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What does America need right now? Data science! (says, er, the first Chief Data Scientist)

So much more exciting than just calling them spreadsheets, eh?

The White House has created the post of Chief Data Scientist and hired the guy who coined the term as its first incumbent, DJ Patil.

Patil lives in California and has worked for a number of Silicon Valley giants, including LinkedIn, eBay, PayPal and Skype. Now he's moving to Washington DC for the role and report to Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith.

The official announcement doesn't go into much detail about what Patil will actually do, saying only that he will "help shape policies and practices to help the US remain a leader in technology and innovation, foster partnerships to help responsibly maximize the nation’s return on its investment in data, and help to recruit and retain the best minds in data science to join us in serving the public."

However, Patil gave a keynote at the Strata conference in San Jose earlier today, in which he gave some more details, albeit heavily wrapped in tech lingo.

Introduced by a video from President Obama, who said "there is the potential to change everything with data" and who encouraged attendees to "help build better data services," Patil was full of praise for the president who he called "the most data-driven president there has ever been." The new CDS even presented a six-point slide on his data credentials.

The release and use of data can "led to open transparency of government," Patil argued before highlighting three 'priorities' and four 'responsibilities' for the new role.

The start point will be the health field, Patil said (something also highlighted in the president's remarks), and summed it up under the phrase "precision medicine". The idea is that datasets and "bio informatics" are analyzed in ways that highlight what sorts of drugs and treatments work best for different people. There has been a budget plan and White House factsheet about it.

Following that is the more vague notion of building "data products" using the huge stockpile of facts and figures that the US governments has put out on its Data.gov website. And the third priority is taking account of privacy concerns in data production and use.

Even though Patil highlights that many government departments now have, or are looking for, data scientists and despite his claims that some agencies are "more data-driven than most companies", he has his work cut out for him.

Which is probably why, in closing, he heavily stressed that there was "one thing" that attendees and the community of data scientists could do for him and the new office of Chief Data Scientists: join in.

"Data science is a team sport," he said. "And we can't do this without you. We really need your help. You don't have to relocate to Washington; there's all sorts of ways to jump out. Check out 'whitehouse.gov/usds'. We need your help, we can't do it alone."

Safety in numbers, DJ, safety in numbers. ®

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