Carl Malamud believes that he’d make a great Public Printer of the United States. And he’s right. There is nobody on the planet more qualified to reinvent the Government Printing Office, and there’s never been a time when that mattered more.
Of course nobody’s asked him. But meanwhile, over here, he’s doing the job, and he’ll keep doing it no matter what.
From the New York Times:
“If called, I will certainly serve,” he said. “But if not called, I will probably serve anyway.”
I hope he gets the call.
PS: A lot of folks have done interviews with Carl. Here’s mine.
Carl Malamud is my hero. He is to the seas of Big Data what lighthouse workers were to the Sea.
In this Industrial Age of Data, he recognizes and evangelizes that taxpayer-supported data is a public good. As such, it should be not easily just available (a .pdf or .doc is not enough), but readily accessible (XML, RDF, even dare I say direct SQL access to government data).