White House Names Google's Megan Smith As CTO 75
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.
Oh boy (Score:3, Insightful)
improving technology and the use of data across agencies
That is the exact opposite of what we need right now.
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We need pervasive American technical panopticon to keep Islamic extremism and resurgent Russian imperial aggression from destroying Oceania.
Remember, you need to doublethink plusgood if you think Snowden was good, the NSA is bad and ISIS is a threat.
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Stop covering for your closeted robosexual tendencies, transistor tweaker!
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Google cozying up to a facilitator of murder, the world can't wait for the doodle.
You think this makes things worse? (Score:5, Insightful)
improving technology and the use of data across agencies
That is the exact opposite of what we need right now.
The NSA and the security industrial complex don't need stinking laws and the approval of the public to aggregate and track you. They're already doing it. I doubt this role will help them (or hinder them). What integrated data could provide is more effective programs and less paperwork, and possibly more data.gov APIs.
Worrying about the CTO "improving things the wrong way" is the same as worrying about sharing your bank password with your spouse while storing your password file in cleartext on a malware infested desktop.
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No, the exact opposite of what we need right now is a series of executive orders enforcing implementations that hurt technology, rather than foster it.
Example? If one came down the pike demanding that all government agencies use only Microsoft-built operating systems (or worse, one forcing the use of .docx, .xlsx, etc in all government documents...)
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Why?
Every time I hear someone say this the reasoning ends up being "because the government is incompetent at all IT projects, and isn't capable of keeping things in good order, just look at all the current evidence about how badly the government organizes things, it wastes money, and ruins everything."
I can only assume that the reason for the gigantic waste of money is exactly because people like you stop them doing things in more efficient ways all the time.
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Oftentimes, they do that when the candidate has little-to-no experience in the office.
Kind of odd in this case, but with most political appointees the press likes it's a means to hedge against cries of nepotism, favoritism, or suchlike. Gives them a means to shout "...see? Mr. So-and-So is qualified for the job!!!!11!!"
Re:Of course (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
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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?
I love how your factual, informative, insightful posts got modded into oblivion.
Slashdot is useless.
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"Managing buying other companies for the giant Google" is a very incomplete description of her role there. It is also not incompatible with developing new technology. Sometimes you build a technical capability, sometimes you buy it in. Working out which capabilities are important to you, and how you can develop them, requires an understanding of both the commercial and technical sides of a business. People who can work well at this intersection have rare and important skills. The OP was doing her a disservi
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So, do you deny the apparent political content of her appointment? Do you always wear rose colored glasses or is it a condition you where born with?
I'm not saying she's not qualified she is (I'd be qualified too, but that's not what we are debating), I'm saying that there are far more qualified people out there, folks who already are CTO's of large businesses so why did they choose her? Political Optics of course.
The choice was drive by the political reality of who she is in private life not her professio
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There may or may not be more qualified folks out there, but they need to want to do the job and work with this administration, and that means that they in all likelihood will need to agree with the aims of the administration, so her politics being aligned with his is really not very surprising, is it? It is a feature of the US system of governance, not a bug. If you want a wholly impartial civil service, you need to move to a different country.
As for your claim that you'd also be qualified....I kinda doubt
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Re:She may be fit for the job..... (Score:4, Insightful)
She only fits this "job" as far as politics is concerned. There is no CTO of the federal government position, they just invented it, so they could appoint her to it so she fits as well as anybody could who has a position invented for them.
Take a look at her Wikipedia page and it's pretty clear what's going on here.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... [wikipedia.org]
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CTO of what is the question. You do understand that there is no CTO position in the Federal government right? They just invented this for her. She will have ZERO authority to make any day to day technology decisions.
Dig a bit and figure out why they are doing this. This is about politics, not fixing anything more than the next election.
Elaborate, please. (Score:2)
Dig a bit and figure out why they are doing this. This is about politics, not fixing anything more than the next election.
I don't think anyone has the time to dig for every bit of information that someone on the internet insists exists. I don't suppose you have any links, do you? ...or perhaps you could just elaborate? Otherwise I think you're going to completely fail to spread whatever message it is you are trying to spread.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... [wikipedia.org]
Wikipedia isn't that hard and she does show up in Google searches still, even if she may be quitting there soon.
Think politics, think about which groups support the current administration and you tell me why they picked her...
Look, I've posted it elsewhere and I'm getting modded down for it, so I'm going to be a bit obtuse for now..
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CTO ? Really ? (Score:1)
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That position doesn't report to the President. It's under the Director of White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, under that Director. "CTO" is just a catchy name some consultant thought up, although it is a hell of a lot shorter than the alternatives.
Re:CTO ? Really ? (Score:4, Informative)
God dammit. I hate not being able to edit posts. Let's try that again-
That position doesn't report to the President. It's under the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. "CTO" is just a catchy name some consultant thought up, although it is a hell of a lot shorter than the alternatives.
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We usually refer to him as the "Crony Capitalist in Chief"
Sorry, she is not worthy of the title (Score:1)
"Mechanical Engineering" has basically no common grounds with Computer Engineering/Software Engineering/Computer Science. She may be a good CEO, but the job of a CTO is still an engineering one (if often abused) and she has not what it takes there. No argument that her predecessors where even less qualified.
Re:Sorry, she is not worthy of the title (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Wired describes her as "n addition to being a gifted programmer and technologist," and she helped make some of the first cellular technology for Apple.
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Ah, so there has been an extreme bastardization of "mechanical engineering" in the US? My apologies then, the rest of the world has kept its sanity in that area.
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Control Theory is part of Mechanical Engineering.
And a position like this is all about "control".
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Control Theory is part of Mechanical Engineering.
And part of Aero-Astro, and Applied Computer Science, and Theory of Computation, and Applied Mathematics, and ...
Personally, I'd put it in Signals and Systems, smack dab in the heart of EE.
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She's worthy of the title (Score:2)
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More CS in BEng(Mech) than MBA (Score:2)
"No common ground" my arse. I moved into dealing with computers full time after I spent more time wrangling a cluster than simulating heat transfer on it.
Sounds great! (Score:5, Insightful)
As if we don't [wikipedia.org] already [whitehouse.gov] have [wikipedia.org] enough [whitehouse.gov] corporate [whitehouse.gov] executives [wikipedia.org] running the white house.
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bummer (Score:2)
I miss the days of hiring people with talents like running a horsey show. /snark
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not Bush's fault a damn hurricane showed up and spoiled that tried and true means of appointing cronies. You have to admit that vacant "deer in headlights" look Brownie had while corpses floated behind him in the street was priceless. Community activism is almost as good a criteria, can't wait to find out if Obama really wants to destroy ISIS or just "manage" them, or maybe just continue to tease us with the waffling.
First Action: Amend Pledge (Score:2)
"One nation, under Google+"
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I have no problem giving the job to the most qualified person, even if that person is a woman. But she's not the most qualified person! You know how I know? Because she's a woman! She is clearly an AFFIRMATIVE ACTION pick. She's no good. All she knows about is mechanical engineering (aside from her years of IT experience)! I'm so sick of all this AFFIRMATIVE ACTION! Again, I'd love to give the job to a qualified woman. But every woman who gets any job gets it because of AFFIRMATIVE ACTION!
Thank you for this succinct recap of much of this Slashdot discussion thread.
You did forget to mention how the position was "just invented" for her. (And her two predecessors [wikipedia.org], err...)
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But creating a few sinecures will improve the numbers!
Frankly I don't want this (Score:2)
First an inept CIO position now a CTO position. I don't want the US government smarter about systems and data. They're already fucking things up nicely right now as it is. Some agencies with better technology and training could really wreak havoc; like the IRS. Screw that.
Most of her career is in acquisitions (Score:1)
Basically an M&A due diligence apparatchik. After all MOST patent lawyers also have technical degrees. Doesn't make them scientists though.