TMCnews Featured Article

Aneesh Chopra, the first-ever CTO of the United States and associate director for technology in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, today presented a speech at SUPERCOMM that was probably most notable for its lack of any detailed discussion around the broadband stimulus, for which the first round of funding is expected to be announced next month, and the National Broadband Plan, which the FCC (News - Alert) is required to deliver in February.

Instead, Chopra talked about President Obama’s Innovation Strategy and the importance of a strong communications infrastructure to support the important services and applications of today and the future.

 

He pointed to one recent study that gave the U.S. abysmal scores in terms of its advancement on key performance indicators such as the share of the adult population with college degrees (we’re 15 among 40 countries according to the study he noted), among other factors.

 

The Obama Innovation Strategy aims to change that, he indicated, by doubling the country’s R&D in science and engineering, which the administration sees as critical to the country’s long-term economical prosperity; creating a positive environment for entrepreneurship and innovation by doing things such as protecting intellectual property, making information about such things as GPS and nutrition more transparent; and ensuring smart, secure infrastructure is in place.

 

He talked about how open markets have been key in moving things forward on that front. He reiterated that the government is keen on cybersecurity. And he talked about some of the exciting new communications-related innovation we’re seeing around things like cloud computing and applications that improve quality of life, pointing to a GE portable ultrasound solution as one example.