Commerce Department Hires Google Vet Alan Davidson

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The Commerce Department has recruited former Google executive Alan Davidson for the newly created position of “director of digital economy.” Davidson is a well-known presence in Washington. In 2005, he left his post as associate director at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a public advocacy group, to open up Google’s Washington office, becoming one of the first Internet company representatives taking part in day-to-day debates in the capital. He stayed at Google until 2011, and later went on to head the think tank New America’s Open Technology Institute. Davidson described his role at Commerce as giving “a greater voice to the Internet community on issues in this Administration.” “The Commerce Department is going to be playing a central role on some of the biggest issues that we’re going to be facing, from Internet governance to surveillance to privacy to patent reform,” he said, “There’s a whole set of issues where the department has a lot of work to do, and the idea here is to bolster that effort.” Davidson will also be a senior advisor to Pritzker and lead an existing agency team known as the Digital Economy Leadership Team, or DELT.


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