This morning, President Obama issued an historic executive order making open data the new default for releasing information in the federal government. The president announced the order on a trip to Austin, Texas, where he visited Manor New Tech High School, visited the Capital Factory incubator, where he saw a demonstration of StormPulse, a risk management startup that uses open data, and delivered remarks on open data at Applied Materials Inc.

Showing @stormpulse to @barackobama.Thank you, Mr President! twitter.com/mattwensing/st…

— Matt Wensing (@mattwensing) May 9, 2013

Here’s what the tech media had to say about today’s news. (Got half an hour? Listen to the press briefing from today  at FierceGovernmentT or download this MP3 of the call that provides the source material for much of the following.)

• PC Week: “Obama Wants More Open Government Data for Entrepreneurs“
• TechCrunch: “How Obama’s Open Data Order Could Save Lives, Energy Costs and Make Cool Apps“
• Information Week: “White House Releases Open Data Policy“
• Federal Computer Week: “Executive order makes open data the new normal“
• ZDNet: “White House aims to ‘liberate open data’ with Executive Order“
• Network World: “Obama administration expands open data access“
• The Verge: “President Obama signs executive order requiring agencies to publish ‘open data’“
• GigaOm: “The White House opens the data floodgates, and now the real work will begin“
• Federal Times: “Obama directs agencies to make more data public“
• NextGov: “White House Orders Agencies To Follow New Open Data Standards“
• Fedscoop: “White House unveils open data policy”
  

Sean Gallagher and Nick Clark Judd both penned the most thoughtful, informed and well-reported pieces covering the news. Both are especially strong on covering what the order and associated initiatives actually mean.

At ArsTechnica, Gallagher highlights the challenges that implementing the policy will face: “Obama orders agencies to make data open, machine-readable by default.”

At techPresident, Judd parses out what’s new (Github!) and what actually relates to transparency in “Developers Are Already Submitting Patches to Obama’s New Open Data Policy.”

The Github angle was irresistable  to Wired reporter Bob McMillan (and pretty much anyone else interested in open source) who noted that “Now You Can Fork U.S. Government Policy … On GitHub.”

We’ll see if “the revolution will be forked,” as Githubber (and former White House staffer) Ben Balter put it.

The executive order was significant enough news to escape the tech orbit: The business and general press was also on the story, framing it in terms of jobs.

• U.S. News: “Obama Announces Two New Executive Orders to Create Jobs“
• The Washington Post framed it in terms of jobs: “Obama sets new open-data policy to foster innovation“
• BizJournals: “Obama hopes open data, manufacturing innovation institutes will create jobs“
• Reuters: “Obama renews focus on jobs, economic growth on Texas trip“
• WSJ: “Obama visits Texas to pitch economic agenda“

The Daily Caller earned the dubious distinction of writing the worst headline of the bunch, “Obama is going to tell people how the White House is organized.” (Not exactly.)

Out in the blogosphere and on Twitter, there’s a somewhat different flavor of reaction and commentary from reporters tasked to cover the news.

The Data.gov team is actively looking for feedback, as Data.gov evangelist Jeanne Holm made clear on Google+

Those of us at the Data.gov team are seeking your great ideas and constructive criticism as we move forward to the next phase of Data.gov. We want to scale up the quality and quantity of data, be more helpful to American businesses and entrepreneurs looking to use government data and research, more clearly support learning in classrooms, get government data in front of researchers and journalists, and bring the power of open data to American citizens.

It’s all about getting you to the data you need as quickly as possible in a variety of machine-readable formats with better search, more APIs, easier ways to share data, more data resources federated.  You can see an early view of our new CKAN-powered catalog http://geo.gov.ckan.org/dataset .

You’ve told us via forums, list serves, hack-a-thons, blogs, social media, and meetups around the country and the world that we need to have more and better capabilities for developers and innovators.  We are listening.Find out more details about the technical implementations underwayhttps://www.data.gov/blog/under-hood-open-data-engine and let us know what you think at Data.gov https://www.data.gov/developers/page/forum-topic/11?tid=28622 or via Twitter @usdatagov!

At the Sunlight Foundation, John Wonderlich says that the “open data executive order shows the way forward.”

Simon Rogers explored how the open data executive order compares to similar efforts in the United Kingdom.

Open government data advocate and Govpulse.us founder Josh Tauberer weighed in, regarding licensing: “New Open Data Memorandum almost defines open data, misses mark with open licenses.”

OpenTheGovernment.org praised aspects of the open data policy but expressed concern about exemptions, definitions for information systems and references to the mosaic effect.

Steven Aftergood questioned whether making government data open and machine-readable would have an effect on government secrecy, particularly in the intelligence world.

Jim Harper focused on a similar dynamic, praising President Obama’s new open data policy but questioning its relationship to government transparency.

Noel Dickover said the the new open data policy is terrific, but… notes that “creating and maintaining an enterprise data inventory is a massive undertaking.”

Clay Johnson also wondered about related costs  and found the part of the policy focused on grant and contract knowledge especially interesting.

Coming tomorrow: my interview with US CIO Steven VanRoekel and further analysis on why this matters.