U.S. tech head: We’ll be talking to 2016 campaigns
Megan Smith, the chief technology officer of the United States, said Friday that her office will be reaching out to the 2016 presidential campaigns to discuss the work the administration has done to improve the government’s digital capabilities.
“You know, it’s such good practice to be including these kinds of innovation techniques. It’s not partisan,” she said at an event hosted in Washington by Mashable.
{mosads}“One thing we will do next year is we hope to reach out to every campaign and just make sure that everybody who’s running knows about the work we’re doing so they can think about how they might include it,” she said. “I think that would be a good best practice, and we’ll understand from lawyers how and what’s allowed there — because we’re new around here.”
The Obama administration has undertaken several initiatives to bring the practices of Silicon Valley to Washington.
In August, the White House launched the U.S. Digital Service to work with different agencies on tech projects. It is led by Mikey Dickerson, a former Google engineer who helped to spearhead the rehabilitation of Healthcare.gov after its disastrous initial launch.
The administration then asked for $105 million to fund similar teams in 25 federal agencies.
The White House has also introduced 18F, a tech consultancy based out of the General Services Administration that includes the Presidential Innovation Fellows program.
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