WASHINGTON: Indian-American Sonal Shah will craft the incoming Barack Obama administration's high tech policy priorities as the President-elect's Transition Team have announced leaders for a series of Policy Working Groups for the Presidential Transition. The focus of the Policy Working Groups will be to develop the priority policy proposals and plans from the Obama Campaign for action during the Obama-Biden Administration.
The groups will focus on the following areas: Economy, Education, Energy and Environment, Health Care, Immigration, National Security, and Technology, Innovation and Government Reform" the Transition Team has said in a statement. Obama has named two telecom industry and policy veterans and a leader of Google's philanthropy arm to craft the new administration's high-tech policy priorities.
"The policy working group on Technology, Innovation and Government Reform will develop... Proposals and plans from the Obama Campaign for action during the Obama-Biden Administration," according to the President-elect's transition website. Shah heads Google's philanthropic arm, Google.Org's global development efforts, and has a lengthy resume on international development issues including being a vice president at Goldman, Sachs and Co. Prior to joining Google.
She is also the co-founder of Indicorps, a US-based non-profit organization offering one-year fellowships to Indian-Americans to work on development projects in India. Sonal worked at the Department of Treasury from 1995-2002 on various economic issues and is on the Obama-Biden Transition Project Advisory Board.
The naming of Shah in the panel to oversee Technology, Innovation and Government reform -- along with Julius Genachowski and Blair Levin -- comes at a time when there has been some considerable interest on who will be the Chief Technology Officer in the Obama administration, the speculation being that the high tech czar will streamline technology within the federal government with a view to making records more accessible.
Meanwhile, Obama has also announced some key positions for the White House with his top campaign strategist David Axelrod named as senior advisor to the President, Greg Craig as White House Counsel, Chris Lu as Cabinet Secretary and Lisa Brown as Staff Secretary.
"I am pleased to announce these new additions to our team, and I'll be relying on their broad and diverse experience in the months ahead as we work to strengthen our economy, reform Washington, and meet the great challenges of our time," said President-elect Barack Obama.
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