Saw this on Techcrunch and had to voice my disgust.
While I think a great many Silicon Valley CEOs are douchebag tards too busy telling each other how great they are, I think a great many (and many non CA CEOs) are highly intelligent, savvy guys (and gals). All very much people I’d be happy to see serve their country as our CTO.
Instead, President Obama has selected Aneesh Paul Chopra.
So who is Aneesh Paul Chopra? Good question, one I’m sure echoed around the country a lot when it was announced. Lots of “Who?”
Chopra currently serves as Virginia’s Secretary of Technology, and has previous acted as the Managing Director for the Advisory Board Company, where he advised executives on health care operations.
So he’s experienced in our frakked up healthcare system, great.
According to Virginia’s state website
, Chopra was recently recognized by Government Technology Magazine’s for excellent ‘use of technology to improve government’, and he was awarded Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society’s 2007 State Leadership Advocacy Award.
So a group government bureaucrats think he’s a great guy, and has ‘improved government’ through technology. Let’s see, healthcare is still expensive and inefficient, hospitals are slow and disorganized, electronic records are non existent. Wonder what he’s been up to? Wonder what makes him even remotely qualified to be our CTO?
I’m sad that President Obama, has chosen a bureaucrat as our CTO. He had an awesome chance to really take us forward technologically.
According to this article published in the Washington Post in 2005, Chopra was not a career technologist before he became Virginia’s Secretary of Technology, but he has extensive experience in policy making.
Great, a clearly non-innovative, non technological person.
When I worked out Ameriquest, one of the worst parts, was the CIO. Like Chopra she wasn’t a coder or technologist. Rather she saw the ‘benefit’ in management over actual experience or expertise. Chopra’s “primary understanding is from customer need, not bits and bytes”. Which == crap. I know because our CIO spouted the same crap when asked what her experience.
The CIO was terrible, her skill was kissing ass, and managing up, coming up with grand schemes that wasted time, wasted effort, wasted money, and in the end got her ousted by a ‘better’ (and equally as technologically inept) ass kisser.
Sadly I doubt President Obama will fire Chopra and replace him, so our first CTO, for the next 4 or 8 years, is a bureaucrat, with little to no TECHNOLOGY experience. I’m not sure what the ‘T’ in Obama’s CTO is, but guessing it’s not Technology.
I know Obama is a politician, but so far he’s two for two as far as I’m concerned, working to squash the illegal wire tapping program Bush started, and now this clear political ass grab.
