Creating a CTO position in the U.S. Government?

An interesting article appeared in Friday’s - 11/14/08 Washington Post regarding President Elect Barack Obama’s plan to appoint the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer.

According to Obama’s Website this person would help “to make government work better” by helping federal agencies use technology. It has not been determined whether this person would hold a Cabinet level position or just an administrative slot.

Another question is whether the potential CTO would be an executive from the tech sector or someone currently in the Government.

Some have mentioned current Google CEO Eric Schmidt (he has already stated he is not interested) or Vint Cerf, who is the ‘Chief Internet Evangelist’ at Google – either of these choices would have likely caused a storm anyway since Google has a major stake in how the government approaches ‘net neutrality’ and regulates broadband in general. Here is Google’s guide on Net Neutrality: http://www.google.com/help/netneutrality.html

Over the past two years Google has greatly increased its lobbying presence in D.C. With the new administration, it will be interesting to see how complex issues like ‘net neutrality’ (especially in Google’s case) are handled.

No matter what, the focus on technology in general and the possibility of appointing someone to devote more focus on how technology can help make things more efficient amongst the various government agencies seems like a good move for any administration.