United States CTO

I just learned from the La Times that the new CTO was finally
appointed. As the CIO, he also comes from Virginia. His name
is Aneesh Chopra (see also a note about him 4 years ago).

This is what President Obama is expecting from this nomination:

"Aneesh and Jeffrey will work closely with our
Chief Information Officer, Vivek Kundra, who
is responsible for setting technology policy across the
government, and using technology to improve
security, ensure transparency, and lower costs.
The goal is to give all Americans a voice in
their government and ensure that they know exactly
how we’re spending their money – and can hold us
accountable for the results. "

I marked the phrase "ensure transparency" above.

The same LA Times news reports on the new position in
federal government, the Chief Performance Officer.

Read more about the new CTO from Tim O'Reilly´s blog, which
includes a video where Chopra talks about Open Government, data
mining, data standards, legacy, broadband, health systems and
so on.

It seems that his strong point is the vision that government
should be in the upfront usage of new technology and not behind it,
as it seems it is in the United States, as well as in other countries.

Bringing the possibilities of IT to government is his main drive.

Interesting as well is his view on approaching R&D as support for
attracting new industries, a policy applied in Virginia for the case
of the Rolls Royce jet engine plant.