Akamai CEO Says Tech Council Meeting With Trump Focuses On Modernizing Government Systems

President Trump is digesting some economic suggestions made at the White House Monday night by leaders of some of the country's biggest technology companies.

Executives from companies such as Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Cambridge-based Akamai Technologies participated in the first meeting of the American Technology Council.

Akamai CEO Tom Leighton joins Morning Edition to discuss how the meeting went.

On what the tech leaders discussed with Trump

Tom Leighton: The focus is on using technology to help modernize government IT. This has a benefit of both saving a lot of money and also providing much better services for the citizens.

Another major thrust was how to make government infrastructure be more secure so that you don’t have cyber attacks, or information stolen, or websites and applications made unavailable online.

On what the president seem most interested in

The president wants to see much more effective government IT infrastructure — much less expensive, much more usable for citizens, and to have it to be a lot more secure so people's information is not being stolen, data [are] not being corrupted and websites aren't being taken offline.

On whether the company received pushback from Cambridge residents for attending

This was an apolitical event. I think everyone in America, including the major parties, believe it would be helpful for the government to modernize its IT infrastructure. It benefits everyone to help make the government be more secure, and of course, it helps everyone to save money.