Before joining the White House staff, Patil worked as a data scientist with eBay, PayPal and Skype, among others, and spent some time in academia, in addition to helping the Department of Defense study social media networks to predict emerging domestic threats. All this to say, he's incredibly qualified to hold position as the country's first-ever CDS. ​Patil's hiring shouldn't exactly come as a surprise, either: one of President Obama's biggest directives during his tenure has been to utilize public data and make it usable by everyone. Naturally, there would need to be someone to take care of all of that info.

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