The Health and Human Services Department has tapped Bryan Sivak, Maryland’s chief innovation officer, to serve as its new chief technology officer.
Sivak has been in his current role as chief innovation officer to Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley since April 2011. Prior to that, he was the CTO for the District of Columbia.
Sivak replaces Todd Park, who was appointed federal CTO in March 2012.
HHS took to Twitter to announce and welcome its new CTO on June 15. Sivak himself tweeted he was “super excited” to continue work started by Park and the agency itself.
Sivak joined the public sector after founding InQuira, a provider of knowledge management solutions. The company was acquired by Oracle in July 2011.
Posted by Camille Tuutti on Jun 15, 2012 at 6:59 PM0 comments
Want to know how cautious the government is being about spending money lately? An incident from the TechAmerica Foundation's American Technology Awards ceremony, held June 13 in Washington, D.C., may illustrate it.
Kevin Johnson, CEO of Juniper Networks, showed a video as part of his acceptance of the corporate leadership award. The video highlighted Juniper's three areas of emphasis – the programmable network, cloud architecture and security innovation – with dramatized scenes to show how the technologies may work in the near future.
Following Johnson, Homeland Security department CIO Richard Spires took the stage to accept the award for Government Technology Executive of the Year. As the applause died down, he said, “Here in the federal government these days, we don't do things like slick videos. But I was very impressed.”
Posted by Michael Hardy on Jun 14, 2012 at 6:59 PM0 comments
If you’re late for a big event, you probably want to make your entrance as discreetly as possible. The likelihood of that actually happening when you’re a former federal chief technology officer, however, is low.
The June 11 U.S.-India Joint Commission Meeting on Science and Technology Cooperation was nearing its end when a familiar figure emerged through the doors, trying to sneak his way to the front row without drawing attention to himself. But no such luck.
“We just had one late addition; nice to see nothing changes! Aneesh Chopra, the former chief technology officer, just joined us,” Chris Vein, White House deputy chief technology officer, announced in jest as the latecomer flashed a sheepish smile and took his seat.
Chopra was appointed as the first federal CTO in 2009 and stayed for more than two years. The White House broke the news of his resignation in late January 2012, and a few weeks later came the announcement that he had joined the Advisory Board Co., a consulting firm focused on health care research.
During his White House tenure, Chopra led open government efforts and was involved with the creation of the Open Government Platform, which was unveiled at the June 11 event. The open source, so-called Data.gov-in-a-box, initiative strives to increase transparency and accountability, as well as provide citizens with one portal to government information.
Rumors have swirled that Chopra soon intends to announce a run for Virginia lieutenant governor, with one source saying that announcement will come after July 15.
Posted by Camille Tuutti on Jun 14, 2012 at 6:59 PM0 comments