U.S. President Donald Trump is to meet Monday with the chief executives of technology companies including Apple and Amazon as the White House looks to the private sector for help in cutting government waste and improving services.
White House officials said on a conference call on Friday that the administration believed there was an "economic opportunity" to save up to $1 trillion over 10 years by cutting government information technology costs sharply, reducing government costs through improved IT, leveraging government buying power and cutting fraud across government agencies.
The meeting with nearly 20 chief executives comes as the White House pushes to shrink government, cut the number of federal employees and drop regulations. Many business executives are eager to work with the new administration as they face numerous regulatory and other policy issues.
Others planning to attend include Alphabet Chairman Eric Schmidt as well as leaders of Microsoft, IBM, Mastercard, Intel, Qualcomm, Oracle, and Adobe Systems
In May, Trump asked lawmakers to cut $3.6 trillion in government spending over the next decade, taking aim at health-care and food assistance programs for the poor in a budget that also boosted spending on defense.
A 2016 U.S. Government Accountability Office report estimated the U.S. government spent more than $80 billion in IT annually, excluding classified operations. In 2015, there were at least 7,000 separate IT investments by the U.S. government and some agencies were using systems that had components at least 50 years old.
