U.S. Principal Deputy CTO Alexander Macgillivray departs

Principal Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer Alexander Macgillivray on Thursday announced that he has stepped down from the role.

Macgillivray, who led the White House’s push on the need for algorithmic transparency, joined the Biden administration in December 2021 after previously serving as deputy federal chief technology officer during the Obama administration.

Following his departure, Deirdre Mulligan takes the role of U.S. deputy chief technology officer, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Mulligan is a professor in the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, and is on leave from the institution while serving in the White House. In February she was installed as U.S. deputy chief technology officer for policy, and has also worked as principal adviser to the National AI Initiative Office.

Macgillivray, who led the White House’s push on the need for algorithmic transparency, joined the Biden administration in December 2021 after previously serving as deputy federal chief technology during the Obama administration. 

Before working in government, he held private sector roles as deputy general counsel at Google and general counsel at Twitter. It’s unclear where Macgillivray will work after leaving the White House.

“I am thankful for the support of WHOSTP Director Arati Prabhakar and am excited to see all the great work to come from the phenomenal Tech Division,” Macgillivray wrote on Twitter on Thursday afternoon.

“It was a huge privilege to get to work here again as part of the Biden Administration. I am extremely grateful and more than a little sad that my time is up,” he added.

Macgillivray during a speech on tech policy at the State of the Net Conference in March of this year highlighted three key goals of the Biden administration, which included improving federal privacy protections for Americans’ personal information and closing digital infrastructure gaps.

The OSTP, which Macgillivray is leaving, was established by Congress in 1976 and has a wide mandate to advise the president on the effects of science and technology on domestic and international affairs.

Details of Deirdre Mulligan’s new appointment were first reported by Axios Pro.