NPR: In his position as CEO, Schmidt already is speaking out. This past year he publicly made a $3 trillion policy proposal to wean the U.S. off oil. In fact, it was discussions about green technology that first brought him into contact with then-presidential candidate Barack Obama. The two men discovered they shared a vision of how technology could transform the country. Both believe that more information is a force for good. Schmidt has been advising Obama on how to make government more open using the Internet.
"Much more use of social networking, much more use of involvement, much more than just Web sites for government programs, which was what was achieved a decade ago," he says.
Recently, President-elect Obama announced that documents from all official meetings with outside organizations would be available online; Schmidt has been giving technological advice for making that happen. The idea is to allow Americans to discuss government decision-making, and it's a reflection of Obama's grass-roots organizing background.
It's also a reflection of how Schmidt runs Google, says autnor Vise.
"Google on the technology side runs a very flat organization, which is quite similar in philosophy. Rather than being very hierarchical and having a lot of layers of management, Google, to this day, has tried to keep the size of project teams very small so that the best ideas could still bubble up," Vise says.
Friday, January 02, 2009
Google's Influence on Obama's Government
Google's CEO Eric Schmidt have a meeting of the minds on how technology could transform government.
