White House Names Google's Megan Smith As CTO

itwbennett writes that, as expected, The White House has named long-time Google executive Megan Smith as the government's new CTO, in charge of improving technology and the use of data across agencies. Smith most recently served as vice president at Google's tech lab, Google[x]. She previously served as CEO of PlanetOut, helped design early smartphone technologies at General Magic and worked on multimedia products at Apple Japan in Tokyo. She holds bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT, and just might be, as noted in a previous Slashdot post, the first US CTO worthy of the title. Also on Thursday, the White House named Alexander Macgillivray, a former general counsel and head of public policy at Twitter, as deputy U.S. CTO.

Re:CTO ? Really ?

[s.petry]

Do you really believe that it's working any differently? Look who funds him (the same big banks he promised to prosecute), look who he attacks (whistle blowers and liberty minded individuals), and look at his list of accomplishments (the US is a whole lot more fucked up today than it was when he was elected either time).

Re:Sorry, she is not worthy of the title

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you know anything about Mechanical Engineering? I have two degrees in it - all about Scientific Computing/Applied Computational Mathematics. Computational Fluid Dynamics, Finite Elements, Control Systems Engineering .... ringing any bells? Yup. All under the stunningly wide umbrella of mechanical engineering.

Re:Of course

[bobbied]

You got that right. She's a Gorden Gekko in real life. Her activities involved managing buying other companies for the giant Google NOT the development of technology. She's into the acquisition side of Google's business, not the technical development or management side.

Also, understand that this is a BRAND NEW position. They just invented it. She will have no legislated authority, no budget, no staff, no legal mandate. Just an executive order. She can advise the administrative branch at the president's pleasure, but this position has no power of law. Not that this administration couldn't use some knowledgeable technical advice to avoid things like the HealthCare.gov mess. But why her? Why, politics of course.

The political angle is that she's a woman AND very prominent member of GLAAD. (Not that this matters to me, but it does to the left.)

She's not a horrible choice for this brand spanking new Federal Government's CTO position, but it's pretty obvious this is about political reality and not fixing anything in the government. We have an invented position, a politically expedient appointee in the face of a serious election challenge to the party in power. DC business as usual. This is about politics, and she's just a political hack appointee being used to throw a group of supporters a bone.

I wish her luck, but this whole thing is a waste. Government CTO? Why on earth do we need a CTO at the federal level?

Re:Sorry, she is not worthy of the title

[kit_triforce]

I have a degree in Geology but have been employed as an IT consultant for 15 years. Degrees are a wonderful foundation, but there is no substitute for work experience, and working you often learn more then you ever could in a classroom. Roughly 80% of my technical abilities came from self-study and on-the-job training and experiences. Look at her work history, and what she has done. She is the best qualified person we have seen coming in to this position by quite a large margin.