Former Microsoft Exec Picked to Fix HealthCare.gov
President Obama today announced that former Microsoft executive Kurt DelBene will serve as a senior advisor on HealthCare.gov.
As part of the 'One Microsoft' effort, outgoing Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced in July that DelBene would retire as president of Microsoft's Office division. His bio on Microsoft.com now says he stepped down as of Dec. 16.
Going forward, DelBene will advise Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and lead ongoing efforts to improve HealthCare.gov, the White House said today. DelBene replaces Jeff Zients, who will become White House economic adviser, the New York Times reported.
The announcement came as Obama sat down with a number of tech execs to talk about HealthCare.gov as well as concerns those companies have with current National Security Agency policies. According to Bloomberg, execs in attendance included Apple's Tim Cook, Yahoo's Marissa Mayer, Google's Eric Schmidt, Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg, Twitter's Dick Costolo, Microsoft's Brad Smith, and LinkedIn's Erika Rottenberg.
'The group discussed the national security and economic impacts of unauthorized intelligence disclosures,' the White House said. 'This was an opportunity for the President to hear from CEOs directly as we near completion of our review of signals intelligence programs, building on the feedback we've received from the private sector in recent weeks and months.'
'The President made clear his belief in an open, free, and innovative internet and listened to the group's concerns and recommendations, and made clear that we will consider their input as well as the input of other outside stakeholders as we finalize our review of signals intelligence programs,' according to the White House.
The nation's top Internet firms recently made a more public push for government surveillance reform, demanding limited user data collection and more transparency, among other things. Apple, AOL, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo all signed on for Global Government Surveillance Reform, which is pushing five principles: limiting governments' authority to collect users' information; oversight and accountability; transparency about government demands; respecting the free flow of information; and avoiding conflicts among governments.
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