I'm an appointee of President Obama.

Technology and computers are very much at the core of our economy going forward. To be prepared for the demands of the 21st century-and to take advantage of its opportunities-it is essential that more of our students today learn basic computer programming skills, no matter what field of work they want to pursue.

I mean, look, the government is not a startup obviously. But projects to change government I think are best thought of as startups.

Data by itself is not useful. Data is only useful if it can be applied for public benefit.

Silicon Bayou - aka Lafayette, LA - is the best kept secret reservoir of innovation mojo in America

Unfortunately, the experience on HealthCare.gov has been highly frustrating for many Americans. These problems are unacceptable.

When I was 24, I co-founded a company called Athenahealth which built the first Web-based software and back-office service suite for doctors' offices.

When I was in the private sector, one characteristic that differentiated the best entrepreneurs from the others was that they were not in it for the stock options, but for a mission - to deliver something that was helpful... Every entrepreneurial journey, it turns out, is like this.

We will continue to work with agencies across the government to unleash the power of open data and to make government data more accessible and usable for entrepreneurs, companies, researchers, and citizens everywhere - innovators who can leverage these resources to benefit Americans in a rapidly growing array of exciting and powerful ways.

There's a project that I started at HHS called the Health Data Initiative. The whole idea was to take a page from what the government had done to make weather data and GPS available back in the day.