President Donald J. Trump brought technology leaders from major companies like Apple, Amazon and Google to the White House June 19 to help launch the American Technology Council.
The president created the council in May to leverage private-sector expertise in his push to modernize the government’s outdated technology infrastructure.
“Our goal is to lead a sweeping transformation of the federal government’s technology that will deliver dramatically better services for citizens,” Trump told the council.
The first meeting of the council — which includes senior government officials, CEOs of top technology companies and presidents of major universities — also marked the beginning of the White House’s “technology week.”
“We’re embracing big change, bold thinking, and outsider perspectives to transform government and make it the way it should be, and at far less cost,” the president said, estimating that cost savings could equal up to $1 trillion over 10 years.
The president has also created the Office of American Innovation, led by White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner, to help overhaul and update the federal government.
“Federal agencies collectively operate 6,100 data centers, the vast majority of which can be consolidated and migrated to the cloud,” Kushner said in an address to the council attendees. “Together we will unleash the creativity of the private sector to provide citizen services in a way that has never happened before.”
Technology leaders attending the meeting included Ajay Banga of MasterCard, Brian Krzanich of Intel, Satya Nadella of Microsoft and Ginni Rometty of IBM.
“Government needs to catch up with the technology revolution,” the president said. “We’re going to change that with the help of great American businesses.”
