Facebook exec becomes White House IT head

The former top engineer at Facebook is taking over as the White House’s first-ever director of information technology, the Obama administration announced Thursday. 

David Recordon will be responsible for making sure President Obama’s office is using the most updated and secure technology, the White House explained in a blog post.

{mosads}“In our continued efforts to serve our citizens better, we’re bringing in top tech leaders to support our teams across the federal government,” Obama said in a statement. “His considerable private sector experience and ability to deploy the latest collaborative and communication technologies will be a great asset to our work on behalf of the American people.”

By eliminating redundancies and upgrading software for the White House, Recordon will be helping to pave the way for better use of tech all across the government, the White House predicted.

The creation of the new position builds on Obama’s efforts to inject Silicon Valley talent into the upper echelons of the federal government.

Last year, the president created the new U.S Digital Service  to replicate the government’s success turning around the early troubles of HealthCare.gov all across the government.

That effort is led by former Google executive Mikey Dickerson, and on Thursday it helped unveil a new tool for the public to keep track of how people visit government websites.