Barack Obama | Change We Can Believe In | Technology.
"Obama will appoint the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to ensure that our government and all its agencies have the right infrastructure, policies and services for the 21st century. The CTO will ensure the safety of our networks and will lead an interagency effort, working with chief technology and chief information officers of each of the federal agencies, to ensure that they use best-in-class technologies and share best practices."
i'm pretty apolitical by nature, when pressed i usually state that i'm a libertarian, the passive non-freak show kind - i stayed out of this discussion when it happened online awhile back but being a cto for the latter half of my career and now that barack will be putting this into action, i felt the need to chime in along with the various reactions (scoble, riley, wag, rizzn, riley to rizzn & others) to the obama campaign's statement that if elected he would appoint a cto of usa...
in reading his technology page there really are multiple areas that need focus and not all of them are well suited for a traditional cto - btw, this is a great well meaning list of concerns that should be bipartisan, i couldn't find anything similar from mccain regarding the need for a cto however his campaign did have a good technology focused section on his site that was also worth reading...
this cnet article is a little more current and does a pretty good job of breaking down some of the issues and concerns, whether the cto role is more of an adviser or an active change agent...
of all the proposed candidates, i like vint cerf best - but i also think the role needs to be more clearly defined before the person filling it can be identified...
i also don't think it'll be an active cto in the prime of their career, commercial compensation is always better than what the government can afford - seems obvious but i haven't seen anyone w/ that take yet...
the government is a federation of entities that utilize technology in a wide variety of ways and degrees of competence (much like any big complex company btw) - for the cto to be successful they will need to understand how to motivate effective change via more than just the authority their role will grant them but rather via the ability to influence the various diverse organizations to want to change, its a subtle difference but a very important one in my experience...
who ever ends up being chosen, i wish them well and will enjoy watching them tackle the challenge...
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