Those of us who follow such things are delighted to hear that the Prez-elect is thinking about appointing the first Chief Technology Officer for the United States of America. Among the earliest to report this, I believe, was Tom Lowry on Oct 19 in Business Week, listing a bunch of possible appointees ("Vint Cerf, Google's ... "chief internet evangelist," who is often cited as one of the fathers of the Internet; Microsoft ... chief executive officer Steve Ballmer; Amazon ... CEO Jeffrey Bezos; and Ed Felten, a prominent professor of computer science and public affairs at Princeton University"). Then Claire Cain Miller wrote again about it the day after the election in the NY Times. Yesterday comes the news via Roger Smith's Information Week piece that Google's CEO Eric Schmidt has taken himself out of the running, happy where he is. Smith's piece, btw, has a nice summary of the Obama tech platform (more on the campaign site here).
So that's the gossip for the moment but bigger here is what President BarackObama.com is thinking about re: technology, reported today by that font of good journalism, Hiawatha Bray in our hometown rag, The Boston Globe, "Obama brings cyber sensibility to office:"
Barack Obama's Internet-fueled campaign has transformed the way Americans choose a president. Now, the president-elect's administration plans to change the way Americans use technology.
If Obama gets his way, all Americans will have broadband Internet access, whether they live in big cities or remote villages. Online life will be safer, with better defenses against cybercriminals. And there will be greater access to government, with online services to let anyone question members of the president's Cabinet or track every dime of the federal budget.
So why is this important? Because the existing agencies, Commerce, FCC, FTA, DoD, OTA (RIP) and others that touch on and shape technology, are not leaders in the way that we need now. Indeed much "leading" has been following if not retrograding at best. We have a chance here to do something truly extraordinary, as per the work of such intrepid pioneers as Congressman Ed Markey, who was concerned about the "digital divide," whereby the tech haves and have-nots part ways never the twain to meet, long before most others, and certainly nearly all law-makers, were thinking about it.
OK, so we have a CTO on the docket. (Let's skip the argument about whether this should be Chief Information Officer for now.) Next up, Mr. President "who-can-think-around-the-next-bend-in-the-road," as some say, what about a Chief Knowledge Officer for the US of A? And, while we're at it, maybe throw in a Chief Learning Officer, both positions that are spurring the forward-thinking of many organizations, including the US military.
