New Federal CTO Is an IT Innovator

President Obama has appointed Aneesh Chopra as federal CTO and Jeffrey Zients as chief performance officer (CPO).  CTO and CPO are new positions created by the Obama administration. 

Annesh Chopra has been Virginia's Secretary of Technology. There's a fascinating Youtube clip of Chopra on IT infrastructure, interoperability and 20^th century governance.  "We have all this data. We just can't mine it because it's siloed." The Federal CTO will be an assistant to the President, as well as the Associate Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. He will be working closely with Vivek Kundra, the new Federal CIO, and the new CPO to develop and implement President Obama's technology agenda.

Vivek Kundra was the CTO for the District of Columbia.  There's a very interesting Youtube clip of Vivek Kundra discussing interoperability and geospatial.

The IT industry appears to be pretty happy about these appointments.  All three appear to be IT innovators so this could be an exciting time for technology.  Tim O'Reilly is extremely positive, "Aneesh Chopra is a rock star. He's a brilliant, thoughtful change-maker. He knows technology, he knows government, and he knows how to put the two together to solve real problems. We couldn't do better."