"Macgillivray, though, also does a bit of engineering of his own. After leaving Twitter, he hand-coded a script for resurfacing old Gmail messages to which he hadn't yet replied."
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.
I think the takeaway here is not "he didn't change much" but "the new deputy CTO for the US uses Github and knows enough about coding to adjust scripts to his liking".
Well, that just takes the wind out of our hate-sails. That's the charitable (and probably objective) interpretation. I guess people are taking issue with "hand-coded", which is an odd term that may imply things that aren't really true. It's possible it did indeed mean "customized" though.
My first reaction was "I didn't know the US had a CTO" and after a quick Wikipedia search it appears as they didn't until 2009 under Obama who appointed the first one.
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).
"Because, to me, this role's primary job should be to rangle in the technology contractors who are near constantly ripping off the US Government and under-performing/failing to deliver."
> 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)?
Why do you think Megan Smith was chosen? Google has lobbyists and the right political connections. Fortunately the candidate has good credentials as well.
Considering they took a Google executive, this could already be "someone with the right political connections". Google is one of the biggest lobbyists, I wouldn't be surprised if this had something to do with their efforts.
Still, at least it's somebody with proper qualifications. A techie, not a politician, so I'm hopeful either way.
Seems like their would be a conflict of interest when making decisions about search, web-based mail, self-driving cars, mobile phones,... (Google stuff). But I agree a techie is better than anything else.
How do you hire a qualified CTO for the US without having potential conflicts of interest?
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.
Because the CTO does not have any legislative, policy, or regulatory authority. Their only job is to improve the way the U.S. federal government uses technology.
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.
Wouldn't there be a conflict of interest no matter who the CT O of the United States is? Anyone who is qualified for such a position would be coming from another company. The current CTO was a lawyer for Twitter, which you can say there is a conflict of interest there as well.
Anyone with decision-making authority will be beset by lobbyists/lawyers. Is industry the only source of talent for industry regulation, or are there academics who have law, policy _and_ domain expertise?
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?
That has always been my thought when someone makes ad hominem attacks on political figures who have industry experience.
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.
It's not some nameless google exec, but Megan Smith who is a high achieving multidimension awesome person. She's high energy and ambitious with a good heart. She's exactly the kind of person you want in office.
[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.
Really? I think it would have been nice if someone would have told them that healthcare.gov was a giant mess. Of course the CTO has to be competent enough to give good advice.
I seem to recall reading an article about healthcare.gov (maybe the time article) specifically mentioning that the CTO was kept separate from the project until things started to go wrong.
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."
Under Todd Park the role was more of an "entrepreneur in residence" that helped shepherd some of the practices from the private sector into government. Some lean practices, small prototype testing before major program deployment, and changes in policy that provided more flexibility. That had the side effect of also impacting the ability of small businesses to engage with government. I hope they keep the role moving forward in a similar way.
Putting a stop to the rip-off is easy. Do what another great American did to turn Ford around from a $3 billion loss into being more profitable than GM:
If your focus is on quality, then quality rises and costs fall.
If your focus is on cost, then costs rise and quality falls.
Back in 2009, I met the first US CTO, Aneesh Chopra, and without a doubt he was a smarmy politician who met every political prejudice one might have.
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.
If there was any doubt that Google is in the sack with the US government, this consistent funnel of execs from Google to the White House should quell it.
If the Whitehouse isn't recruiting top Silicon Valley talent to fill technical positions, would you rather they fill them with executives from Washington D.C. area beltway bandit management consulting companies?
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.
Very good point. DC should be reaching outside its toxic beltway bandit ecosystem in general any time it wants anyone talented at anything other than milking the Federal cow.
I suppose you're right: If not Google, then who? But I don't think it's entirely fallacious: The US government is a toxic organization, and I hope Google keeps true to its civic duty to resist government spy agendas. To be fair, their technical wing seems to be trying, with end to end email encryption and PFS.
I think the contrast is to the complaints we often hear when a top financial position is an ex-Goldman exec. Or in general when a top regulator is recruited from the industry they will soon regulate.
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.
One big difference is that the CTO role is not as regulator, so you don't have the large concerns you have with putting a cable company exec in charge of the FCC, or an RIAA lawyer in charge of the DOJ's copyright enforcement policy.
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.
The conflict of interest I see is more along the lines of when it comes time for the government to pick a service provider, for save, Maps, Docs, Email, etc, Google being part of the bidding (with say Microsoft and Apple as the other bids) creates the appearance of favoritism.
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.
It's gonna happen unless you can sell everybody on a more-or-less Calvin Coolidge view of the world. Policy cannot actually be diktat; there must be a dialogue.
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".
Google has the combination of talent and name recognition that make it a great place to recruit candidates for this type of job.
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.
This is in the same way as Google is "in the sack" with Yahoo, Facebook, Softbank, Xaiomi or any of the countless companies that have recruited ex-Google execs?
Because US citizens need somebody from Google's business model and school of thought fighting for us on the inside and helping the gov't formulate our data and privacy policies?
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.
I have never claimed Google no longer stands for these things.
I just don't believe Google is on the front lines anymore, because people (like you) damn them either way.
Their security teams do important work, and largely it seems because they profoundly give a shit about these issues. They're still the front line technically.
US government has a CTO? Moldbug has advocated[1] turning the USG into a corporation for some time now. Not the first prophet to be called a kook at first.
Having briefly met with Megan a couple years ago, I'm pleased with this appointment. She asked good questions and seemed to think through the consequences of rough conceptual ideas diligently.
I'm really happy this position was given to a chick. Hopefully inspire more girls to enter tech and help to mitigate the sausage fest that is the technology industry.
I think we aren't past it until we express delight in credentials and achievements, and not gender. We shouldn't be happy that a woman got the position, we should be happy that a qualified person did.
Don't doubt for a second that being a woman helped her secure this position. Absolutely every decision made at this level is covered from all political perspectives. To assert otherwise is either hopelessly naive or intellectually dishonest.
No kidding. I would simply hope that the best PERSON for the job was appointed to the position, gender (or race, religion or sexual orientation for that matter) be damned.
I do find it mildly interesting that both the CTO and National Coordinator for Health IT roles recently went to females for the first time. Both are incredibly deserving on their own merit, and I can't wait for the time when this isn't the first thing to be mentioned.
Maybe in surf culture when used by your friends, but from a stranger and especially in a professional context it's a diminutive that comes across as dismissive.
Just to give some idea of the scale of things we're talking about, there's a Federal CIO council[1], with scores of memebers. The Feds have tons of agencies spending hundreds of billions on IT. Most all of these agencies were created by Congress, not the president, and although they report up the executive branch, they're also accountable to various and sundry legislative committees. Many times the decisions around tech and contracting have been legislated in some fashion. They just aren't made off-the-cuff.
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.
On the surface of it, I don't mind that they recruited from the industry.
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.
What other choice do they have? They're not going to hire someone right out of college and there aren't a ton of people already in government that have the qualifications for that job. It's difficult to blacklist people who have former employment at a company when that company hires the best in the industry.
I find this conflating of the US as a country and the US Government annoying. Megan Smith is the CTO of the US Federal Government, which is an entity separate from the US as a country.
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.
The President is "of the United States" not "of the US Government", it doesn't mean everyone in the country reports to him - I think you might be over-thinking the terminology a little bit.
98 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 165 ms ] threadThe 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 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://18f.gsa.gov/
They've made a lot of good hires, too - see e.g.:
https://twitter.com/18F/lists/team/members
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."
http://time.com/10228/obamas-trauma-team/
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.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming
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.
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.
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.
[1] http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/04/formali...
Can we please not use a term like "Chick" to refer to a person who holds a position in the white house?
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.
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.