President Obama appointed Todd Park to be the nation's second Chief Technology Officer on Friday, filling the vacancy created by the departure of Aneesh Chopra last month. Park previously served as CTO for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) since August 2009. The federal CTO is responsible for ensuring the government adopts the latest innovative technologies, though Chopra served more as an ambassador, touting the benefits of technology to revolutionize fields like healthcare.
At HHS, Park helped create HealthCare.gov and worked to post more agency data online. He joined HHS after helping found Athenahealth, which sells healthcare management software for doctors, in 1997. The CTO's office is situated within the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where Park will work closely with Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Telecommunications Tom Power.
Chopra was in attendance at at last month's privacy event at the White House and said he said he's back working part time at the Advisory Board, where he began his career, consulting on the role of technology in healthcare delivery. Chopra dismissed reports he will be a candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, but sounded like a politician while describing how he has been traveling around the Commonwealth meeting with voters and working to get former Gov. Tim Kaine (D) elected to the Senate. Kaine gave Chopra his start in politics as Virginia's Secretary of Technology.
GOP Senators Concerned About L-1B Visa Changes: CQ's Ambreen Ali reports Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Richard Durbin, D-Ill., wrote to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Alejandro Mayorkas on Wednesday voicing concern about changes to visas for high-level executives and managers that possess specialized knowledge about their employees. USCIS plans to update the qualifications for the visa, which does not have an annual cap or wage protections like the H-1B guest worker visa. The Senators suggest some firms are using L-1B visas to work around limits on the number of H-1Bs issued.