Tech Matters: Using tech for positive social change

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....

Through the Full Circle Fund , where I spoke recently on a panel with Premal Shah of Kiva.org, I had the chance to meet the third panelist, Deb Levine of ISIS. It's great to meet a new technology social entrepreneur who is so on top of the latest social technologies! [Kiva's cool, of course, but everybody already knows that!] ISIS has a mission around sex ed and STD prevention, and has an array of clever and innovative uses of the web and mobile communications to advance their mission. One social enterprise I was impressed with is their inSPOT sex partner STD electronic greeting card service. This service is supported by public health agencies to encourage notification of sex partners when someone is diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease (STD). ISIS manages to get a very high click-through rate for this important notification. Deb and I had a great brainstorm a few weeks after our panel, coming up with ideas for helping each other's projects. I think this is...