AI Presentations

Have been doing some fun presentations on AI. They are split between policy (like the one below) and struggling with when and when not to use AI in learning (will post a recording when I have one). 

The AI in Learning presentation dives deep into the analogy of regular learning as weightlifting to AI's forklift. I first heard it on the great Hard Fork podcast and Kevin Roose said he had first heard it elsewhere but didn't remember where. Anyhow, here's the slide from the presentation.

It has been fun to get my thoughts in a presentable form.

My Time in The Biden-Harris Administration

I recently (ok, not that recently) left the Biden-Harris Administration after serving in a variety of ways over the last few years. Initially I was part of the transition team. Then, after a break, I became Deputy Assistant to the President and Principal Deputy US Chief Technology Officer (CTO), in the Office of Science and Technology Policy through the wonderful National Science Foundation Technology, Innovation and Partnerships Directorate. I'm grateful for the time I had in the administration, the phenomenal people I got to work with, and the impact we had together.

The Eisenhower Executive Office Building hallway leading to the Navy Steps down to the White House. One of my favorite views in the EEOB. In the morning the light as you walk towards those doors is blinding.

Joining the small but mighty CTO team in the fall of 2021 was quite different from when I held a similar role in the Obama-Biden Administration. For one thing, I was joining at the beginning of an administration, not the end. For another, President Biden had learned a number of lessons during his long career and time as Vice President that led his administration to keep a rigorous focus on the priorities President Biden had outlined on the campaign and to prioritize effective implementation of policy initiatives at the highest level. Finally, from a tech perspective, the government in 2021 was different than in 2014. 

The first US CTOs extended our government’s capacity to use technology effectively and brought tech expertise to White House policy making. In 2009, few agencies used modern technology fluently. Many career techie civil servants were pushing for change but were met with the various forms of resistance as Jen Pahlka details in her exceptional book, Recoding America. The first three US CTOs, Aneesh Chopra, Todd Park, Megan Smith and their teams were successful in a wide array of policy areas. They opened data sets for transparency and innovation, championed expanding digital medical records, helped increase access to broadband, brought more tech expertise to policy tables, and much more.

They also made significant strides, working with many others at the White House and across government agencies, in building the capacity of the federal government to deliver modern technology. That included helping to create the US Digital Service, the Tech Transformation Service, the Presidential Innovation Fellows, and supporting the creation of agency digital services (e.g. the Defense Digital Service, Health and Human Services Digital Service, etc) and the transformative work of the federal and agency Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and Chief Data Officers (CDOs). 

One of the most exciting things about being back in government in 2021 was how different it was from 2009. In 2021, there was significant tech expertise in all of the White House policy counsels, from the Domestic Policy Council, to both the National Economic Council and National Security Council. Even without counting the excellent CTO Team, the Office of Science and Technology Policy had significant technical expertise in its other divisions – including Alondra Nelson’s incredible Science and Society division. Both Alondra and Arati Prabhakar, two of the three Office of Science and Technology Directors during my tenure, were highly technically sophisticated. In addition, leaders at agencies across the spectrum were increasing technical fluency at all levels.

Senior Staff at the Office of Science and Technology Policy circa May 2022.

Furthermore, the centralized tech experts at the US Digital Service, Federal CIO, and GSA were – and still are – thriving under strong leadership of Mina Hsiang, Clare Martorana, and Robin Carnahan. Many agencies have digital services groups of their own, while others have bulked up their CIO, CTO or other offices to more aggressively pursue strong digital service delivery. And, if you looked into the teams working on the biggest problems, such as climate change or COVID-19, you’d find strong tech experts.

I love walking meetings. This is staged for the White House photographer. In real ones I wouldn't be wearing a suit. With me are two wonderful members of the CTO team, Ismael Hussein and April Chen. 

While the government environment was changing, the CTO team’s core mission remained the same. Our priorities were to build tech capacity and advise on policy, all in the service of delivering on the President’s agenda and delivering results for the American people. The CTO team still works hard on establishing good tech policy, including in the areas of artificial intelligence, digital assets (cryptocurrency), privacy, platform regulation, advanced air mobility, web accessibility, broadband access, wireless spectrum policy and in many other areas. Also, under the leadership of Denice Ross and now Dominique Duval-Diop in the role of U.S. Chief Data Scientist, we had the privilege of continuing to support federal data science expertise, including in the development of equitable data that can be used to ensure government benefits and services reach those who  need them the most and that data science is  a  key  part of   policy implementation. 

President Biden and Vice President Harris meeting with AI CEOs on the promise and risks of AI. This meeting and its followup commitments are examples of the types of tools the CTO team used to drive policy forward. 

Delving deeper on the team’s artificial intelligence work the US CTO team was deeply involved in President Biden’s work on AI. The team helped draft and launch the landmark Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights. We spearheaded the Biden-Harris AI CEO convening that resulted in a set of commitments from the largest AI companies regarding AI. We led, hosted or participated in the various White House AI processes to create federal AI policy as well as subsidiary policies such as the National AI Research and Development Strategic Plan. We put forward the National AI Research Resource to ensure public sector participation in AI research and development. We also hosted the National AI Initiative Office, the federal coordination body for AI policy. That comprehensive approach to AI is similar to how we approached other policy areas.

Alondra Nelson leading a panel during the launch of the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights in October 2022. I was proud to have helped draft and achieve the internal consensus required to publish the Blueprint. It was a deep collaboration with the Science and Society Division.

There is still a ton of work to do and the leadership team now in place on the US CTO team is phenomenal. Deirdre Mulligan is the Principal Deputy US CTO and is someone I’ve wanted to work with – or for – for more than 20 years, Austin Bonner is Deputy US CTO for Policy, Wade Shen is Deputy US CTO for AI and leads the National AI Initiative Office, Denice Ross is now Deputy US for Tech Capacity, Dominique Duval-Diop is US Chief Data Scientist, and Nik Marda, the longest current serving member of the CTO team, is the Chief of Staff. Working with each of them, and the rest of the CTO team is what I miss most about having left the administration. Watching them take the team in new directions will be the best thing about sitting on the sidelines.

Zoom tiles from a meeting of the CTO team.

Our third US CTO, Megan Smith, sometimes joked that the CTO team’s job would be fundamentally different when there were as many tech experts in all the rooms as lawyers or economists. That dream imagines a government that always delivers services effectively, efficiently, and equitably on behalf of the American people. A government that understands, and can keep up with, technologies and the disruptions they create to mitigate harm and ensure that people can maximally benefit from our phenomenally innovative nation. I was privileged to be able to work towards that dream. 

P.S. Now is a critical time to come into government as a techie. The potential to make a deep positive impact on the lives of people is huge. It is also a time of tremendous opportunity because of President Biden’s genuine empathy in understanding people’s needs, as well as his focus and excellence in execution in delivering on their behalf.

If you are interested in getting involved, please consider applying to join the United States Digital Service, Tech Transformation Services, Presidential Innovation Fellows,US Digital Corps or the broader set of government technical jobs on the Federal Tech Jobs Portal.

One of my favorite views. When leaving around sunset, there would often be a murmeration of starlings near the edge of the South Lawn with the Washington Monument in the background.

First Time in Government

“The President of the United States is going to call you in three hours to offer you the job, so I need to know in two whether you will say yes because we do not surprise the President.” That’s what Todd Park, U.S. Chief Technology Officer (CTO), said to me in August of 2014 as our family was about to head back to San Francisco for the new school year.

Todd Park, Assistant to the President and Chief Technology Officer
shows President Obama information on a tablet April 15, 2013.
Official White House Photo by Pete Souz

In those two hours, I tried to figure out if I could really make a significant positive impact in the job the President would offer me as Deputy U.S. CTO. And, if so, whether that was worth moving our family.  The ability to make a positive impact is generally my north star when trying to make job decisions, but time and again, when I am looking back on whether taking a job was the right decision, the quality of the team I got to work with is always most important. Now that I’ve had some time to reflect on my time in government, and the entire Obama team has moved on from team CTO, I know that this time was no different. While I am extremely grateful for the impact of the work I was privileged to do, I am most happy about my time in government because of the the people I got to do it with.

The Eisenhower Executive Office Building, home of the
U.S. CTO, pictured c 1907, then the State, War & Navy Building
Gall, George, Washington: The Capital of the Nation (1907).
Digitized by The Internet Archive from the Library of Congress

The impact of government work was amazing. Our purpose was clear: help make life better for and with the American people. Under President Obama, Team CTO had significant impact working together along with many others in our home at the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), elsewhere in the White House, and across the Federal Government. We supported the work done by previous CTO teams to bring tech capacity to government in the form of the Presidential Innovation Fellows, 18F, U.S. Digital Service, and revamped Office of Digital Strategy. We brought more data science and data scientists into government through the creation of the U.S. Chief Data Scientist team and role, and creating a data science cabinet. We expanded data collaborations for solutions in justice, jobs, housing, education, and more, while continuing to get more government data out to the public. The Open Government Partnership (OGP) continued to thrive and grow and we shepherded the U.S. Open Government National Action Plans while teaming up with the National Security Council and State Department to help lead the U.S. OGP. With support from the Chief of Staff, we created a new tool for tech policy making called the Tech Policy Task Force -- which added “TQ” to many policy tables, formulated a federal source code policy, moved the government forward on artificial intelligence and uncrewed aerial vehicles, accelerated open educational resources, highlighted the opportunities and challenges of big data and algorithmic decision making, and worked with the Departments of Education, Transportation, Commerce, State, Homeland Security, Justice, and others to help regulations get out of the way of innovation while protecting people’s rights and lives. We pushed for greater recognition of all American talent, including women and underrepresented minorities in STEM; catalyzing for improvements in the portrayal of STEM people in media; expanding inclusive opportunity in computer science education; ensuring outreach for jobs in innovative industries in hiring programs, such as TechHire; increasing Internet connectivity in the U.S. and around the world; championing innovative local community solutions; pushing through more diversity and inclusion in the Federal government workforce; and expanding best practices in organizations and companies in diversity, equity, and inclusion, including an implementation action grid, the Tech Inclusion Pledge, and expanded inclusive venture funding.  And, lots more. Even reading the list brings a tired smile to my face.

President Obama writes his first line of code and celebrates
with the middle school student who helped teach him, Dec. 8 2014.
Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

So, while there was no shortage of impact, I still would say that it was the people that were the most important reason why I was so glad that I had the opportunity to work government. The diversity of people in the White House and at agencies was a huge difference from Silicon Valley. That diversity was expressed in terms of the traditional lines of socio-economic, ethnicity, race, color, religion, age, disability status, gender identity, sexual orientation, and far more balanced gender representation, but also in terms of point of view, educational, geographic origin, and career background. Sometimes, I was among others like me but more frequently I was unusual along a number of dimensions such as my lack of long federal service, my lack of military service, my tech background, etc. I came away extremely impressed with the level of experience, intellect, and passion that the Obama White House was able to attract. There were people who you later discovered were Rhodes Scholars, or Supreme Court clerks, or had beaten a Scrabble world champion over the weekend. I had expected both the diversity and excellence, but it is one thing to expect something and quite another to live it for two-plus years.

President Obama talks with U.S. CTO Megan Smith, and
OSTP Director Dr. John Holdren, Oct. 8, 2014.
Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

Team CTO under U.S. CTO Megan Smith was also outstanding. I had the privilege of working with a number of people that I have admired and wanted to work for for years. I also got to meet and work with a bunch of folks that I might never have otherwise met. Over my time there, the U.S. CTO team while I was there included at different times: Puneet Ahira, Seth Andrew, Rob Bacchus, Jake Brewer, Marvin Carr, Jimmy Catania, Colleen Chien, Evan Cooke, R. David Edelman, Ed Felten, Anjali Fernandes, Brian Forde, Brianna Fugate, Dipayan Ghosh, Vivian Graubard, Renee Gregory, Dan Hammer, Natalie Evans Harris, Read Holman, Kristen Honey, Mina Hsiang, Kelly Jin, Terah Lyons, Matthew McAllister, Dawn Mielke, Lynn Overmann, Ryan Panchadsaram, DJ Patil, Tom Power, Laura Weidman Powers, Jason Schultz, Nick Sinai, Lauren Smith, Ashkan Soltani, Suhas Subramanyam, Emily Tavoulareas, Maya Uppaluru, Aden Van Noppen, Nancy Weiss, Claudia Williams, Charles Worthington, Cori Zarek, and, of course, the wonderful Megan Smith herself.

Yowza.

Some of the wonderful folks that made up team CTO,
Jan. 14, 2017.

That combination of a top-notch team amid a diverse broader group of excellent folks from top to bottom at OSTP, the broader White House and across the Government, made going into work both a joy and a challenging learning experience every day. I felt like I grew a ton, learned a lot about how the U.S. government functions, and picked up some really interesting management and leadership lessons from the people I got to work with. I came home mentally worn out but almost always smiling. I also made a bunch of new friends.

President Obama talks with Girl Scout White House Science
Fair participants who had designed a Lego page turner to help
people read books who may not otherwise be able, Mar. 23 2015.
Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

Now that I have been out of work for a few months, I am thankful for the opportunity to make a positive impact but I am certain that I made the right choice that August because of the amazing people I got to work with. I am still fired up that I had the privilege to serve with each and every one of them, and ready to go and work with them again!

President Obama, listens during a technology 

strategy discussion, Oct. 8, 2014.

Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

Chiefs of Staff: We need more in the private sector

A bunch of friends in Silicon Valley have asked some version of “what was surprising to you in govt?” or “what did you learn about govt?” This is part of a series of posts answering those questions.

One of the MANY things I learned while serving as Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer was just how amazing the folks are that have the title “Chief of Staff.” They are some of the unsung heroes of the White House and government as a whole. There is no true equivalent to the Chief of Staff job and it is pretty rare in the corporate world, particularly in Silicon Valley (but see Kris Cordle at Slack). Chief Operating Officer (COO) may be the closest analogy, and it is no coincidence that Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s extremely effective COO was Chief of Staff at the Treasury Department before moving to Google and Facebook. Read on for a bit more about what a Chief of Staff does, with some examples from President Obama’s administration.

Letterhead of the Chief of Staff to the President

Managers

First and foremost, a Chief of Staff (COS) is a manager.

Data from the Office of Personnel Management

The U.S. Federal Government is extremely large. The President of the United States is a CEO of sorts for approximately 2.6 million civilian executive branch employees engaged in a mind-bendingly diverse set of jobs (including the military, that number is over 4 million). In addition, the President’s relationship to the country makes him also responsible to the more than 300 million people that make up the United States. As a result, the President’s time, and that of other leaders in government (called “principals” in government), is precious and spent on external events, relationship calls, decision making, or getting information, and, in each case, only if the principal is not replaceable with others. An example of part of that schedule for President Obama is archived here but the schedules of other principals, from the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to the Secretary of Commerce, are similar.

A COS's first job is making sure their principal’s vision is implemented effectively and that requires, in the first instance, managing their principal. They need to make sure that their principal is using their time effectively, for example that any issue that can be resolved at a lower level is resolved, and that they have the information necessary to make informed decisions. This part of the COS job requires an extraordinarily good relationship with the principal and almost supernatural ability to predict what the principal wants. A COS may have their own views but a significant amount of the COS power and effectiveness comes from being, in Game of Thrones vocabulary, the “Hand of the King.” This relationship balances a COS's management of their principal with their relatively egoless role as their principal’s direct report and executer. They are also truth-tellers who aren’t shy about bringing bad news to their principals. In my experience, the best COSes are both supremely loyal and trusted by their principal to make significant decisions without them. This gives them a dual role “staffing” their principal but also being principals in their own rights. Denis McDonough, who was President Obama’s COS during my time in the Executive Office of the President, is a great example. Denis was in sync with the President and his guidance could be relied upon to reflect the President’s. As much as anyone at the White House, he seemed to embody being in service to the President. At the same time, the buck frequently stopped with Denis, and, in those situations, he was a principal himself.

Chief of Staff to the President, Denis McDonough,
walking with President Obama, Sept 22, 2014.
Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

The COS is also likely to be the manager of the department. Hiring, firing, tasking, internal dispute resolution, and other managerial duties are often functions that are delegated to the COS. The principals oversee these but a ton of day-to-day management is done by the COS. For example, within OSTP where I worked, Cristin Dorgelo was the COS and would do weekly one on one meetings with each of the Director of OSTP’s reports. Cristin constantly was touching base with people across the department. She interviewed every person brought into OSTP, and she had an exit interview with everyone who left.

OSTP Chief of Staff, Cristin Dorgelo,
leading brainstorming at an NIH event, June 24, 2015
Photo by @NIH3DPrint

Similarly, Natalie Quillian, part of Denis’s COS team and a Deputy Assistant to the President, established new internal communication avenues for the White House to help spread internal communication and to create a sense that all of the employees in the Executive Office of the President were part of one team. Natalie also gave me and other White House staff regular guidance and mentoring in how to approach different processes and people within the White House.

Deputy Assistant to the President, Natalie Quillian, 

introducing her child to President Obama, Aug 27, 2014.

Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

Process Wranglers

The Federal Government has a significant amount of process designed to improve decision making and ensure that the diverse viewpoints of departments are represented. For example, Presidential Policy Directive 1 laid out the National Security Council system for national security decision making under President Obama. A well run process can produce a good decision but, equally importantly, it will produce a decision with buy-in from the components and agencies that will need to implement the decision. While laudable, these processes are a lot of work to run and to exist within. The various COSes are the masters of them and are responsible for “shipping” a decision just as in Silicon Valley we rely on product managers to ship products.

Natalie was an expert at driving a process to completion. Understanding the type of decision that was required, she effectively figured out the right forum, the right questions, and the right type of information to get in front of the right set of principals to ensure an informed and constructive discussion that could produce a decision that would then have the buy-in to be implemented. She did everything from scrutinize an attendee list in order to add a person or two that needed to be included (or remove someone that was unnecessary to the decision); force lower level folks to more finely hone their disagreements or come to agreement on items that didn’t need higher level participation; push the conversation in the meeting towards an argument that was left unaddressed; and follow up to crisply articulate the meeting’s outcome and the mandate of each participant going forward. Each is an active task requiring a very high degree of understanding of the subject matter and emotional intelligence about people across government. I saw Natalie and many of the other COSes take this on across an incredible range of substantive areas from national security to communication to legal issues.  

The White House under President Obama was also a place that effectively used memos. As Jeff Bezos reportedly does at Amazon, the White House used memos to force the cogent development of argument and to allow components and agencies to resolve disagreements and to make decisions in a way that others across government and outside of government can see and understand. Working a document, with hundreds of other potential editors can be a recipe for committee-written prose and a huge time waster. The only thing worse would have been the potential for future disagreement if the various players didn’t have to come to agreement on paper. This paper process would have been impossible without the COSes. For example, on any given day, Cristin could be involved in a handful or more memos. Over her time at the White House, that meant that she was likely involved in thousands. She developed an expert sense of what was an important edit for OSTP and what might be better to let go. As importantly, the set of COSes within the Executive Office of the President and at the agencies were repeat players with strong relationships and a good deal of trust between them. Irreconcilable substantive policy differences that might otherwise disrupt the decision making process could often be resolved to the satisfaction of all through Cristin’s relationships and the creativity of the COSes.

Implementation Gurus

Federal government implementation of policy is almost always the responsibility of agencies. For example, while the President may determine that Federal data should be open, it is up to the Department of Transportation to release Traffic Fatality data to the public. This can leave execution of policy initiatives, particularly ones needing interagency cooperation without a central driver. Since few policies are successful without successful implementation, President Obama focused White House staff on continuing to track policy decisions through implementation and helping where needed. No-one did that better and across more important policy priorities than Kristie Canegallo, whose title was Deputy COS for Implementation. During her time in the position I saw Kristie ensure appropriate implementation across a wide range of topics including the Affordable Care Act, Precision Medicine Initiative, Cybersecurity National Action Plan, and the technology transformation of government more generally. And those were just a small percentage of her workload.

Deputy Chief of Staff for Implementation, Kristie Canegallo (center), 

with other members of the Affordable Care Act team

giving an update to President Obama, April 1, 2014.

Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

As with any good operator, Kristie delegated effectively but sometimes got into the weeds to better understand and debug problems. She removed obstacles for the teams. She elicited and measured teams against metrics. She kept the cross-agency and cross-functional teams focused on the bigger picture and brought her own mastery of all of the tools available to our government to get the job done. Kristie is one of the better executing leaders I have ever worked with and her focus on and skill in implementation was shared by many of the COSes.

Calm, Solution Oriented, and Without Ego

A great COS is also calm, solution oriented and without ego. Yohannes Abraham, Valerie Jarrett’s COS at the Office of Public Engagement, is a great example of this COS attitude. Like part of a startup founding team, Yo has seen it all, so nothing phases him. He does not dwell on blame but moves quickly towards finding solutions. For example, I once brought him an issue that I was working on that some said might threaten one of his core implementation projects. Yo’s project was a higher Presidential priority than what I was working on. He talked through the issue calmly and saw the tensions between the two policy objectives. Together we weighed the good that would come of each and then talked through an approach to try to ensure the thing I was working on could get done in a way that would not threaten the higher priority policy project. Then he used his relationships to broaden that understanding and ensure that others could come to the same conclusion. Yo, like the other COSes, worked on thousands of individual policies and launches. His experience showed in his calmness and in the creative solutions he was able to make happen and often he was working to push someone else’s work over the finish line. Yo is exactly the kind of person you want to be working with you on the hardest problems. No ego, all drive to make a positive impact.

Chief of Staff of the Office of Public Engagement, Yohannes Abraham
Undated Government Photo

We Need More Chiefs of Staff!

While not every business is as large or complex as the Federal Government, the Chief of Staff position is underutilized in the private sector. The skills of Chief of Staffs in managing their bosses and staff, pushing through processes, and driving implementation, all with a reassuring calmness, solution orientation, and lack of ego, are very much in need in Silicon Valley.

I focused this post on the COSes that I worked with closely over the last few years but there were many others, and all were world class. And, they also ALL tendered their resignations as part of the peaceful transition of power at the White House. They would each be well suited to be CEOs or COOs in the private sector. I can’t wait to see what they do, and I would work with any of them again.

Update: Paul Cohen wrote a good series of posts that go into more depth on the COS role at high growth companies in the private sector.