Just in time for the November elections!
Via the New York Times, "Ex-Google Engineer to Lead Fix-It Team for Government Websites":
Ex-Google Engineer to Lead Fix-It Team for Government Websites http://t.co/03sXnpJ6wa
— The New York Times (@nytimes) August 11, 2014EDGARTOWN, Mass. — Faced with the politically devastating collapse of HealthCare.gov last year, President Obama’s White House staff lured Mikey Dickerson away from Google to save the day.Remember, Google executives have been one of the biggest sources of campaign cash for the Obama reelection machine, so it's not like there's no revolving door here or anything, wink, wink. At CBS News, "Google Political Donations: Where Company Execs Put Their Cash."
Mr. Dickerson will lead a new government team that is intended to identify and fix the government’s other failing computer systems and websites, officials said on Monday.
The decision to hire Mr. Dickerson full time is a blunt acknowledgment that even Mr. Obama’s government — with a leadership that embraced technology to win two national elections — has yet to fully adopt a Silicon Valley mind-set when it comes to cutting-edge computer systems and consumer-friendly Internet portals.
It is also a calculated bet that Mr. Dickerson can do from inside the government what he did as an outsider: break through the bureaucratic rules about technology procurement and standardized practices to inject a bit of innovative thinking across federal agencies.
“It was a very life-changing experience,” Mr. Dickerson said on Monday of his role in helping to save the health care website. He said that when he was asked to permanently leave his job at Google, “there was really not any way I could say no to that.”
White House officials said Mr. Dickerson would become the deputy chief information officer of the federal government and the administrator of the United States Digital Services Team, a small group of technology experts whose job will be to fix the government’s ancient and bloated websites.
0 comments:
Post a Comment