At this time of year, it’s common for blogs and publishers to either look back at what has gone over the past year, or alternatively to look forward at what the future might bring.
The past year have seen a number of reports come out gazing into the future at some of the technologies that will transform society. We’ve had McKinsey’s report into 12 disruptive technologies from earlier this year, which was itself preceded by the UK government’s updated Technology & Innovation Futures report that looked at some of the shifts about to hit UK life.
Looking the other way is GovLoop’s report highlighting 20 innovations that mattered in 2013. The document looks specifically at the top public innovations that emerged throughout the year.
In this end-of-year issue, GovLoop analyzed the 20 best innovations in government in four (rather naffly named) categories:
- Mobile Apps Movers and Shakers?
- Big Data Dynamos
- Social Media Mavericks
- Website Wonders
So what did they come up with? Here are the top 5:
- Cybersecurity executive order “The importance of the executive order should not be overlooked, I think it is worth pausing and reflecting on the significance of the executive order and the time the President spent speaking about cybersecurity during the State of the Union.” Jeffrey Greene, Senior Policy Counsel, Symantec
- Open data directive. In May, the President mandated that the data should be fully described, fully accessible, standardized and fully downloadable and should be made public whenever possible.
- Presidential innovation fellows. The 43 fellows included engineers, entrepreneurs, computer scientists and designers, all tasked with developing solutions to improve lives, save tax dollars and create jobs.
- Libraries re-imagined.
- iCenter. North Carolina’s new iCenter houses technology demos from across the state so that agencies can try new technologies before buying them.
You can see the remaining 15 here.
