Todd Park Appointed Second U.S. CTO 78
redletterdave writes "On Friday, President Barack Obama appointed Todd Park, a 39-year-old former entrepreneur and data scientist, to be the new Chief Technology Officer of the United States. Park takes over for Aneesh Chopra, the first U.S. CTO, who resigned earlier this year. Park was formerly the CTO of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services since 2009, where he helped bring 'big data' to healthcare by helping create an open health care data platform similar to the National Weather Service, which could feed data to commercial websites and applications. Before joining the Obama administration, Park helped co-found AthenaHealth and Castlight Health, and also served as a senior adviser to Ashoka, a global incubator for social entrepreneurs. One of his ventures, Healthpoint Services, won the 2011 Sankalp Award for the 'most innovative and promising health-oriented social enterprise in India.'"
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Did you see Bush WITH his teleprompter, let alone without?
Bush Jr. with a teleprompter or speech to follow was a joke.
Bush Jr. just talking about things was perfectly coherent and reasonable.
Bush Jr. is not a moron, he is just a terrible public speaker.
Whether or not you agree with his opinions or his administration's actions is a completely separate matter.
How come CTO of USA are minorities? (Score:2)
Just a curious question:
This may be a coincidence, but I find it curious that the first CTO of USA, Mr. Aneesh Chopra, an Indian American, and the second CTO of USA, Todd Park, a Korean American
Is the position of CTO of America a Political Correct appointment or is this - appointing minorities to the post - a sign that the minorities are somehow doing something right that the majority (ie the Whites) are under performing?
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Since these are the appointments of one person - how is their race the sign of anything besides what that person believes?
Obviously, the President is from the political party that pushed the style over substance societal pressure that is "political correctness", so what would even lead you to search the space of "doing something right" while trying to understand the likely reason for a statistical aberration?
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I'll never understand how criticism of Obama is somehow countered with criticism of George W.
That's politics, I guess, where which team you're on is always more important than the soundness of your logic or the value of your core principles.
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Have you seen him without his teleprompter?
Sure, with slick professional script writers with ph.ds in public relations to tell him exactly what to say, he looks smooth enough. Without it, he's a stuttering bumbling idiot. I'm the only one who remembers that?
I would love to see you get up and give an extemporaneous speech in front of hundreds of people who are just itching to tear and twist your every word apart. It would be hilarious. I'd wager you couldn't get through a single sentence without at least two "ums", "uhs", or "likes".
Obama, off-script, talks like a regular person. What a shock. If you want to find something trivial and petty to criticize him over, go after his terrible comedic timing. Seriously, that dude can't tell a joke to save his life.
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We certainly see it with the banking industry, the bank CEO's get jobs at the treasury. This shit is happening far too often and I see it as the number one problem we face, big business running our government.
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What's wrong with the word "Obamacare". It's short and unambiguous. Is the guy supposed to say "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" instead?
It's like the "Bush Tax Cuts". We all know what someone is talking about when they bring it up. No need to site the HR and S bill numbers which no one knows anyway.
Sure, these terms tend to be used to in the pejorative sense; but that's the fault of the actual legislation, not the way their nicknames.
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The same thing could be said with any presidency, there is always some catch-phrase or slogan that ends up paraphrasing an administration. I see your point
CTO? (Score:5, Funny)
Is it bad of me that I didn't know the country HAD a CTO? Do we have a CEO, COO, and chairman of the board too?
I think we should work on a hostile take-over of Iraq... no wait, maybe we already did that.
Re:CTO? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know about all those executive posts, but the country does have owners. You and I are not among them.
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Is it bad of me that I didn't know the country HAD a CTO? Do we have a CEO, COO, and chairman of the board too?
I think we should work on a hostile take-over of Iraq... no wait, maybe we already did that.
First I've heard of it, too. What systems did they hack into to get these jobs?
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Is it bad of me that I didn't know the country HAD a CTO? Do we have a CEO, COO, and chairman of the board too?
Silly. CTO is just the title they use for /. readers.
His real title is Tsar or more precisely Computa Tsar , so you don't confuse him with the Auto Tsar, the Dealing with Foreigners Tsar, or the War Tsar.
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The US does indeed have a CIO.
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CEO -- Barack Obama President (Chief Executive)
COO -- Joe Biden (VP)
CFO -- Ben Bernake (Chairman of Fed)
Chairman of the Board -- John Roberts
Board Members - Supreme Court Justices
I think that corporations just made new titles for roles that already existed in models of governance and applied them to corporate governance, but the "CTO" title might be the first
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All the CTO/CIO + tons of Czar appointments are an effort to legitimize more executive appointed bureaucrats, more staff to support them, more money, and more power for the government.
Over time, these appointments will get expanded into departments that will end up completely undermining the very thing they're supposed to be promoting - at the cost of billions to taxpayers. Take a look at the Department of Education and the Department of Energy. Horrible track records for accomplishing squat in their resp
Understood (Score:3)
He has my condolences.
Great! More Outsourcing (Score:1)
It's a good thing this guy has done so much for Indian health care.
After all, with Immelt - the great innovator of outsourcing - as head of Obama's Job Creation Council, India is going to need healthy workers.
Why is it not immediately obvious to everyone that the White House is quite literally selling them out?
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It's not immediately obvious to everyone because it is not, by any factual account or logical reasoning, true.
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And looks like people are voting for it.
It's even worse in Britain - here the poor and the disabled aren't regarded as a consequence of a free market served best by charity but as lazy, dishonest scum.
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It sounds like the British have moved from mere conservatism to killing off the weak and powerless.
There is no reason why, in a society which has reached the general level of wealth ours has, the first kind of security should not be guaranteed to all without endangering general freedom; that is: some minimum of food, shelter and clothing, sufficient to preserve health. Nor is there any reason why the state should not help to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance in providing for those common h
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"Neither the left nor the right should be satisfied with the current system, which fucks everyone except a few major shareholders and executives."
Which are properly rewarding those governing from the left or from the right, so being everybody that counts.
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(1) We already have that - minimum level of food (stamps) and lowcost housing. Also shelters for homeless and orphanages for kids.
(2) Our society is wealthy? Is that why our almost-all our EU and US governments owe money to China and Arabia? I don't define that as wealth.
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Why should I have to work to provide you a minimum level of food, shelter, and clothing? Are you my master? Am I your slave? How many hours of my labor do you require to take care of you and the results of your breeding activities? At what point during the day can I take care of my own needs and pursue my own desires?
Am I selfish for choosing how to spend the fruits of my labor? Or are you selfish for wanting to take the fruits of my labor by force through government?
Maybe if giving people people minim
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Because, as Warren Buffet said, you grew up in a society which was the creation of others before you, and if you didn't have that society you and your parents wouldn't have had your own food, shelter and clothing.
You would be chasing rabbits with sharp sticks, sleeping in trees, and wearing rags, if you survived at all.
In exchange for the benefits of society that you grew up with, you have an obligation to give back to society. If you don't, society will punish you for not following its laws.
As biologists a
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Because, as Warren Buffet said, you grew up in a society which was the creation of others before you, and if you didn't have that society you and your parents wouldn't have had your own food, shelter and clothing.
Sure, I owe Society something for providing a starting point. I don't advocate anarchy. But what is this "society" you speak of and for so authoritatively? Further, what is the actual fabric of that society that has benefitted me and that I owe? Yet further, what parts of society actually hindered me? Certainly you realize that our society, like any framework, has its good parts and bad parts. Have you thought about that? Have you followed that thought to its logical conclusion in that some people su
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You owe everything to the society that provided you with a starting point.
As Warren Buffet said, if he had been born in Somalia he wouldn't have accomplished any more than the average Somalian.
The people who study the history of science have seen that there are few if any great individual accomplishments. Science is created by cooperative teams. Most of the scientists who have accomplished great things, such as the Nobel laureates, agree.
You are part of a hive. You can look up Samuel Bowles http://en.wikipe [wikipedia.org]
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You owe everything to the society that provided you with a starting point.
Obviously you think this line of reasoning is hyperbole and bullshit or doesn't apply to you since you're spending time debating politics on Slashdot and probably surfing the internet rather than working to provide food, shelter, and clothing to others in need.
So let's try again. What do you mean by stating that I owe everything to society? What is this society you speak of? I owe everything to all of it? Throughout all time? To which structures of this society should all the fruits of my labor go? Th
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"Am I selfish for choosing how to spend the fruits of my labor?"
Yes, because you purposely choose to ignore that only a small part of "the fruits of your labour" can enterily be attributed to your individual efforts.
"tyranny against individual liberty"
It is not tyranny when you understand, accept and respect the weight of your sourrounding society on what you want to call your "individual liberty".
But I suppouse you are in fact free to migrate to Haiti or Somalia any day you want: they certainly are more re
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Yes, because you purposely choose to ignore that only a small part of "the fruits of your labour" can enterily be attributed to your individual efforts.
So, 100% of the money you don't need to minimally feed, clothe, and house yourself, you send to various federal, state, and local governments? Obviously not, since you're here on Slashdot, arguing this subject. Obviously, you're selfish for spending time surfing the internet when you could be helping to build someone a house with Habitat for Humanity. You're selfish for having a personal computer and an internet connection. Maybe you have cable television, own your own car, or have taken a vacation by a
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"So, 100% of the money you don't need to minimally feed, clothe, and house yourself, you send to various federal, state, and local governments?"
Obviously not. But can you please point where I said you owed 100% of your income? It is you here the one making the strawman going from "only a small part of the fruits of your labour can be enterily attributed to you" into "therefore 100% of your income above survival you should return in taxes".
"Oh, so I owe something?"
Of course yes. While I can't tell you an u
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s/doubt/debt/
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And looks like people are voting for it.
Sure. Anytime it looks like anyone might want to examine or change that, a manufactured issue is raised and immediately promoted to BIG FUCKING DEAL status by the media. "What? Oh no, don't worry about that, hey look over there!"
Usually the manufactured issue is abortion, or guns, or the old standby of income disparity (aka class warfare, the kind that exists to create controversy with no intention of changing anything because that would remove an issue that's just too damned useful). Lately it's con
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What you consider a "manufactured" issue, is only an issue because the government does things like try and set up shit like government funded health care and then makes pro-lifers not only have to accept that abortion is legal, they will then face the very real possibility that their tax money is paying for it. You'd probably find that most pro-lifers don't like abortions at all, but would probably leave well-enough alone if it really was between the women and her own body and didn't include their wallets
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What you consider a "manufactured" issue, is only an issue because the government does things like try and set up shit like government funded health care and then makes pro-lifers not only have to accept that abortion is legal, they will then face the very real possibility that their tax money is paying for it. You'd probably find that most pro-lifers don't like abortions at all, but would probably leave well-enough alone if it really was between the women and her own body and didn't include their wallets too.
Man, if you want to talk about objectionable things the government does that are funded by tax dollars you have no choice but to pay, abortion is damn near at the bottom of the list. How nice for the pro-lifers that they might even get their way on their pet issue. Meanwhile, how many pointless, destructive wars (which harmed more people than every abortion clinic combined) have my tax dollars funded and where's my media talking head explaining why I should have a choice? How many nonviolent criminals ha
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Re:Corporate conversion... (Score:5, Insightful)
Only if you define the Heritage Foundation as "socialist."
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/apr/01/barack-obama/obama-says-heritage-foundation-source-health-excha/ [politifact.com]
Or if you define "socialist" to mean "any government program that I don't like."
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I define it as stealing..... taking money from somebody else. Whether you do it yourself or ask a Congressman to do it for you makes no difference. --- And if we are going to provide for the poor, then let's do that (welfare, food stamps, lowcost housing). Not a universal program that includes the well off. Wouldn't it be silly if I, an engineer, was being given free food stamps by the government?
Of course. It's ridiculous. Government programs should be a last-resort safety net for those who need the
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Ya know it helps if you read the WHOLE message. I very clearly stated I support a government safety net to help the poor (welfare checks, food stamps, et etera).
As for illness, I have catastrophic insurance. If I did not, and I could not afford the bill, that's where government would step in (after I've exhausted my wealth and become a poor person).
BTW I'm a liberal not a conservative.
You missed the mark on that one.
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So, taking money from people (ie, taxes) are stealing, but you support a safety net. Where does the money for that come from? What about money for roads? The police? The military? Firefighters? Schools?
It sounds to me like you're defining "stealing" to mean "any government program that I don't like."
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Stealing is using your taxes to pay for a bridge to nowhere (or several). Stealing is using your taxes to pay for body scanners that nobody wants to go through, is harmful, and doesn't actually do any good. Stealing is taking away from the public domain.
Stealing is not using taxes to maintain social order, provide social services, and promote individual well-being. A national healthcare system is as much stealing as a national interstate system. As long as everybody gets the same level of treatment irrespec
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Out of curiosity, are there any programs in the present day United States that you'd consider socialism? What exactly would be changed in your ideal world?
Certainly "Obamacare" doesn't meet your definition of socialism, as it only provides subsidies to low income families who couldn't otherwise afford health care. Maybe Medicare, but it is a very rare person who could afford to pay all their own medical bills into old age. The only one that might make sense to call socialist under your definition would b
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The privatization of education isn't complete yet.
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Perfect Choice! (Score:5, Insightful)
What is the deal with the health care guys? I mean honestly it is the worst industry for technology ever, well except for like actual medical procedures and stuff - but that's not what these guys did.
I mean really? We couldn't find someone from IBM or Oracle or Apple or Microsoft .. hell, I'll take a guy from Netscape at this point .. who at least has a sense of how things *should* work? Next time you wonder why it takes your doctor 3 months to bill you remember that the CTO of the United States of F'ing America is a guy who was considered a genius in that industry.
flame away on my company names, they were just examples of the hundreds of companies that actually use real technology to actually, you know, DO THINGS.
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Obama's campaign was & is heavily-funded by the Medical & Insurance industry. He's just returning the favor by hiring one of them. (Note: So too is Romney.)
Aside - Netscape no longer exists (except as a brandname). Most of the former employees of that once-great company moved over to Mozilla circa 1999.
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American CTO..Symbol of reigning corporate fascism (Score:1)
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What a contemptible title to give someone in government. It assumes we're all in favor of having a government that's as inefficient, tyrannical and fascist as the average corporation.
While I don't want a government that is as efficient, tyrannical, or fascist as the average corporation, I do have a question about the job title. What would you call this guy? CTO does say who he is and what he does.
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How about Minister of Federal Information Technology? Or commissioner. A title that actually fits a government job. I suppose CTO is better than Czar (or Tsar, or whatever) though.
Government Buffoonery (Score:2)
Government technology buffoonery has plagued this nation for decades. If banks can daily move trillions of dollars without the loss of a penny, why does the government require months or even years of waiting for various permits? The technology already exists. Companies like Fiserv, Jack Henry, Metavante, and Harland (maybe not Metavante, their technology and people skills suck) already manage off the shelf systems that could take a large bureaucracy like INS and make it super efficient.
If an Government
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Most of the Banks around here seem to use Diebold ATMs. The company that managed to infect its own ATM network with Windows viruses. One of the more common kinds of financial scams relies on the fact that cheques _never_ actually clear even though the banks have to clear them in a certain time frame. It can be two years later and suddenly a $50,000 cashiers cheque you deposited and your bank "cleared" is reversed. There have been tons of cases of billions of dollars being completely misused by bankers and b
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Your suggestion of where a Government CTO should start implies a misunderstanding of the motivation of the State and of this administration in particular.
There will be no concerted moves toward efficiency that might decrease a need for Government personnel and budget. No, this CTO will be suggesting new programs that require new expenditures. If anything, those new programs will degrade the performance of other parts of Government, requiring more budget dollars to correct.
The State is interested in its ow
He'll last 8 months at most (Score:2)
Because a) it's a do nothing job and b) it's impossible to accomplish anything when procurement runs the world.