White House Names Google’s Megan Smith the Next CTO of the US
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
The article nor Wikipedia make it clear exactly what a CTO's job in the White House would really entail. It sounds like a bunch of random stuff which utilise technology in some way or another.
But at least, for now, they have a technologist with decent technology credentials. I wonder how long until those role gets given to someone with the right political connections (or someone with good relationships with technology contractors/lobbyists)?
Because, to me, this role's primary job should be to wrangle in the technology contractors who are near constantly ripping off the US Government and under-performing/failing to deliver.
They can try to spread technology in schools and such, but then they run into the limits of the White House's powers and or the states right's dilemma (although this could definitely promote third party educational resources, like Coursera or Khan Academy).
Not a bug, WONTFIX.
Why do you think Megan Smith was chosen? Google has lobbyists and the right political connections. Fortunately the candidate has good credentials as well.
Still, at least it's somebody with proper qualifications. A techie, not a politician, so I'm hopeful either way.
Personally, I'm far less worried about this revolving door than others.
If you know of anyone qualified for the position but yet doesn't work for a company then I guess I am wrong but having work experience is kind of a requirement.
What's the fear, that their appointment will lead to a broken IT procurement system rife with conflicts of interest, perverted incentives, and no accountability? That's what we already have now.
I can't imagine a CTO not having worked at any of the big tech companies.
Technolgy is rarely neutral, all techies are at least inadvertent politicans. What is the best vehicle for training techies to be civil servants -- lobbying jobs, venture capital, government contracting, academic residency, technical career in government service?
If there is evidence of bias, then we should attack them, but until there is, I would prefer someone with actual industry experience as opposed to a layman with less probability of bias.
[citation needed], I think. They certainly lobby, but are they one of the biggest? I think that, in reality, a lot of tech companies were kind of lagging in that department until relatively recently.
The problem isn't that America doesn't need a CTO--as a nation, as a government, it makes more sense to bring systems expertise in-house than to keep bleeding resources out to contractors. There really should be a .gov entity that handles IT and application development.
That said, the problem is that such a position is going to be beset on all sides by people that don't want their job disrupted and which won't be given enough authority to actually change workflows to match the new software.
I think this is the USDS, the "US Digital Service":
https://playbook.cio.gov/They've made a lot of good hires, too - see e.g.:
edit: well, it sort of says that, but doesn't offer much explanation:
> Zients, who is not an engineer, was teamed with Park, the White House chief technology officer. "On Oct. 17, I went from White House CTO to full-time HealthCare.gov fixer," Park says. The two were charged, says Zients, with "finding fresh eyes who could decide whether the thing was salvageable."
> ...Early on, Lambrew, highly regarded as a health care policy expert and advocate for medical care for the poor, kept Park off the invitation list for the planning meetings, according to two people who worked on the White House staff prior to the launch. (The White House declined to make Lambrew available for an interview.) The only explanation Park offers for his exclusion is that "The CTO helps set government technology policy but does not get involved in specific programs. The agencies do that."
Rangle: small stones which are fed to hawks to aid in digestion.
Wrangle: to herd horses or other livestock.
If your focus is on quality, then quality rises and costs fall.
If your focus is on cost, then costs rise and quality falls.
I am happy that they have appointed Megan SMith, who appears to be a real technologist, because the meeting with Aneesh was so "political" that I had zero faith that position would be doing anything of merit going forward. That it was just another political office.
It was the same when I used to meet with Tom Ridge. That level in politics is really a bizarre world.
The article links to https://gist.githubusercontent.com/amac0/6b17b0ca497e9cb1f37... , which has a comment that says:
* This script is based on and is nearly identical to: * http://jonathan-kim.com/2013/Gmail-No-Response/
I don't think modifying an existing script counts as "hand-coded". Anyway, I still find it interesting that WashingtonPost links to a javascript file directly.
2 of the 4 lines changed simply alter the labels from "AR" (awaiting response) to "No Response."
So really is is two lines of actual logic different and some labels.
Still awesome. We got a guy in the White House who has written two lines of code!!
The CTO is truly a stupendous job, even for someone working at Google scale. I would be very surprised if this turned into an operational role. I imagine it would be advisory and policy-based only. There's simply too much to get your head around and not a lot of levers to pull to make things happen like it does in the commercial world.
Still, I am very optimistic that there is much goodness to be done here. It's just not a CTO job in the way most of us would understand.
[1] https://cio.gov/
However, if the CTO is in a position to influence government contracts or other spending towards Google, then I would be against this - same principle applies to ex-Goldman Sachs execs taking up key finance related Government positions.
They've got to go somewhere for the talent pool and credentials, and that means tapping Google, Twitter, et al. It helps that Google and many Bay Area companies lean progressive and helped both Obama's campaign, as well as fixing ACA Web sites.
If the suggestion is this somehow proves some nefarious NSA connection because a few employees went to work for the government, that seems pretty fallacious to me.
In those cases too, you could say "well, how else would you rather they fill those spots?" And yes, it is likely the a Goldman exec would have lots of expertise in the financial sector, so it's a natural place to recruit from.
Still in both those cases, and with Google here, there are large potential conflicts of interest. People that complain about Goldman execs in Washington will also complain about this appointment, and there are valid reasons for such complaints.
There may be some instances when a conflict of interest comes up, but as others point out, that's virtually impossible to avoid for anyone with expertise. Many here might not object to an academic being appointed to the role who specializes in open source and advocating for the limitations of copyright, but of course there's a huge conflict of interest there, too.
The conflict of interest would be their tendency to see everything from the lens of their life's work, and of course to actively advocate for their values, which are already well formed in the relevant domain.
Barring financial conflict of interest (e.g. stock still owned from the previous job), it's just as much of a conflict of interest as someone previously at one of these related companies but no longer employed there.
Of course, one could argue that in many cases, Gmail is a better solution than Exchange or Outlook for the government workers, but Google as CTO will forever taint any wins.
I don't think the Goldman comparison works. In those cases, industry reps control the implementation of regulations or help draft rules or laws, and that is a much bigger conflict of interest.
If you can catch leaders on CSPAN from various companies testifying before Congrefs, it's pretty frightening to think they'd have no voice at all - things are so over-specialized that there's considerable time spent on just getting warmed up. During the brownouts of the electric grid, it was sorta uncomfortable watching people from the electric industry trying to phrase things carefully but completely for the committee. Considerable time was spent on them asking how frequently the instrumentation on the grid should be polled. It's all a bit like the comedy short "The Expert".
She has the tech expertise but worked as an executive. She worked at Google which automatically gives at least the perception that she is one of the top people in the field.
It doesn't make sense for a country to have a "CTO". Do all technology decisions made anywhere in the US have to have her approval?
Logically, if she were the CTO of the US, she would have as direct reports all the CTOs of all the companies in the US.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/30/twitter-al...
If you want to assault Andrew's credentials as a staunch defender of free speech, etc, you are going to have to do better than "he worked at Google".
He worked at Google at a time when Google really was on the front lines of defending this stuff, and he was the one doing it.
If you want to blame Google, blame Google. Amac is pretty much unassailable, IMHO. He was on the right side of every legal/policy decision I can think of during his tenure. He eventually left, IMHO, precisely because he saw an opportunity to be a staunch advocate for these kinds of things at twitter.
Can we please not use a term like "Chick" to refer to a person who holds a position in the white house?
[1] http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/04/formali...