Daniel Weitzner Named to Run US Government Internet Policy Unit

Daniel Weitzner has been named Associate Administrator for the Office of Policy Analysis and Development at the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). Danny will have a leading role in fulfilling the NTIA's mandate to provide the President advice on telecommunications and information policy issues.

Danny will thus be leaving the W3C staff, which he joined in 1998 as the Technology and Society Domain Lead. During these 11 years, Danny has contributed significantly to advances in many areas where policy meets technology, including privacy, security, intellectual property, and trust. As Chair of the Patent Policy Working Group, Danny led the effort that culminated in W3C's Royalty-Free Patent Policy, now a cornerstone of W3C's value proposition to the Web community.

Before joining the W3C, Danny was co-founder and Deputy Director of the Center for Democracy and Technology and was Deputy Policy Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Danny is also Director of the the MIT CSAIL Decentralized Information Group with Tim Berners- Lee and a founding director of the Web Science Research Initiative and holds an appointment as Principal Research Scientist at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

While W3C regrets that Danny will be stepping down from W3C, it is encouraging that US policy may well be shaped by someone who has demonstrated a commitment to open standards as a tool for improving society. Danny, good luck!