Brian Gryth is a passionate advocate for civic innovation and technology driven open government. Brian is the Manager of the Operational Support Team in the Business and Licensing Division of the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office. While at the Secretary of State, Brian led the creation and managed of the Operational Support Team. Through the adoption of continuous improvement and data-driven management processes, this team has implemented more effective and efficient service delivery to the Division’s customers. Most recently, Brian lead the effort to gain funding to create the Business Intelligence Center program. This program will centralize access to government data relevant to businesses and implement a civic apps challenge to incentivize the tech community to use the data and create tools useful to business owners.
Brian also co-founded OpenColorado, a non-profit formed to help facilitate a transformation in government that will lead to a more useable and interactive government. Through the use of open source technologies, OpenColorado deployed data.opencolorado.org, one of the first community driven CKAN data catalogs in the world. This catalog makes nearly 700 government datasets accessible to the public and developer community. As part of OpenColorado’s educational efforts, Brian led the effort to create opengovernmentinitiative.org, which creates and publishes open government policy templates to help municipal governments adopt and institutionalize open government in their organizations.
Brian has also co-organized multiple unconferences and community events, such as Gov 2.0 Camp Rocky Mountains, CityCamp Colorado 2010, 2011, 2012, and Denver Startup Week. In order to help reach a new population of civic activists, Brian has planned or advised the planning of several civic hackathons, including Colorado Code of Communities Civic Hackathon, Hack for Longmont, and Hack4Colorado. Brain frequent presents on the topics of Open Government, data transparency, innovation, and social entrepreneurship. Brian earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Northern Colorado and a Juris Doctor, cum laude, from Hamline University School of Law.
