Comments on: Where in the World Is America's CTO?

By: White House CTO? Bigger fish to fry first… « Become A Fan Of

White House CTO? Bigger fish to fry first… « Become A Fan Of — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 14:30:52 +0000

[...] It looks like Kara has jumped on this [...]

By: 02.12.2009 Obama CTO reader: Will we ever see appointments? « DorobekInsider.com

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 13:24:06 +0000

[...] WSJ’s All Things Digital blogger Kara Swisher asks precisely that question. With the naming of Oracle (ORCL) President Charles Phillips to President Barack Obama’s [...]

By: ian kennedy

ian kennedy — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 08:10:17 +0000

I nominate Tim O’Reilly!

By: sean garrett

sean garrett — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 04:59:08 +0000

Based on how some in and around the administration have described the function, I wouldn’t be surprised if the CTO comes from an academic background.

By: Andrew Rasiej

Andrew Rasiej — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 04:50:28 +0000

Unfortunately, as much as we are all hopeful for a CTO with vision and influence, the reality of it is that without a budget and line authority, the role will have very little influence to effect change in the federal system. Unless President Obama is willing to walk with is arm around the CTO and tell all his agency heads to “do whatever my CTO says”, we shouldn’t get too excited.

Obama himself may get “it” about how technology is not just a slice of the pie, but is actually the pan that has the potential to change outcomes at every level in redesigning our government and our economy on competitive 21st century platforms, but he is so distracted worrying about the mess we handed him , that he has had no choice but to delegate designation of the CTO position to old school political operatives who are still living in the 20th century.

The fact that one hasn’t been chosen by now speaks volumes in itself.

By: deb schultz

deb schultz — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:47:35 +0000

The new CTO needs to be a pragmatist – someone who can get stuff done and not get embroiled in turf and standards wars. Someone with a philosophical belief that open is good; someone with *current* geek cred and an understanding of how to translate this to the market in terms of value. In other words – part geek, part diplomat, part businessman, part translator, part evangelist. They can hire staff of experts they need to have a vision to bring it all together.

By: Kari Aakre

Kari Aakre — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:38:28 +0000

There are many of us anxiously awaiting the appointment of America’s “head geek.” I work for Intel and about a month ago, Intel’s CTO blogged about a letter he wrote to the incoming Obama CTO on what Intel and other tech folks think the priority of the new CTO should be. The areas focused on how tech can help improve education, the environment, broadband and healthcare. Check it out here: http://blogs.intel.com/researc.....try_le.php.

Though Obama clearly has more pressing matters on his hands these days, I hope the CTO appointment doesn’t get lost in the shuffle for too long!

By: Mac Beach

Mac Beach — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 20:00:48 +0000

Richard Stallman.

Just kidding.

But seriously, it would be nice to have someone with real technical cajones, as opposed to someone who used a soldering iron 20 years ago.

Woz is comfortable in his retirement, let him rest.

And some of these various “father of the Internet” types seem a bit like deadbeat dads to me. Off playing golf while the kids are left to fend for themselves.

First order of business is to clean house within the government, look at the hodgepodge of stovepipe systems that not only don’t work together but in some cases don’t work at all.

How many important (new) government systems are being maintained in languages that have been around for a long time and will contue to be widely used? I’d guess close to zero. How many of these systems have been independently audited? How many of these systems include code for which the source has never been submitted, or has long ago been lost? In some cases the cleanest and best maintained code the government has is still written in Cobol and running on mainframes. The rest being managed by the same people who weren’t allowed in the computer room 20 years ago.

Maybe more important as a PR issue, why do we continue to read almost weekely of break-ins to government systems, or laptops lost with sensitive data?

Most importaantly the government needs to focus on DATA standards and not look for every oportunity to be further locked into Microsoft products. This lock-in nature of the company’s products have made them more of a liability than an asset. Here is one case where some of the European countries (among others) are ahead of us.

Why would any industry sector want to get mandates from an organization so clearly unable to get its own act together?