DEC. 9, 2020 – Today the U.S. Census Bureau celebrates the 5th anniversary of The Opportunity Project (TOP) with a three-day virtual conference featuring more than 35 new products from industry collaborators including SAP, Mapbox, Esri, IBM and Harvard University that utilize open data from the Census Bureau and other federal agencies.

This year’s event features 24 sessions including keynote speeches, lightning talks, and discussions on government innovation, open data strategy, and technology for good.

Features include:

• Student technologists on the future of civic tech and institutional barriers.
• A session on the critical importance of data-driven civics education.
• Leaders from indigenous communities discussing their perspectives on data and technology.
• An open discussion on the state of federal innovation ecosystem featuring speakers from Census Open Innovation Labs, 10x, the Partnership for Public Service and more.
• Industry data executives from SAP, Redfin and more on what government needs to learn about data curation.

The Census Bureau is also launching a new toolkit (TOPx), marking a major shift to the next phase of TOP, enabling any government agency and the public to apply the TOP model of collaborative technology sprints to increase data usage and access of open data from across federal government.

The event will also feature the products resulting from this year’s Earth-themed sprints based on natural and built environment challenges, in collaboration with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Wilson Center, the UN Refugee Agency, and more than 400 sprint participants. 

TOP is a collaborative effort between government agencies, technology companies, start-ups, students, and nongovernment organizations to translate open data into user-centered tools that solve real-world problems for families, communities and businesses nationwide.

No news release associated with this product. Tip sheet only.

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