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this Tuesday August fourth 2009 I'm Jason owl I'm Natali del Conte I'm Hollywood and I'm Tom Merritt welcome to buzz out loud seen its podcast of indeterminate length episode 1033 our first of two episodes today because we have a couple of special guests with us today as we have promoted federal CTO Aneesh Chopra is joining us thank you very much sir my pleasure thanks for having me I appreciate you coming on the show appreciate you sending us little well wishes for a thousandth episode and I know you have a busy schedule and so we really appreciated you coming in and taking some questions from us and the audience yes sir also joining us from craigslist Craig Newmark hey glad to be here this is an issue show though I'm just here is a kind of a camp follower that's it we are we are very happy to welcome you to buzz out loud like I said we've got a bunch of questions so let's get into it I'm gonna start with my own which is just kind of the general question your exact title as I understand it is associate director for technology of Science and Technology Policy but they call you the federal CTO and we have the federal CIO we have the FCC we have the cyber czar who just stepped down yesterday where do you fit yeah all of this new technology focused policy well thank you for asking the question my title is actually more complicated than that I'm actually assistant to the president and chief technology officer and associate director the reason why that's relevant is that the president had made it very clear when he campaigned and as he transitioned into the governing that we as a nation need to harness the power and potential of technology and innovation across a wide range of disciplines on healthcare on education on our energy strategy so my role is to provide both advice to the president on how best to take advantage of the capabilities but also to make sure that we are incorporating near term strategies inside the government that will move the ball forward how do we bring emerging capabilities into Washington more thoughtfully and then how closely do you work with federal CIO Vivek Kundra on this and where you guys differ well the vac is largely responsible for the IT governance the federal government spends nearly seventy six billion dollars on IT and we have within the Office of Management and Budget a clear for running that more effectively and efficiently the vague is responsible for making sure that we make the right policy decisions on the consumption of technology inside the government we work together in what we're referring to as our management c-suite we have a chief Performance Officer we have a chief technology officer a chief information officer the three of us are essentially working together to demonstrate how we can make government more effective incorporating new technologies running what we do better and assigning long-term outcomes goals so that we can measure performance now with the cybers are stepping down yesterday how are we going to go about filling that role what is the government looking for can you comment a little bit about that I bill me begin by saying Melissa Hathaway has been a phenomenal resource to the federal administration she's been terrific on a personal level I'm sad to see her stepping down but she's been working 24 by 7 for the last several months and I'm very supportive of whatever she chose to do the president has made this a top priority and administration in May he announced that significant strategy in this regard we built in the White House essentially three teams that will focus on this issue a coordinator that makes sure that we're getting the right policies done at the long-term level but then to have two other aspects of it I'm responsible for our engagement with the private sector namely around our critical infrastructure banking energy healthcare my colleague Vivek Kundra is responsible for the use of principles of cybersecurity in the federal government itself so we as a team continue to move forward it's unfortunate Melissa will step down but we will hopefully have named a new coordinator in the not-too-distant future the work is continuing to get done there are operational issues as well as strategic issues that will continue forward with the team in her absence so where does that put you in line for the presidency Obama and then by to Jim Pelosi and then where are you in this oh no where near we are simply advisers to make sure that we've got the right information to make the best decision to the country all right good to know all right let's move on to the broadband infrastructure because i know that's a hot topic Molly you've got the question yeah i was just up from a policy perspective obviously i'm sure you can't tell us that you're going forward with this but do you do you feel and are their discussions about at this point the digital divide and whether internet access particularly broadband internet access should be a utility should be something that every American needs in order to stay competitive and is entitled to and is that something that that the government would consider you know regulating and take it over well let me begin by saying the president's been absolutely clear that that broadband access for all Americans is critical to our global competitiveness I will be thoughtful and saying that the regulatory question is really one that the Congress is tasked to the FCC which is essentially an independent body we work very closely with chairman Genachowski is a dear friend and we are tasked together in developing a national broadband plan that is due in February of 2010 that is led by chairman Genachowski and we are contributing in a thoughtful way following the rules that are set out I'll make this observation there are my focus in this area is that there's essentially two themes that emerged one is innovation in the supply that is how do we bring lower-cost capabilities so that all Americans can afford broadband but there's also an equal interest if not more so in my front my front on driving innovation in the applications space so the more we deliver better applications that demonstrate value to the American people I think the faster we're going to see the closing of the digital divide just take example cell phone penetration has we have more cell phones in this country per household than washing machines so we're seeing a you know if the applications are there and of you stand there going to be adopted what what share of the global Internet traffic is YouTube one application what is it three to five percent of the network traffic so if we if we if we focus our efforts on balancing driving more innovative applications as well as bringing down the cost of the supply we hope we can make an impact well I got a phone that has lots of great applications on it but I can't use it half the time because I have the access that that's just just one carrier so you know and now yeah I was that was going to be my following basically do you feel like that access is there that that access to internet to internet that access to internet access kill me well great is available to people the way that it should be in that they're you know you said you interface with the private sector do you like that competition is happening so that people have the right options I I must say this we are in a very interesting time pre iPhone the average smartphone was still majority voice traffic I think it was something like seventy percent of the traffic on them on the smart phones were still voice iphone is majority data and so we're starting to see the cellphone market essentially as a connectivity play to the Internet where we thought about that years back when when carriers invested in data networks but now we're actually seeing it it is in that context that we celebrate chairman Genachowski 'he's work recently to actually ask the questions in that example of the recent actions in apple with respect to their their work with google voice these are questions that need to be asked and we celebrate the fact that we're doing it our commitment to ensuring access to the internet is not limited to the wired world versus the wireless it's about the broader question of how does one get connected and I think if you look at continued innovation you know everything in the home is going to be connected to the Internet my new TV that I bought thanks to the cnet how-to videos has a connection so is that an Internet access to a device and how does it allow for competition these are great questions we're going to be grappling with and one of the things we talked about on buzz out loud a lot is the fact that the United States has consistently ranked low as far as broadband penetration broadband access what what can we do do we know what we can do yet to boost that up to get us up there in the top five where people are not frustrated all the time oh my internet went out or I don't have enough bandwidth all that sort of thing well the first question is does this nation have a broadband strategy all the other countries in the world that are serious about this issue have and we should have done this years ago so I applaud the Congress obviously the president's been calling for this we will buy februari 2010 have a framework that allows us to get into this question unless focused on the benchmarking of broadband penetration because you might we might quibble about the per capita designation and whether that's an accurate way of measuring widespread adoption and I'm more interested in are we using the technology to deliver value to society is it helpful to us in our personal lives is that advancing our healthcare agenda our educational strategy and so forth I'm focused on the verb as much as I am the noun which is do we in fact have someone buying a particular connection the verb part is what occupying my time to what end are we using that and are there policy barriers that we need to get out of the way to drive more usage that's the focus it seems like standardization is such a barrier to policy right now and it seems like the EU has their act together in terms of standing standardizing especially the mobile market all the way down to just standardized chargers where are we I you guys that was listed your episode about the Japanese chargers that that was maybe a month ago yeah charger haha come on all the cards that I have a battle are something listen I I from my vantage point in terms of the role that I play engaging on standards is clearly one of the leverage points to make an impact up there there's obviously a desire to continue the the innovation the spirit of innovation in this country to drive a private usage but my where appropriate we will try to bring people together and collaborate in the adoption of of standards we're doing this in healthcare IT we're doing this in the energy grid we want to continue to push you raise the right questions natalie uh it's one that's been on a personal level baffling why are we having a tough time but there's thoughtful reasons as to where we are and how we got here the National Broadband Plan by the FCC will help us get real deep on that that issue okay well you mentioned healthcare let's move on to our next question we have coming from dr. Carl he wants to know about your previous mentioning of health IT is a top priority he says as a doctor the effective rolling out of the cohesive EMR system is something we have all been keeping an eye on as the utter lack of cohesion even within hospitals is readily apparent to that effect do you plan on supporting the distribution of a single EMR system countrywide if so would you recommend the current VA lis system or would you support a private efforts such as Google's with such integration be mandatory or voluntary if mandated what kind of timeline seems feasible so we'll leave it at that cuz that's like six questions everyone what a powerful policy of our by the way electronic medical record yes yes but that let me begin by saying this we have a more fundamental challenge in our healthcare system that is we reward the sickness and the response to sickness and the president's been absolutely clear that we need to focus our policy priorities are on prevention and wellness this is an important question before we get into the purpose of health IT because again if you think about the noun versus the verb analogy we have nouns you can go to the store buy some software and show me a receipt and says see I bought something but to what end am I using it today most physicians and hospitals use technology to improve billing to be very frank they're not in scented to use it to communicate with patients to keep them healthy how many physicians get paid today by keeping you healthy with an e visit this is not part of our policy framework so it's obvious therefore there hasn't been as much product innovation to support the market because the market doesn't really know what it wants the technology to do the president's been so clear we will shift the focus to wellness and prevention through health reform that if we're successful in that vision I'm confident there will be a widespread activity on innovation for new products and better products because that's what people are going to want if Eve is 'it's are part of our strategy going forward and other related examples you're going to see people saying how can I proactively text message you to make sure that you're if you're a pregnant mom and we're worried about the infant mortality rate in this country we might text message you more frequently to make sure you're doing the right things to keep your child in the womb healthy that's a different world today and so that's what I'm hoping for driving product innovation around the health care outcomes goals that our presidents been so clear about and then are you the person that has to deal with the weather hippo will allow a doctor now to text messages or you can email about those things there's a huge I mean it seems like there's a huge policy barrier to communication this now that you know I've literally had conversations with my with some doctors about how I want to email with them yeah and they say HIPAA prevents me yes from a Latin from ever emailing you anything and you know I mean I think there's some pretty so big policy challenges you have to overcome before you can even get to take this is precisely why the Congress and the president have set up a health IT policy committee I have the honor of serving on the standards body but that addresses this issue and embedding security and privacy principles which really are the byproduct of why we had the HIPAA legislation the first eyes are key to getting this right we're going to be engaging on this issue between now and the fall there's a term you may not be as aware of but the two words that are going to drive healthcare IT moving forward or meaningful use what that means is that the Congress is set aside billions of dollars to help physicians adopt technology if they become meaningful users of the technology to improve healthcare so the debate right now is when we regulate the definition of Meaningful Use will security and privacy provisions be incorporated and if so how that is a regulatory review process will comment on that as that process unfolds this fall and into the winter all right let's move on to something that probably is a little more in the FCC's bailiwick but here you are Ken Whisenhunt to ask you this well I understand the FCC is currently investigating wireless open access and handset exclusivity and that it may not be appropriate to comment on these investigations my question mr. Chopra is how does the Obama administration view net neutrality with regard to the mobile product and service space in general and you believe that it is the role of government agencies such as the FCC and FTC to regulate mobile application stores like the App Store to ensure equal footing for developers and promote consumer choice uh let me take the second question first I go to the first I do not envision the federal government regulating uh the App Store it is not a network carrier and we want you to bring google voice back into the apps having said that i don't think that's uh no appreciate the sentiment but the broader question is a very thoughtful one the president has been absolutely clear that in this country we have benefited greatly from the openness of the Internet in fact when we announced our cybersecurity strategy the president said that we have benefited greatly and that our efforts to protect the nation's private networks will be driven by more collaboration and less government control and ownership so we've been very clear on these principles in fact the funding announcement that went out on our broadband stimulus grants have embedded these principles in how people apply for the grants that is that there should be non-discrimination principles as well as interconnection features so we've been very clear in the in the past on these issues whether it's wireless or wireline I said to you earlier the point is the outcome connection to the Internet and so I would presume as we unfold our frame work for these issues that whether it's wireless or wireline we will basically think of the internet as a tool however you access it and ensure that our principles of openness and innovation will continue as core foundations moving forward do you think that the best way for us to get a good open end-to-end internet is is through some legislation or through fostering competition you know it's a great question and I know that the congressional folks can have constantly engaged on this in fact a bill recently was dropped on the same issue my focus is on the here and the now which is how do we spur through collaboration the kind of innovation we're looking for and again if we there's some basic building blocks of innovation right having a secure and smart network infrastructure is critical to achieving our goals in banking and health care you name it so I'm working very closely with the private sector to see how we might work together in fact a week after the president called on our cybersecurity framework i joined Melissa who just made the announcement we visited New York City and met with 20 or so of the most senior researchers in the banking sectors IT together we could collaborate on cybersecurity and it'll be supportive of the network carriers that is working together to find find solutions this doesn't always have to be through legislation or through regulatory frameworks we could get there if we work hard on it plus I just want to have more choices I mean that that's that's the biggest thing how do we arrive at that where I'm not stuck between well it's either cable or dsl and that's all I got or worse I'm in the middle of nowhere and it's dial-up period yeah you know or maybe some terrible kind of satellite broadband thing I tell you this is one of the key reasons why the question of unserved and underserved has been the thrust of our modest investments in the broadband infrastructure today having come from Virginia we most certainly saw the impact on our rural communities I would argue that if you live in rural America today access to broadband is not if not number one is number two on your priority set to be competitive in the global marketplace all right speaking of technology and connectivity I have a question about education and this is a good one for you since you pioneered the Virginia e-text what is the real picture and this actually comes from me not from a viewer what's the real picture in terms of public education and technologies and do most schools have technology that will actually prepare them for the workforce because for most people connectivity is still sort of a matter of convenience but for students connectivity is imperative for their chances at upward mobility so how much do you work with the educational system very closely had the honor of testifying in Congress on the future of learning my main theme was that we have to think of the educational space the way Congress it on health care which is it's about the meaningful use of technology I must tell you how disappointing it is when I go to visit a school that's adopted a laptop per child program but then turns off every feature of the machine that would be useful for them in the real world because of concerns so the the challenge for us natalie is that we have investments in technology in fact the president has an economic stimulus plan 650 million dollars in funding to support the adoption of Technology in our in our schools the jet the challenges are we doing him for the right reasons into pursuing the right ends I am working very closely with the president's team in education and most specifically Jim Shelton who runs the office of innovation to coordinate a plan for education technology moving forward and more importantly to experiment you know a lot of what I do and we're going to engage on in this first half of this discussion has been really about kind of policy goals but I keep myself at night worrying about the other half of the equation what do I deliver in 30 days 60 days 90 days so not everything requires a law or a policy change we can deliver and demonstrate value in here in the now and it is that spirit that is pushing me to think of questions like education technology what what does the fall look like when god forbid h1n1 returns in a manner that puts children out of school for an extended period of time we're actively engaged on the question what is the alternative and how does technology play a role to make sure that we get those kids still continued to learn there's a continuity of learning plan if you will we're focused on these issues because we have to and that doesn't wait for new laws and policy and are you are you literally in a position to send guidance to America's schools and say like look the way you're managing technology operations at these schools is absolutely ludicrous and you're keeping kids act logical dark ages because it I mean the emails that we get from from kids in school today are just ridiculous they may as well be using the same sort of word processor terminals that i was using because they like you said they have been so the machinery itself the functionality has been so crippled that you know kids are getting kicked out of school for taking a USB stick from one computer to the next you know it's uh can you just email them yeah that and not not so much but but but we are we Jim Shelton I did speak at the education technologies conference just a few weeks back and we hit home this message you know we have to be respectful of our federalism our system of federalism which is that schools are largely governed by local districts they make the decisions states play a role and the feds do a little bit in terms of funding in the No Child Left Behind provision so working in that ecosystem and finding the right leverage points to engage obviously key part we're in the middle of the national education technology plan effort these issues are going to come right up moving on to social networking and of course cyber security which were sort of dancing around what is the what is the administration's guidance on balancing this question comes from cyber man 375 my cyber man what is the administration's guidance on balancing the emerging capabilities of social networking and the security constraints um you seem to be easy such as banning the use of peer-to-peer file sharing and government computers others such as restricting the use of Twitter would remove what is becoming an important tool for policy makers to communicate directly to people so given that using Twitter Facebook and and the like put some security and operational readiness concepts concerns into non government hands how seriously can the government afford to move services into depending on social networking as a major form of communication about the role of a CTO and the CIO we collaborate on how we bring emerging technologies into government itself I mean I must say one of the more frustrating aspects of visiting in Washington when I when I took the role was just to see how limited we are in the use of technology in our personal professional lives meaning my bandwidth was extraordinarily I had better bandwidth my iphone to be very frank even though you struggle that right here uh well tells you how sad it was in Washington it's getting a little bit better but uh the reason there is anxiety is that there's not a lot of upside for folks who adopt these technologies today Craig Craig has been a real champion to inspire the web managers in Washington they don't get a lot of attaboys and at a girls for adopting these technologies if they have one incident that that jeopardizes one of our policy goals the downside way out outsize is the upside our job is to provide a safe place for the agencies to adopt these technologies so we're not ready to announce it yet but you can rest assured that the CIO and I are working closely at provisioning secure access to these web two point O capability so that they can be thoughtfully used and be respectful of our true restrictions on on security well I guess the other question to that end is do you see them as as truly useful I mean on the one hand they're wonderful tools for communication for real-time communication on the other hand you know they're havens for trolls and script kiddies I mean is it like do you think that you will get to the point that some celebrities have gotten to Twitter where you say you know what we don't this isn't worth our time actually and that's what the US Marines just decided this week that they've put a one-year ban on any social networking any marine you know it's a fascinating question again noun verb the noun is whether or not you open up a Twitter account ok in and of itself doesn't really do anything it's nice to do it's not a nut must do but if you think about the verb I'm going to tell you one story again in the spirit of delivering value in the here and the now the president on jun 25th announced that myself the CIO and our chief Performance Officer are partnering with the Citizenship and Immigration Service why in 90 days we're going to turn that agency around and make it more customer friendly for the first time we will allow you like Burger King to have an information update on your application your way would you like a text message alert would you like an email would you like to visit online and be able to check where you are in the queue and then to benchmark how long you have to wait in that queue against others in the same category and then to demonstrate how one field office compares to the other this is a sea change in thinking in 90 days with no incremental budget we're going to turn on a more citizen facing capability using emerging I mean text messaging you might think of as yesterday but from our standpoint Wow do you how many people are scared waiting when they apply for for immigration not knowing what to do they call their congressmen to ask on their behalf they hire lawyers to just ask basic questions to have us be public and available in that information it's using the technology in a verb to demonstrate meaningful value against a policy objective a final question because we know you've got to get out of here you've got a busy day ahead of you Kevin Dupuis on Twitter asked with the huge deficit why doesn't the federal government switch to proven open-source tech lyk soos or red hat instead of windows the big fat question I defer to the chief information officer who regulates our 76 billion dollars in spend of which they told him about it that you were like hey there's all the servants are stuck I'll make one one one small comment about open source and I'll move on as a policy priority for me I care much more about the principles of open collaboration and the sharing of intellectual property as we build value so what does that mean if I'm buying a house and I want to develop a mortgage calculator to help me figure out what to do you might as a neighbor of mine build one on excel but you'll share it with me I don't care if Excel is the proprietary platform upon which you wrote that intellectual property I care that you shared the mortgage calculator too little in government is shared intellectual property from agency A to B and that's my policy priority that can be embracing the spirit of open collaboration on a proprietary stack like Oracle or Microsoft but it could also be introducing open source you could use openoffice to share your markup haha you know any of that but I will I appreciate the sentiment but that open collaboration and sharing of intellectual property in advance of public policies a priority for me Craig we haven't let you get a word in edgewise do you do you want to throw out something ask a question before we close it Hanley rapido pretty much what I just do is bear witness there's a lot of good people in Washington doing a lot of good work right now and hardly anyone knows about it we now have leadership which is committed to serving the public well there's a lot of line workers and web and related technology who are ready to go and oddly enough they're actually getting stuff done already and you know the best thing I can do is bear witness to it well thanks very much for coming along anish thank you so much for totally when I asked my digital voting question don't go please this is my one big question that I want is will we ever be able to vote reliably and securely online you know there are there are committees right now looking at that question and I've been asked to be engaged on the issue so I will I will dig deeper but the use of technology to improve our voting experience we did in Virginia we partnered with the Pew Charitable Trust in Google through the voting information project to make accessible the information on where to vote so it's a start Natalie it's not ultimately doing the actual transaction but but my hope is that we'll have a thoughtful debate about this and then in the coming months good get on that please all right thank you for thank you very your audience into your listeners I'll make one final plea continue to innovate your country needs you develop applications and services that will help us improve our health care system our energy system and our educational system if you come up with great ideas let me know about them and we'll try to demonstrate them as much as possible across the country because I while we wait for Washington and pass laws and rules we'uns we would look to your inspiration in the act yet the benefits you all make to to make a difference in people's lives and I thank you for what you do and how do people I let you know about them well they can definitely visit me at whitehouse.gov / open where we have a running blog for our open government initiative which is a policy priority for my office and they can blog on that site if they wish they can visit ostp gov which is where I sit and we have a blog that in fact I'll have a blog post going on later today so we'll engage in any which way possible all right thank you for your time today thank you very much I mean you can find all the links to what we talked about at our blog bol dot cnet.com and they'll be a second episode with the news of the day in your as well