The Most Interesting New Tech Startup of 2009?

Here’s a great article by Anil Dash where he makes the scandalous statement that the most “promising new startup of 2009 is one of the least likely: The executive branch of the federal government of the United States.”

As proof he offers several government websites that have launched:

• Data.gov, providing open access to feeds of valuable facts and figures generated by the executive branch.
• USAspending.gov, allowing any of us to drill down into the details of spending from various federal agencies.
• Recovery.gov, perhaps one of the best-known of the new sites, offering up details of how resources from the Recovery Act are being allocated.

“…We've seen the remarkable innovation that sprung up years ago around the API for services like Flickr, and that continues full-force today around apps like Twitter. But who could have predicted just a year or two ago that we might have something like Apps for America, the effort being led by the Sunlight Foundation, Google, O'Reilly Media and TechWeb to reward applications built around datasets provided by Data.gov. The tools that have already been built are fascinating. And, frankly, they're a lot more compelling than most of the sample apps that a typical startup can wring out of its community with a developer contest.”