Ex-Microsoft exec VanRoekel named U.S. technology chief

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Source: The Washington Post

Former Microsoft executive Steven VanRoekel has been named the nation’s top technology chief, the White House announced Thursday. VanRoekel succeeds Vivek Kundra, the 36-year-old who pioneered the role.

VanRoekel, 41, said he would use his new role as chief information officer to introduce new technologies to improve government service as well as focus on cutting costs in an age of austerity.

“The productivity gap between where the private sector has gone over the last two decades and where government has gone is ever-widening,” VanRoekel told reporters at the White House on Thursday, attributing this largely to the government’s slow uptake and lack of spending on new technology. This “can be done in a way that actually saves money, saves resources and everything else,” he said.

VanRoekel spent 15 years at Microsoft — including a stint as Bill Gates’s assistant — before becoming the managing director of the Federal Communications Commission in 2009. At the FCC, he oversaw the implementation of many of Kundra’s projects, such as a shift to so-called cloud computing.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/vanroekel-is-new-top-technology-chief/2011/08/04/gIQAaO8IvI_story.html

[cliffordu]

1. So we can have Internet Exploder and Outbreak Express on every computer

the government operates.

Schweet.

[onehandle]

2. No conflict of interest there. Nosireebob.

Just imagine if the last administration would have hired this guy.

What would we have said?