Alvin Salehi

Alvand "Alvin" Salehi is an American technologist, attorney and policymaker. He is a Senior Technology Advisor at the White House and the co-founder of Code.gov.

Salehi was born and raised in Orange County, CA. He graduated from the University of Southern California with a Bachelor's degree in Journalism, a Bachelor's degree in Political Science, a Master's degree in Management, and a Juris Doctorate.

Salehi joined the White House in 2015 as a technology advisor in the Office of the US CIO. Under the Obama Administration, he led the development of the nation's first-ever Federal Source Code Policy, which was officially published on August 8, 2016. The policy cuts wasteful taxpayer spending on software acquisitions by mandating that government-funded software be shared across all federal agencies. It also requires that a portion of government code be released to the public as open source software to maximize the economic benefits associated with code sharing and reuse. The draft of the Federal Source Code Policy was recorded as one of the most highly commented White House policies in history.

On November 3, 2016, Salehi launched Code.gov with US CIO Tony Scott. Since then, Code.gov has become the nation's primary platform for sharing and improving government code, boasting a large collection of reusable software projects from over two dozen federal agencies and organizations. Notable examples include a reusable Facebook Messenger bot built by the Executive Office of the President, a comprehensive web analytics tool built by GSA, and an intuitive tracking application built by the Pentagon for a NATO mission in Afghanistan—all of which Salehi has discussed in keynote presentations around the country.

On July 13, 2017, Salehi was appointed by Harvard University to serve as a research affiliate at the law school's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. His research focuses on the impact of open source software on code security, economic efficiency, and technological innovation.

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