White House Names ‘DJ’ Patil as the First U.S. Chief Data Scientist

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DJ Patil speaking at a press conference in San Francisco, Calif., in 2012. The Indian American said his new role “will be to responsibly source, process, and leverage data in a timely fashion to enable transparency, provide security, and foster innovation for the benefit of the American public.” (Getty Images)

Arun Kumar, IANS

Washington — The White House has named Dhanurjay ‘DJ’ Patil as its first chief data scientist to help shape policies and practices to help the U.S. remain a leader in technology and innovation.

In a memo to the American people Feb. 19, Patil, 45, noted that “the Obama administration has embraced the use of data to improve the operation of the U.S. government and the interactions that people have with it.”

The Indian American data scientist said his role “will be to responsibly source, process, and leverage data in a timely fashion to enable transparency, provide security, and foster innovation for the benefit of the American public, in order to maximize the nation’s return on its investment in data.”

Patil said he planned to focus on four activities: providing vision on how to provide maximum social return on federal data; creating nationwide data policies that enable shared services and forward-leaning practices to advance our nation’s leadership in the data age; working with agencies to establish best practices for data management and ensure long-term sustainability of databases; and recruiting and retaining the best minds in data science for public service to address these data science objectives and act as conduits among the government, academia, and industry.

President Barack Obama “has prioritized bringing top technical talent like DJ into the federal government to harness the power of technology and innovation to help government better serve the American people,” said chief technology officer Megan Smith.

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