Marc Benioff, the high-profile CEO of hosted CRM service provider Salesforce.com, will be appointed co-chair of the Presidents Information Technology Advisory Committee by President George Bush, the company acknowledged Friday.
Benioff will co-chair the 25-person committee along with Edward Lazowska, who currently holds the Bill and Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science at the University of Washingtons Department of Computer Science and Engineering. He will serve a two-year term.
“PITAC represents the administrations commitment to technology innovation,” said Benioff, in a statement. “I am tremendously honored to have been chosen by President George W. Bush to play an integral role in this effort to maintain Americas tradition of excellence in the field of information technology.”
PITAC was first chartered by Congress in 1991, then re-chartered in 1998 as part of the Next Generation Internet Act that year.
The Committee advises the president, Congress and the federal agencies involved in information technology research and development on maintaining Americas pre-eminence in advanced information technologies, focusing in particular on high-performance computing, large-scale networking, and high assurance software and systems design.
As part of this assessment, the PITAC, which comprises representatives from both industry and academia, reviews the Federal Networking and IT R&D Program. PITAC is formally renewed through Presidential Executive Orders. The current Executive Order expires June 1.
The committee is part of the National Coordination Office for Information Technology Research & Development, based in Arlington, Va.
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