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The White House announced Thursday that it has named its next Chief Technology Officer. She is Megan Smith, a Google executive with decades of experience in Silicon Valley. The Obama administration named as deputy U.S. CTO, Alexander Macgillivray, a former Twitter lawyer known as a staunch defender of the free flow of information online.U.S. White House Confirms Its Next Chief Technology Officer, Google's Megan Smith [washingtonpost.com]
With the announcement, President Obama gets a pair of widely-respected technology world figures, both steeped in the workings of some of Silicon Valley's biggest and highest-profile companies, but with different expertise -- one an engineer with a record of executing upon ambitious, even fantastical ideas, the other a lawyer who has navigated some of the Internet's trickiest policy questions.
"As U.S. CTO," presidential science advisor John Holdren writes on the White House blog, "Smith will guide the Administration's information-technology policy and initiatives, continuing the work of her predecessors to accelerate attainment of the benefits of advanced information and communications technologies across every sector of the economy and aspect of human well-being."
Macgillivray -- known as both Alex and, perhaps even more so, "amac" -- is a graduate of both Princeton University and Harvard Law School. The White House said that his focus will be on policy matters, from so-called intellectual property to where big data and privacy intersect.
