A CTO’s views on the new Fed CTO

Posted on April 18, 2009 Updated on April 22, 2009

I’m very pleased with the pick of Aneesh Chopra as the Federal Government’s CTO.  I wish I could add more context than that, and was thinking of a quick biographical sketch of Aneesh and some ideas on why this is great news.  Then I read Tim O’Reilly’s post at OReilly Radar, and frankly I just totally agree with everything Tim said.  Please check out his post at:

http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/04/aneesh-chopra-great-federal-cto.html

Here is an excerpt that particullarly resonated with me:

“Chopra has been focused for the past three years on the specific technology challenges of government. Industry experience does little to prepare you for the additional complexities of working within the bounds of government policy, competing constituencies, budgets that
often contain legislative mandates, regulations that may no longer be relevant but are still in force, and many other unique constraints. In his three year tenure as Secretary for Technology for the Commonwealth of Virginia, Chopra has demonstrated that he has these skills. In fact, last year, the National Association of State Chief Information Officers ranked Virginia #1 in technology management. ” Read the rest of this entry »