[6] In August 2012, Johnson became a Presidential Innovation Fellow and worked on a project called RFP-EZ,[7] a digital utility to improve the success rate of small IT firms in acquiring government contracts.

[11] Over several election cycles, Johnson contributed to Democratic political candidates including Brian Forde and Doug Jones in 2017, Michelle Nunn in 2014, as well as Zephyr Teachout in 2016.

[5] Johnson has been accused of sexual misconduct and mistreatment by multiple women during his tenure on the Howard Dean campaign and employment at the Sunlight Foundation.

Along with John Petropoulos, Johnson invented the use of mouseover preview ability in search results for which they were granted a patent in 2006.

[15][16] In 2009, he was the Google-O’Reilly Open Source Community Builder of the Year,[17] and in 2010, one of Federal Computer Week's Fed 100.