Obama names tech execs to transition team
President-elect Barack Obama has named tech executives from Google.org and InterActiveCorp to his transition team, according to reports. — Google.org's Sonal Shah and Julius Genchowski, a former IAC executive who also served as chief counsel …
Context & Ripple Effects
Obama's transition planning follows his 2007 pledge to create a federal chief technology officer role and October proposals that tied that office to a national broadband buildout. Coverage on November 5 had already established that high-tech policy experience was being brought into the transition.
The reported addition of Google.org's Sonal Shah and former IAC executive Julius Genchowski extends that staffing signal from policy commitments to the team shaping the incoming administration's agenda.
First-order effects
- Google.org and IAC-linked operating and policy experience gain a reported place in Obama's transition deliberations, elevating technology issues within the administration-building process.
- The reported appointees become potential conduits between the transition team and the technology sector's perspectives on broadband and the proposed CTO role.
Second-order effects
- Technology companies and policy advocates have a clearer incentive to organize around the transition's emerging technology agenda, particularly the broadband proposal and CTO mandate.
- Candidates for senior technology-policy posts face a transition process that is already drawing on both Internet-business and Washington-policy backgrounds.
Third-order effects
- If this staffing approach carries into the administration, federal technology policy may be shaped more directly by people fluent in both digital-business operations and public policy, rather than treating technology as a narrow procurement function.
The trend: The transition is part of a broader move to make technology leadership and broadband policy central components of federal economic and administrative planning.