Q&A With Todd Park, U.S. CTO

Federal Chief Technology Officer Todd Park has a vision for changing the way American citizens interact with technology. We had an opportunity to discuss those initiatives with Park, who was appointed Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in 2009. Prior to joining HHS, Park co-founded Athenahealth and co-led its development into one of the most innovative health IT companies in the industry. Many of our questions came from XChange Events advisory board members.

Q: Please tell us about the digital government strategy—how will it help the American people, and what you are doing to drive that strategy forward?

Park: U.S. CIO Steve VanRoekel and I rolled out the digital government strategy in May, which seeks to do three things:

1. Put government at citizens’ fingertips and literally bring government to mobile devices, and any device in general, that citizens are using.
2. Buy technology in a certain way that gives bigger bang for the taxpayer buck.
3. Move even more energetically and strongly in the direction of open data.

Q: Why is it important to make government data open and machine-readable?...