Aneesh Chopra As Country's Chief Technology Officer

Filed under Infrastructure, by Peter Elstrom on April 20

President Obama’s choice for the federal government’s chief technology officer was a bit of a surprise. In January, BusinessWeek reported that the top choices for the position were Padmasree Warrior, the CTO for networking giant Cisco Systems, and Vivek Kundra, CTO for the District of Columbia. Kundra ended up being selected for the chief information officer role in the Obama Administration. But the President announced on April 18 that Aneesh Chopra, the secretary of technology for Virginia, would take the top technology officer role for the federal government.

Chopra comes highly recommended. Intel Chairman Craig Barrett, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, and publisher Tim O’Reilly all weighed in with public statements in favor of the pick. “Aneesh Chopra is one of technology’s leading lights and we are lucky to have him as our nation’s Chief Technology Officer,” said Barrett, in a statement. “Aneesh demonstrated outstanding leadership as Virginia’s secretary of technology and believes to his core that innovation and technology are the backbone of our economy.”

BW's Spencer Ante interviewed Chopra shortly before his appointment, as part of a story on how states are planning to secure federal money to increase the availability and speed of broadband services. Chopra said at the time that Virginia planned to ask for at least $100 million for the effort. His approach is particularly interesting given his appointment: He sees promise in government working with private companies to make broadband--and one assumes technology more generally--available to more people. "We would like to see public-private partnerships to expand the deployment of broadband," says Chopra.

The top companies in broadband--Verizon, AT&T, Comcast--have historically pushed for less government involvement in their services. They have argued that leaving such important services to the private sector allows for vigorous competition and more effective, market driven decisions about where to provide them. It sounds like Chopra may have a different idea about how to proceed.