White House CTO Lauds Google's 20% Time

Those of you who attended either of the job seeker presentations Dan recently did in New Hampshire, you'll appreciate the story below.  Join the voice and call for a new definition of work - one that works better and makes work better!

Best,

Dan.

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JUNE 11, 2009, 3:50 PM ET From the Wall street Journal

Aneesh Chopra, the White House's newly appointed chief technology officer, encouraged tech executives to adopt Google's "20% time" practice in a wide-ranging speech Thursday that touched on the upcoming airwaves switch, digital infrastructure and even this week's product unveilings from Apple and Palm.

Associated Press
Aneesh Chopra speaks at a CEA conference Thursday.

"Many of you might know that Google, as a company, reserves 20% of their time for their engineers and others to experiment with ideas that they may not have developed," he said at a Consumer Electronics Association conference in New York. "To my friends in the room who make consumer devices, think about your 20% time," and consider using it to develop products and services with a societal benefit.

As an example, Mr. Chopra, who previously worked as Virginia's secretary of technology, cited a contest there to encourage iPhone developers to create an algebra application for middle-school students.

He called it an exciting week, saying he followed the launch of the Palm Pre and Apple's iPhone 3G S announcement with interest.

In the White House CTO job for just two weeks, Mr. Chopra spends weekdays in Washington, D.C., then returns to Richmond, Va., on weekends, where his wife, two-year-old and five-month-old still live. He's increasingly keeping tabs on his kids through photos and videos his wife sends, he said. "I'm consuming a heck of a lot more bandwidth than we otherwise had been."

Americans across the board are consuming more bandwidth, he said, but public policy around broadband and technology in general is lagging. He noted President Barack Obama's recent comments on the importance of technology education, and said technology must be considered as part of health-care, energy, education and economic policy, not an isolated area.

There's also a key role that the private sector will play, Mr. Chopra said. "Outside of Washington, every day entrepreneurs are coming up with solutions and tools that will make our health care, our energy consumption, our educational system a little bit better." In Virginia (he apologized at one point for his many Virginia examples), the state education department worked with cable providers to put GED coursework on an on-demand channel. The lectures have since been downloaded more than 6,000 times. "What did it take these guys, a couple weeks making sure the video quality was good? Big deal," he said. "We can do this every day."

The federal government will also need the private sector for projects such as building out broadband service. "The scale of the investment necessary to build a reliable, secure, ubiquitous Internet that we see driving this innovation is in the hundreds of billions," he said. "It is highly unlikely the public sector will be the source of that capital."

Mr. Chopra called the upcoming switch from analog to digital television transmissions a "transformational shift" that will free up airwaves capacity for new services - "What wonderful new applications will emerge when we commercialize all you can do with spectrum? - but acknowledged concerns that consumers are unprepared. He said that since the move was delayed in January, half of the unready homes have been switched over, and just in case, recited a hotline that will be taking calls tomorrow: 1 (888) CALL-FCC.

"If any of your loved ones have trouble tomorrow, or starting at midnight, we want to hear from you right away," he said.