Former US CTO’s book looks at cutting-edge technology.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Aneesh Chopra, the Indian American most famous for being the United States’ first-ever Chief Technology Officer (CTO), has released his newest book: “Innovative State: How Technologies Can Transform Government,” which analyzes the relationship between the US federal government and emerging technologies.
Specifically, Chopra’s book looks at how the emergence of new technologies in the private sector has made it difficult, if not impossible, for the US government to effectively keep pace with the rapid evolution of cutting-edge tech.
“Over the last twenty years, our economy and our society, from how we shop and pay our bills to how we communicate, have been completely revolutionized by technology,” says the Amazon description of “Innovative State.” “A movement arose around the idea that these same technologies could reshape and improve government. But the idea languished, and while the private sector innovated, our government stalled, trapped in a model designed for the America of the 1930s and 1960s.”
In an interview on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” Chopra explained how, for the vast majority of its existence, the US government has been able to adequately reconcile the needs of its citizens with the best technology available.
“It’s just the last 20 years when the pace of innovation in the private sector – cloud computing, big data, mobile broadband – [has made] it harder to ingest these technologies into the government, largely because we’ve had a difficult process in bringing these technologies in,” Chopra told Jon Stewart, in an interview that aired Tuesday night.
Perhaps more than any other Presidency, Barack Obama’s administration has been plagued with complaints regarding the White House’s inability to keep up with the latest technologies, somewhat ironic when considering that Obama’s biggest base of supporters comes from the younger, more tech-savvy crowd.
In fact, over the last six months, two of the biggest controversies to hit the Obama Administration have centered on faulty technology: the horrific launch of Healthcare.gov, and the scandal regarding treatment of sick veterans by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).
During his interview on the Jon Stewart program, Chopra spoke at length about the various issues related specifically to the VA scandal, discussing the strides that the federal government has made in increasing inter-departmental transparency and what else needs to be done to fully revamp the system and modernize it. Unfortunately, by the time it takes for the federal government to brings it technology up to modern standards, it won’t exactly be “modern” anymore.
These issues, Chopra says, underline the central thesis of “Innovative State,” which he hopes will help enhance the debate regarding the apparent disparity between what the government should be able to do, and what it is actually capable of doing.
“Aneesh Chopra’s “Innovative State” is must-reading for anyone interested in tackling America’s biggest problems,” said Ariana Huffington, creator of The Huffington Post. “We’ve seen how new technologies have dramatically changed the media industry, and Chopra shows how we can use them to remake our government.”
The book has also been endorsed by Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, Harvard Business School Professor Kim B. Clark, and Peter Orszag, former Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Below is the full interview of Aneesh Chopra on “The Daily Show with John Stewart.”
2 Comments
Yeah, I watched the Jon Stewart interview. This guy is a complete idiot. Nothing but mindless technobabble. He’s clearly a political hack who really doesn’t have any depth of understanding of the underlying technical issues, nor does he have executive experience in terms of actually leading people to accomplish mission-critical tasks.
One of the Washington parasite class. It’s a shame that President Obama is surrounding himself with these sycophants.
Totally agree. Never touched a PC. Self serving arrogant prick