Trump Meets With Tech Titans To Plan Government Upgrades

US President Donald Trump will meet with the chief executives of some of the world’s leading technology companies this week to help kickstart the government’s digital transformation initiative.

As with many other organisations at the moment, the White House is looking at ways it can use technology to reduce costs, improve services and cut out fraud across government agencies.

Officials believe there is an “economic opportunity” to save up to $1 trillion (£780 billion) over the next 10 years and the government is looking to the likes of Apple and Amazon for help in carrying out this transformation.

Tech summit

According to Reuters, Trump will meet with around 20 technology leaders, including Alphabet executive chairman Eric Schmidt and the chief executives of Microsoft, IBM, Mastercard, Oracle, Intel, Qualcomm And Adobe Systems.

The meeting follows on from Trump’s decision in May to form a technology organisation called the American Technology Council specifically designed to “transform and modernise” government IT after a report found that many government systems are using outdated and often unsupported components.

The report estimated that the US government spends more than $80 billion (£62bn) a year on IT, but still uses parts of IT systems that are at least 50 years old.

In response, Trump has tasked lawmakers with cutting government spending by $3.6 trillion over the next decade, whilst also signing an executive order to upgrade US cyber defences which was welcomed by industry experts.

And the cost saving plan is already showing results, as just last week federal agencies were told to stop providing updates on the Y2K bug which was expected to wreak havoc with computers.

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