Resume

Joshua Ian Tauberer, Ph.D.

Professional Experience

2024–presentOpen Government Federal Advisory Commitee (U.S. GSA), Member
The Open Government Federal Advisory Committee serves as an advisory body to the GSA Administrator on federal open government and public engagement efforts.
2019–presentLARSA, Inc., Head of Product Development
LARSA, Inc. develops scientific software for civil and structural engineers for the design of highway bridges and other complex structures throughout the world. I lead the team designing and developing our products, collaborating with our customer support team and directly with our users to ensure product success.
2003–presentGovTrack.us, Founder
In 2003 I founded what would become one of the world’s most visited free government information websites, www.GovTrack.us. The website helps 10 million Americans annually track the daily activities of the United States Congress in an easily consumable form, catalyzed the world-wide “open government data” movement in the mid 2000’s, and inspired Congress’s efforts in the 2010’s to create its first official “bulk data download” of legislative information. Over GovTrack’s long history, I created the first comprehensive API for federal legislative information, the first Google Maps mashup to show congressional district boundaries, user-customized e-mail alerts for tracking by topic or legislator, and the first ‘real-time’ predictive model for whether legislation introduced in Congress will become law. In addition to being the company’s only full-stack engineer, I am also its spokesperson. In 2019, I testified at a congressional hearing on government transparency, I regularly communicate with the media and have appeared on radio, and our work has been mentioned numerous times in the national news. I also manage two-to-three part-time researchers and the company’s budget and finances.
2016–2019Open Government Advisory Group, District of Columbia Government, Member
Appointed by Mayor of the District of Columbia to serve on District of Columbia’s Open Government Advisory Group and advise District’s Chief Data Officer and Mayor on open government data and enterprise open data issues. Wrote open government data stakeholder recommendations which the advisory group adopted as one of its few formal recommendations based on agency stakeholder interviews.
2016–2019GovReady, Consulting Software Engineer
Developed a prototype Python application to reduce the cost of cybersecurity compliance for federal agencies and contractors. Worked closely with founder-CEO on stakeholder feedback and achieved several design pivots. Developed a novel data model for reporting enterprise cybersecurity compliance based on the NIST Risk Management Framework (NIST SP 800-53) and FIPS 199 security categorization.
2016–2018Demand Progress, Consulting Software Engineer
Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports are policy reports drafted by a office of the U.S. Congress, but have historically been largely inaccessible outside of paid legal subscription services. EveryCRSReport.com is the first website to create comprehensive public access to these taxpayer-funded reports. I built the zero-maintenance website and a new PDF redaction library in Python.
2000–2018LARSA, Inc., Software Engineer (part time)
In the 00’s, I led the development of a new Visual Basic 6 user interface for the company’s flagship software. I subsequently developed novel algorithms in Fortran and C for structural engineering analysis. I also led the company’s technical writing and participated in customer support, client training, and trade shows.
2014–2017if.then.fund, Co-Founder
if.then.fund was a startup I co-founded with Jonathan Zucker that aimed to reshape Congress by empowering small dollar donors to make contributions based on what politicians do — not what they promise. We created the first platform for “conditional” political donations tied to legislative events, navigating a complex statutory and regulatory legal and compliance landscape. I developed the website as the sole engineer and collaborated with my co-founder on marketing and fundraising.
2011–2016Open Data Day DC, Conference Chair
I co-founded this annual hands-on technology training event for ~300 open data enthusiasts in the District of Columbia. Participants learned to transform public data into new ways to gain actionable knowledge about communities and global challenges. Recruited presenters, secured sponsorships, and managed budget. Expanded the field of open data professionals by creating a successful on-ramp. Elevated the careers of participants by creating opportunities for professional leadership experience.
2014–2016United States Congress, Office of the Law Revision Counsel, Consulting Software Engineer
After laws are passed, the Office of the Law Revision Counsel codifies those laws in the United States Code. I developed an internal workflow tool for the positive law codification process, sort of a git for law, with Xcential and Robinson + Yu.
2013–2014Council of the District of Columbia, Consulting Software Engineer
I created the first XML open data for the District's legal code, the DC Code, for the Office of the General Counsel. The prototype was the precursor to https://code.dccouncil.us/ which launched in 2016 and received press attention in 2018 when I made the first GitHub pull request to change the law, improving access to justice by making DC's laws freely available to be read and shared by everyone..
2012–2014U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Consulting Software Engineer
I was on the team that launched HealthData.gov, a public data inventory management platform that was a part of President Obama’s federal-wide open data effort. The site cataloged HHS agency datasets about health. I led the effort to integrate CKAN and create an API.
2010–2012POPVOX, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer
POPVOX was a venture-backed startup I co-founded to create an online advocacy platform which, in part, helped Americans write letters to Congress. I led a 2-3 person product team to design and implement the website, and I collaborated with my co-founders on startup competitions and marketing.
2003The Daily Princetonian, Features Editor
I was a features editor, the “executive editor for Page 3,” at the student-run daily newspaper during college. I also ran the newspaper’s comprehensive poll of the student body on the Iraq war.

Education

2010 Ph.D.University of Pennsylvania, Department of Linguistics
My dissertation “Learning [voice]” sought to inform the question of whether language is universal by measuring the durations of vowels in recordings of the speech of toddlers, investigating phonetics-phonology interface of the so-called voice contrast through a corpus analysis.
2008 M.A.University of Pennsylvania, Department of Linguistics
My masters thesis “Learning in the Face of Infidelity: Evaluating the Robust Interpretive Parsing/Constraint Demotion Model of Optimality Theory Language Acquisition,” explored a mathematical model of language acquisition.
2004 A.B.Princeton University
Majoring in psychology, I wrote a senior thesis on presuppositions in speech. I also graduated with certificates in applications of computing and linguistics.

Publications

Invited Talks / Media Appearances / Testimony

Additional Presentations and Manuscripts

Press Clips/etc. (selected)

Honors

Other Professional Service

  • Hack4Congress 2015, judge
  • TechLady Hackathon + Training Day, December 7, 2013, Washington, DC, sponsor
  • Hack for DC, National Day of Civic Hacking, June 2013, sponsor
  • Open Government Knowledge 2011, program committee
  • Linked Data on the Web (LDOW) 2010, 2011, program committees
  • Great American Hackathon @ Philadelphia 2009, organizer

Selected Additional Technology Projects

2013–presentMail-in-a-Box, Founder and Lead Maintainer
An open source project to easily deploy a good mail server without extensive sysadmin experience. Installed 180,000 times with possibly 25,000 current deployments. The project has a very active community on the discussion forum.
2021Iceberger: Draw an iceberg and see how it will float
(viral for a while, later mentioned here)
2013–2016ANCFinder.org, team member
A project of Code for DC to increase engagement in DC's Advisory Neighborhood Commissions. [press: WAMU]
2005–2009SemWeb .NET Library
An open source .NET library written in C# for working with RDF data for the Semantic Web. It's used in the Gnome application F-Spot, and possibly elsewhere. I created it becaues I thought the Semantic Web would be big! [github]
2009FlyOnTime.us
This entry for Sunlight Foundation's Apps for America contest, in collaboration with Josh Sulkin, is a mash-up of airline on-time flight statistics from the FAA with historical weather data from the NOAA. Mentions: White House open gov status report, The New York Times (3/12/11), NPR (3/14/10), The Washington Post (7/21/09), The Politico (6/24/09).
2007–2008Praat-Py
This is an extension to the Praat program for phonetic analysis that allows scripts to by written in Python. I created it to help with (procrastinate doing) my PhD thesis. [github]
2006–2007The Penn Lambda Calculator
This is a linguistic semantics pedagogical tool made in conjunction with Lucas Champollion and Maribel Romero.
2007/2008Semantic Web Databases
U.S. Census RDF Dataset: A 1-billion triples RDF database of U.S. Census statistics, at the time the largest open, linked, and dereferencable RDF database of real-world information. U.S. SEC Corporate Ownership RDF Data: A semantic web RDF database based on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR database.
1999Webcytology [more info]
My first major web project (I was in high school), this was a winning entry in the 1999 ThinkQuest competition. It featured a cellular automata simulation, inspired by Conway's Game of Life, where users would design organisms with different biologically inspired properties. In collaboration with Andew Kallem.

Academic Publications (grad school years)