Smith will lead a team in Washington that’s also gaining a new deputy. W.H. taps Google's Smith as CTO

President Barack Obama has named Megan Smith, a top Google executive who helped oversee some of the search giant’s most daring research, as the country’s next chief technology officer.

Smith received the official nod Thursday to replace Todd Park, who relinquished the CTO role last month to take on a new role as the government’s leading emissary in Silicon Valley. Back in Washington, Smith will lead a team that’s also gaining a new deputy — Alex Macgillivray, formerly the top lawyer at Twitter, the administration announced.


“Megan has spent her career leading talented teams and taking cutting-edge technology and innovation initiatives from concept to design to deployment,” Obama said in a statement.

“I am confident that in her new role as America’s Chief Technology Officer, she will put her long record of leadership and exceptional skills to work on behalf of the American people,” he said. “I am grateful for her commitment to serve, and I look forward to working with her and with our new Deputy U.S. CTO, Alexander Macgillivray, in the weeks and months ahead.”

For Smith, a vice president at the so-called Google[x] lab, which has investigated everything from self-driving cars to drones, the Washington gig offers a new challenge: The government’s tech tools are far more dated and restricted than anything found in Silicon Valley. And the myriad failures with HealthCare.gov, which plagued Smith’s predecessor, reveal the troubles are as much technological as they are bureaucratic.

“As U.S. CTO, Smith will guide the Administration’s information-technology policy and initiatives, continuing the work of her predecessors to accelerate attainment of the benefits of advanced information and communications technologies across every sector of the economy and aspect of human well-being,” John Holdren, the director of the administration’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, said in a blog post Thursday.

Smith’s arrival in Washington caps off a lengthy career at Google. With the Google[x] team, Smith worked on the company’s “SolveForX” community effort and its “WomenTechmakers” diversity initiative. Before that, the new CTO was Google’s vice president of new business development, and her work contributed to the explosive growth of Google Maps and Google Earth.

Park, meanwhile, is headed out to Silicon Valley — and his primary role is to recruit tech brains and engineers back to Washington. He’ll assume the role this month, the White House previously announced, with the goal to “ensure that the Administration has an on-the-ground sense of how technology is evolving and can craft policy and initiatives accordingly.”

The administration has repeatedly plucked from the ranks of Google employees recently. Last month, the White House launched a U.S. Digital Service, a team of experts that aims to fix problems with government websites and help upgrade federal technology infrastructure. Mikey Dickerson, a former Google engineer who helped resurrect HealthCare.gov, is heading up the effort.

The Obama administration’s tech team also is gaining the policy expertise of Macgillivray, who departed Twitter in August 2013.

A privacy expert who led Twitter’s fights against government requests to access user data, he’ll continue working on those issues as the newest deputy CTO. He replaces Nicole Wong, who held the job for roughly a year before departing in August. Wong helped coordinate the Obama administration’s latest inquiry on Big Data.