Taka Ariga 

Chief Data Scientist and Director of GAO’s Innovation Lab, US Government Accountability Office

Taka is the first Chief Data Scientist and the Director of Innovation Lab appointed by the Comptroller General of the United States for the Government Accountability Office to help GAO adapt to the consequences of web 3.0 technologies and beyond. The mission of the Innovation Lab is to better understand inner workings of machine learning techniques, cloud services, zero trust controls, blockchains, edge devices, and other integrated cyber-physical capabilities. Taka is leading the exploration and experimentation of emerging technologies as a necessary and critical foresight function.

Taka is a current member of the federal Senior Executive Services and has over 23 years of consistent track record on delivering technology innovations sustainably and at scale by combining data science with with IT competencies. He is passionate about fostering a data centricity mindset as a catalyst to address complex policy, regulatory, risk, operational, and business intelligence challenges.

Taka is natively fluent in both Japanese and Mandarin Chinese. In his spare time, he is also a serious classical chamber musician and a competitive tennis player.