“The White House plans to huddle with top executives from Apple, Facebook, Google and other tech giants next month to brainstorm ways that the U.S. government can put more of its ‘citizen services’ online and tackle thorny policy issues like high-skilled immigration,” Tony Romm reports for Recode.
“Both items are part of a lengthy agenda — obtained by Recode on Friday — that awaits the inaugural gathering of the American Technology Council, an effort by President Donald Trump to modernize the inner-workings of Washington that’s being spearheaded by his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner,” Romm reports. “Many federal agencies currently offer a ‘very poor experience defined by outdated websites, unhelpful call centers, and thousands of pages of paper-based forms,’ the Trump administration believes. To that end, it’ll ask some of Silicon Valley’s biggest brands to share their ideas for making government ‘more intuitive, user-friendly and effective.'”
“The initiative itself lives under the umbrella of Kushner’s Office of American Innovation, which aspires to cure longtime, unresolved government ills, such as the poor, aging technology in use at the Department of Veterans Affairs,” Romm reports. “Beyond immigration, the president’s initiative is looking for potential reforms to how Washington buys its computers, software and other tech tools, according to a copy of the invite.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Eliminating waste of time and materials and making interactions with government entities “more intuitive, user-friendly and effective” would certainly be welcome, as anyone who’s ever wasted hours at the DMV can attest.