INN OVATIVE STATE
Can government
drive information
innovation?
The first U.S. chief technology officer claims analytics
holds great promise for promoting public-private
information technology partnerships
BY Doug Samuelson
C
an government be both
smaller and better? Can
analytics show the way?
Aneesh Chopra, the first
chief technology officer of the United States,
thinks so.
In a new book (“Innovative State: How
New Technologies Can Transform Government”) [1], he argues that public-private
partnership initiatives, utilizing new information technology, have already had large
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impacts in agencies ranging from the Veterans Administration to Health and Human
Services and from Education to Energy.
He cites numerous examples of successes, not confined to his own time in office,
advancing these initiatives, although the
period 2009-2012, when he was in office,
he knows best and discusses in the most
detail. He recounts the effort to improve
appointment scheduling for veterans’
health and many federal-state cooperative
w w w. i n f o r m s . o r g