RNC Chief Digital Officer to Join White House in Same Role

President-elect Donald Trump may be poaching a top Republication National Committee official to fill out the White House tech team.

Gerrit Lansing, who has served as the RNC's chief digital officer since 2015, has been tapped to continue that role at the White House, Politico reported Wednesday.

The first White House chief digital officer role was created during President Barack Obama's administration. The first person to hold that position was Jason Goldman, a veteran of Twitter and Google's blogging platform Blogger. Goldman described his job as "creat[ing] more meaningful online engagement between government and American citizens," he noted in a Medium blog post announcing his move.

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Lansing has already met with senior Obama administration tech officials including Rob Cook, head of the General Services Administration's Technology Transformation Service, which houses the digital consultancy 18F, according to a memo obtained by Nextgov

Lansing joined the RNC after serving as digital director for the National Republican Congressional Committee; he was also the House Budget Committee press secretary under Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc. Lansing also previously served as features editor for the Heritage Foundation’s Foundry blog, according to an RNC press release.

Trump appears to have been aware of Lansing's digital track record for years; in 2013, he tweeted, "I am hearing that @NRCC Digital Director @lansing is doing great work expanding and modernizing @GOP social media. Good – we need it."

Politico and BuzzFeed have also reported Lansing co-founded Revv, an online payment platform that processed donations for the RNC and also used to handle donations for NeverTrump.com until that contract was discontinued before the Republican National Convention.

At the time of publication, Lansing and the RNC have not responded to Nextgov's requests for comment.