It's the first time in this country that we have a chief technology officer, CTO, who is Aneesh Chopra. That has made a huge difference, not only again in terms of symbols, but because the President wanted a chief technology officer, it sent a signal all the way through the agencies that this is an important player. So the CTO is part of that White House team, and that person sits in the executive office of the President, sits in the Office of Science and Technology Policy, which is one of the units within the executive office of the President. So they come with a technology and science background, and they're perceived in that vein to be a helpful tool to what are called chief information officers in the agencies. Each agency has a chief information officer.
In addition to that role, the Office of Management and Budget, which is an other office within the executive office of the President, has always had a chief information officer. What the President did was to have that continue but also make that person the chief information officer throughout government. So all those chief information officers within the agencies I mentioned now work through and with...the person is Vivek Kundra.
The combination of having Mr. Kundra and Mr. Chopra has really been a breath of fresh air, if you will, to the agencies. Suddenly all these worker bees in the agencies who felt there was no leadership either on the technology side or on the information policy side have a friend in the White House actively working on this. So again, this was much more than a symbol; this was very real.
The two of them also do not necessarily just control the White House team. If it were so, it would be just a technology-driven enterprise, but instead they've been met with the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, who is Cass Sunstein. He sits also within the Office of Management and Budget and does policy work along with.... The President designated—coincidental with your committee's title—the ethics czar, who was the one who also had transparency responsibilities because of the concerns around special interest influence.
So the White House had a policy team to combine with this technology team. That also sent a very big signal to the agencies.