White House names new federal CTO

The Obama administration has named a leader of the open government movement, Department of Health and Human Services chief technology officer Todd Park, as the nation's new federal chief technology officer, the White House announced Friday.

Park comes to the White House after 18 productive months as what observers have called HHS' "entrepreneur in residence." An energetic former executive who founded healthcare tech company Athenahealth and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard, Park led numerous initiatives at HHS in the last two years, including electronic health records efforts and the development of insurance comparison shopping site HealthCare.gov.


The federal CTO reports on a dotted line to President Obama and serves as the associate director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. In that role, the CTO oversees IT-related research and development spending and serves in a key advisory capacity for the President's innovation agenda.

Among the first to congratulate Park on his new role was former federal CTO Aneesh Chopra, who took to Twitter to call Park "an outstanding pick" for the next federal CTO. Chopra left the White House in early February amid reports that he would seek elected office in his home state of Virginia.

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