White House CTO Lauds Google's 20% Time

Aneesh Chopra, the White House's newly appointed chief technology officer, encouraged tech executives to adopt Google's "20% time" practice. "Many of you might know that Google, as a company, reserves 20% of their time for their engineers and others to experiment with ideas that they may not have developed," he said at a Consumer Electronics Association conference in New York. "To my friends in the room who make consumer devices, think about your 20% time," and consider using it to develop products and services with a societal benefit. Americans across the board are consuming more bandwidth, he said, but public policy around broadband and technology in general is lagging. He noted President Barack Obama's recent comments on the importance of technology education, and said technology must be considered as part of health-care, energy, education and economic policy, not an isolated area.