In hiring Stephanie Hannon to be her campaign’s chief technology officer, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is not just bringing on a former Cisco software engineer with product management experience at Google and Facebook and time in the trenches at tech startups: she’s added a woman who’s deeply immersed in the civic technology movement and knowledgeable about open data. Just watch her talk at the 2014 Code for America Summit:

So, here’s the bad news: Hannon was a product manager for Gmail and Google Wave, so steel yourself for a lot of bad jokes in the days and months ahead in the media, given her new boss’ questionable choices about email as Secretary of State and Google Wave’s demise. While a B.A. and an M.S. in electrical engineering from Stanford and an MBA from Harvard will insulate her from the some of the lamer slings and arrows, get ready for unsubtle, tortured metaphors and misogyny in the comment sections.

Here’s the mixed news: Hannon’s focus on open data on Google appears to have been on standards, services and civic impact, not accountability and transparency. Take a look at her presentation, embedded below:

Given the record of the Obama administration, it remains to be seen whether Clinton will proactively adopt an ambitious agenda on open government if elected, from implementing and resource FOIA reforms, whistleblower support or nominating inspector generals for all federal agencies.

And here’s the good news: while political observers will (and should!) no doubt focus upon her ability to duplicate the success of Harper Reed, the CTO for Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign, Clinton just brought someone who’s tapped into what’s happening in the civic tech space into orbit. If that experience elevates those issues into the campaign and national conversation, it will stand to benefit everyone working towards improving civic life in America. If Clinton starts talking about “building better governance with the people, not for them” on the campaign trail, you’ll know something important has occurred.