Trump: Government needs an upgrade
Tech titans called upon to modernize outmoded agencies
President Trump and leaders of major U.S. tech companies remain at odds on immigration and climate change, but they met Monday at the White House to work on a joint project: using technology to make government more efficient.
“Today, many of our agencies rely on painfully outdated technology, and yet we have the greatest people in technology that the world has ever seen right here with us in this room,” Trump told his guests, kicking off what aides have dubbed a “technology week” of events focused on innovation in the government.
“Government needs to catch up with the technology revolution,” he continued.
This was the inaugural meeting of Trump’s American Technology Council, a group of tech leaders and administration officials committed to modernizing government information technology and digital services.
Trump’s guests at the White House included Apple CEO Tim Cook, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Oracle co-CEO Safra Catz and Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google’s parent company.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was invited but could not attend the meeting due to scheduling conflicts, said a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment publicly.
After Trump asked his guests at the technology roundtable to speak individually, Cook said the government should have the most modern equipment, and “today it doesn’t.” He added that computer coding should be a required subject in school. Bezos said the U.S. needs to work on machine learning and artificial intelligence.
During a session with the same CEOs earlier in the day, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner said the Trump administration wants tech companies to help “modernize the government’s technology infrastructure,” by developing or consulting on new solutions for complex challenges such as delivering veterans’ health care benefits and managing budgets.
Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, helped organize the meeting as head of the White House Office of American Innovation.
In Kushner’s presentation Monday — among his rare remarks in public — he said federal agencies maintain 6,100 data centers, many of which can be consolidated. He said the government still has data systems that are up to 56 years old, including the continued use of floppy disks at the Pentagon.
Yet the summit, the second between the administration and some of the technology industry’s biggest names, highlights a relationship that has been fraught with tension and sharp political differences. Few in left-leaning Silicon Valley publicly supported Trump. Adding to the acrimony, dozens of executives signed an open letter opposing Trump’s presidency. The president skewered Apple and Amazon in tweets and on the campaign trail for sending jobs overseas. He also has taken issue with tech companies’ strong stands to protect widespread encryption on consumer devices for the sake of users’ digital security and privacy.
“Government needs to catch up with the technology revolution.” President Trump