Facebook’s David Recordon Named Director of White House IT

Facebook engineering director David Recordon is leaving Menlo Park, Calif., for Washington, D.C., as he was named director of White House information technology.

Recordon joined Facebook in August 2009 as senior open programs manager, coming from blogging platform Six Apart.

In his new role, he will help ensure that technology implemented by the White House is \"efficient, effective and secure,\" including \"converging overlapping systems, modernizing software used to collaborate and bringing use of new technologies in line with private sector best practices.\"

At Facebook, Recordon led teams on projects including productivity tools that aided employees in creating, sharing and finding information, as well as open source, engineering education, human resources, videoconferencing and physical security.

President Barack Obama said in a release announcing Recordon’s appointment:

In our continued efforts to serve our citizens better, we’re bringing in top tech leaders to support our teams across the federal government. Today, I’m pleased to welcome David Recordon as the director of White House information technology. His considerable private sector experience and ability to deploy the latest collaborative and communication technologies will be a great asset to our work on behalf of the American people.

Readers: Are you surprised more Facebook employees — particularly a certain chief operating officer — haven’t left the social network for positions in Washington, D.C.?

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