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If Obama Appoints a Tech Czar . . .

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By Garrett M. Graff

As we begin to think about what a Barack Obama administration might look like, one of the intriguing ideas the Democratic nominee-to-be has proposed is a Cabinet-level chief technology officer.

CTOs, a now-common post in corporate America, could be a new approach for a government long hamstrung by ill-conceived and poorly executed computer projects.

Obama has called for the position to coordinate the government’s tech infrastructure, work on issues of transparency, and oversee development of national projects like emergency communications.

Names kicking around Silicon Valley and the tech community as CTO candidates include Google’s Vint Cerf, one of the founders of the Internet, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, and Lotus pioneer Mitch Kapor.

An alternate vision has Obama turning to someone like Ed Felten, a computer scientist at Princeton who has been doing a lot on government transparency and voting machines.

One person on many shortlists for the position, intellectual-property guru and Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig, told The Washingtonian that he’d turn down the job if offered: “The CTO would have to be a true geek, not a wannabe geek.”

After years of tech ignorance at the upper levels of the federal government—see Ted Stevens’s infamous “series of tubes” speech in 2006 or President Bush’s references to “the Google”—the push for a national CTO comes at a time when Washington and Silicon Valley are trying to develop closer relationships. Google opened its first official Washington office in January, and in February the Newt Gingrich PAC American Solutions dispatched Capitol Hill veteran Dave Kralik to open an office in Silicon Valley.

Who would you like to see be appointed Obama's "tech czar"? Leave your suggestions in the comments.

This article appears in the July 2008 issue of Washingtonian. To see more articles in this issue, click here.

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Comments

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Posted by: geek, Sep 25, 2008 06:39:58 AM

Is Obama really serious? Or is presented in an effort to draw attention to McCain’s apparent unawareness of all things technological?

Posted by: , Jun 27, 2008 09:27:41 AM

I think that people are looking in the wrong place. Implementing Hi-Tech in Government is not the same as in the commercial sector. The scale is much larger and the impact of making a mistake is much more costly. Gov’t technology implementations take measured approaches so they don’t waste taxpayer dollars.

Look at the respected, super-progressive geeks INSIDE government. Not household names but people who know government and could get the job done.

3 names:

Dick Burk - Recently retired Chief Architect for OMB
Michael Carleton - High Profile CIO at mega-agency HHS
Colleen Coggins - Rising star Chief Architect at DOI

Or you could take a dark-horse private industry person who has spend decades consulting to Government. Picking some commercial inventor who has had NO government experience would be a terrible mistake.

Posted by: IT Consultant to Govt., Jun 27, 2008 05:45:47 AM

Is there any chance Ed Felten could get it, because that would be great.

Posted by: Pete, Jun 27, 2008 02:39:43 AM

god help us if its steve ballmer

Posted by: oh no, Jun 26, 2008 06:03:47 PM

Having the government become more familiar with -- and therefore more efficient users of -- technology is long overdue. However, having a cabinet-level position, whether headed by a person with a science or business background, that dictates tech use throughout the government sounds unwieldy. There are plenty of examples within the government where a group (say maybe the Navy and Marine Corps, for example) has created a tech "project" that proves abysmal to its users.

Posted by: Rosie Heiss, Jun 26, 2008 02:17:39 PM

We don’t need a "tech" or any other kind of czar centralizing more power in Washington, D.C. Technology should let individuals excercise more of their own power. Any government big enough to require a tech czar is a government that needs to be downsized, and fast.

Posted by: Steve Buckstein, Jun 26, 2008 11:36:45 AM

I think he’ll lean towards a scientific-type vice a business-type. I’m interested to see the POTUS Youtube channel and the official POTUS blog.

Posted by: Major Man, Jun 26, 2008 10:36:55 AM

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