night I was able to meet Vivek Kundra, the new Chief Information Officer of the federal government, at an event organized by Full Circle Fund and the Craigslist Foundation hosted by IBM at their offices on Market Street in San Francisco. For me, it's an amazing change. In the last month, I've been able to meet Obama's CIO, the new CTO, Aneesh Chopra, and the head of the White House Office of Social Innovation, Sonal Shah, all in small group settings where every attendee got to speak. These three are hopefully representative of the technology and innovation agenda of the new administration. They are all coming out to the San Francisco Bay Area, a hotbed of tech and innovation, primarily to listen. But, it's also clear that they have a really clear grasp of many of the issues facing innovation in the federal government, tempered with a healthy dose of reality. In the tech area, Vivek Kundra noted that the annual IT budget of the federal government is $76 billion....

One of the highlights of last week's Social Enterprise Alliance's Summit was the Launch of the Policy Track . We were delighted to have with us Carlos Monje of the White House Office of Social Innovation (so new, it doesn't have a website). A lot of cool things happened in the policy track (even I spoke), but I think the interesting thing was Carlos' comments. And so, I'll share those with you. According to Carlos, the Office is part of the domestic policy team inside the White House. They have four staff right now. They have three areas of focus: Service. The big deal here is the Edward Kennedy Serve America Act. Michelle Obama was a big part of Public Allies and is a huge fan of national service Public Private partnerships. Social innovation. The service angle is not service for its own sake. They see this as a big deal, and expect to upgrade Volunteer.gov to really rally more volunteer service. There will be a Social Innovation Fund, small by federal stan...