Sivak Named New HHS CTO

Big Blue to Entrepreneur to Big Brother

HHS announced that Bryan Sivak will be their next Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Bryan has big shoes to fill stepping in to Todd Park’s previous position which was created in August 2009. Park was appointed as the federal U.S. chief technology officer by President Obama on March 9. Park succeeded Aneesh Chopra, who is now a senior advisor on health care technology strategy at The Advisory Board Company, a consulting firm. Sivak will report to duty some time next month.

In a statement from HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, she confirmed that Bryan will work with Todd Park and ensure that the department’s innovation initiatives continue as planned. “We will benefit tremendously from his creativity, experience, and fresh ideas as we continue our work to harness the power of data and technology to improve the health of the nation.”

Like Park he comes from a successful private sector start up. After beginning his career at IBM he began his own venture which became InQuira. InQuira provides an integrated software platform which includes knowledge base management, natural language search, and advanced analytics and reporting. In July of last year Oracle announced its agreement to acquire InQuira stating the extending of Oracle’s leadership CRM with web self-service, customer communities and knowledge management capabilities.

In October 2009, Sivak left InQuira when he was appointed by Mayor Fenty of Washington DC to be the district’s CTO, a position Bryan feels was successful although cut short when Fenty was voted out in January of 2011. By April of last year he had moved to Maryland to become the State’s first Chief Innovation Officer. So from District to State and now the Federal level he will not only be the CTO for HHS but will also serve as HHS’ tech entrepreneur-in-residence.

Bryan was educated at the University of Chicago in Computer Science. He holds US Patent 8,095,476 issued November 26, 2007 for an automated support scheme for electronic forms. Follow Bryan @BryanSivak.