Obama appoints federal CTO

Aneesh Chopra, Virginia's secretary of technology, will serve as the CTO, Obama announced at his weekly address, according to a White House news release.

“In this role, Aneesh will promote technological innovation to help achieve our most urgent priorities – from creating jobs and reducing health care costs to keeping our nation secure,” Obama said in his address.

The news comes on the heels of Obama's appointment of Vivek Kundra as the first-ever federal chief information officer. Kundra was the former CTO for the District of Columbia.

Obama said that in his new role as federal CTO, Chopra will work closely with Kundra, whose responsibilities include ensuring information security and privacy across the federal government, overseeing federal technology spending, directing policy, planning for federal IT investments and overseeing government enterprise architecture.

Chopra previously worked as managing director with the consultancy Advisory Board Company, where he lead the firm's Financial Leadership Council and the Working Council for Health Plan Executives, the White House news release said.

Mandeep Khera, CMO for web application security vendor Cenzic told SCMagazineUS.com in an email that Chopra seems to have the right background for this position. He added that Chopra has done a lot of innovation for the state of Virginia, uses technology as an enabler and favors processes before technology.

“One concern would be that he doesn't seem to have a lot of initiatives on cybersecurity, at least that's publicly visible,” Khera said. “Since cybersecurity is one of the top priorities, we hope that Aneesh's wealth of IT knowledge can be aligned with the cybersecurity priorities."


See original article on scmagazineus.com