On March 19, the president announced David Recordon, a Facebook engineering director, will serve as the nation’s first director of White House Information Technology, a role tasked with modernizing the executive branch’s technology for security and collaboration.
Recordon already was serving as a consultant with the U.S. Digital Services (USDS), an elite team of Silicon Valley experts charged to improve federal IT projects. He'll continue to work with the USDS in his new position as he leads efforts to upgrade executive branch technology. The administration says Recordon will direct efforts to merge overlapping IT systems, update administration software, and cultivate IT innovation and private-sector best practices.
“In our continued efforts to serve our citizens better, we’re bringing in top tech leaders to support our teams across the federal government,” said President Barack Obama in the release. “I’m pleased to welcome David Recordon as the director of White House information technology. His considerable private-sector experience and ability to deploy the latest collaborative and communication technologies will be a great asset to our work on behalf of the American people.”
Recordon has worked for Facebook since 2009 and joined the USDS last March, according to his LinkedIn profile. In a Facebook postlast August, Recordan expressed a few of his thoughts for joining the USDS in its effort to innovate government.
“Now don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of absolutely serious companies who truly impact lives on a daily basis, but the United States government serves all of us in ways the venture-capital-fueled valley does not,” Recordon said.
He listed quality healthcare, affordable college, immigration and business growth as a few of these impacts while underscoring desires to contribute.
“Good technology is not the silver bullet to solve these problems but bad technology actively makes them worse,” Recordon said.
