[3][4] The CTO and their team have historically focused on leveraging technology and technical expertise to help create jobs, strengthen privacy protections, harness the benefits and mitigate the risks of artificial intelligence, create paths to improve government services with lower costs, higher quality and increased transparency and accessibility, help upgrade agencies to use open data and expand their data science capabilities, improve quality and reduce the costs of health care and criminal justice, increase access to broadband, bring technical talent into government for policy and modern operations input, improve community innovation engagement by agencies working on local challenges, and help keep the nation secure.
[5][6] During the 2008 presidential campaign, Senator Barack Obama stated that he would appoint the first federal chief technology officer if elected to the presidency.
[7] Aneesh Chopra was named by President Obama as the nation's first CTO in April 2009, and confirmed by the Senate on August 7, 2009.
Chopra resigned effective February 8, 2012, and was succeeded by Todd Park, formerly the CTO of the Department of Health and Human Services.
President Trump named Michael Kratsios as U.S. CTO in May 2019, and he was unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate on August 1, 2019.