Secretary of State Wayne Williams
It’s been awhile since you could credibly call Denver title town, and don’t get me started on CU football, but if they hung banners for good government the Colorado Secretary of State’s office would be looking at a three-peat next year.
The National Association of Secretaries of State gave its 2015 IDEAS award to Wayne Williams, who picked up the same award Scott Gessler brought home last year.
The prize lauds Go Code Colorado, the collaboration between the Gessler/Williams’ office, Gov. John Hickenlooper’s office, the Office of Information Technology and the state Office of Economic Development and International Trade to put more state-managed data on the Internet.
Last year, Gessler won the top prize for the creation of that helps Coloradans untangle the processes of starting a business, raising money for a charity, managing an election campaign or other government-related tasks.
“It is a testament to the office’s commitment to investment and excellence in state government programming at a higher level,” NASS President Elaine Marshall of North Carolina said of Colorado’s latest top prize for good government service.
IDEAS is an acronym for Innovation, Dedication, Excellence and Achievement in Service. It’s a big-deal prize, signifying the best in the nation. And making it an even bigger deal is that it’s only been handed out since 2011, and Colorado has won it twice in four tries — the same number of Super Bowls the Broncos have won in 48 years.
“That’s what leadership and achievement look like,” Gessler said Monday.
Gessler said innovation is a matter of needs meeting ideas with the handicap of limited resources. (But, come on, if it was that easy, everybody would do it.)
“The secretary of state’s job is to help businesses, particularly small businesses, provide service to their customers,” he said. “And it was our job to help businesses, so we took existing resources and existing data and leveraged them.”
Gessler, a Republican, ran for governor in 2014. Williams, the Republican clerk and recorder from El Paso County, ran for the top elections job in the state and won.
Go Code Colorado makes public information more accessible by the public on the
Go Code Colorado is a leader in the open data movement, staging a civic app challenge that engages entrepreneurs and developers to build data-fueled apps that help businesses make better decisions.
— Colorado Secretary of State’s Office
“Go Code Colorado demonstrates the best of intra-governmental collaboration and public-private partnership to create a better business environment in Colorado while making government more open and transparent,” Williams said in a statement Monday. “We are absolutely thrilled by the success of Go Code Colorado.”
Then-NASS President Tre Hargett, Tennessee’s secretary of state, presents then-Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler the 2014 NASS IDEAS Award.
This isn’t Go Code’s first title, either. It’s also received for innovative technology, the , the Colorado Technology Association’s . as well as being by Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in its Innovations in American Government awards competition.
Anybody want to tailgate next year?
