No “Technology Czar,” Please

by Ryan Radia on November 5, 2008 · Comments

Over at OpenMarket.org, Wayne Crews has a good post arguing against Obama’s plan to appoint a “Technology Czar“:

Industries–and mere concepts like “technology”–do not need czars in Washington. Such enterprise needs to operate apart from this city. Indeed, even supposedly “deregulatory” Republicans were not reluctant to regulate the Internet. Bush favored federal privacy regulation, but never pushed it. His adminstration was also happy to target porn and “spam.” Legislation favored by the Republicans ran the gamut from gambling to cable regulation to media ownership. Right now, many firms in Washington are poised to push for federal privacy legislation to, as they say, pre-empt the states and get rid of the “patchwork” of privacy legislation with which they must deal. But the risk is merely trading 50 regulators for 51.

(Read the rest of the post here)

We already have plenty of regulators in Washington. Instead of appointing yet another messiah-like figure to solve our nation’s technological woes, the best thing for the technology industry would be a massive downsizing of the federal government’s role in regulating telecom companies, dictating privacy policies, and deciding what broadcasters can air.

Comments Posted in: Tech Pork

  • While I don't disagree with you or Wayne about the nature of czars or regulators, I think this is a bit of a straw man. Obama has never said he's going to appoint a tech czar to regulate industry; he's merely said he will appoint a CTO whose job will generally be to make government sites at least half as good as barackobama.com. From every public statement I've heard from Obama on the topic, that's what the position is limited to.

    Wayne understands this, saying, "The role as described seems limited to 'bringing government into the 21st century.'" However, he then asks, "But would the role remain circumscribed?" and launches into an argument against this notional position. I think it's important to stay on our toes about the new administration's intentions, but I think it might be a good idea to save our ammunition for real battles. Trust me, there will be lots to argue against in an Obama administration. I'm not sure we should start opposing a CTO position before it's even officially defined. Who knows, it might even be a good idea.
  • Ryan Radia
    I certainly agree that it might be a good idea to have a CTO whose role is limited to ensuring the federal government uses technology as effectively as possible.
    But as Business Week explained a couple weeks ago, the proposed Tech Czar may play an instrumental role in advancing Obama's stated goals of increasing national broadband penetration and creating more high-tech jobs. And as Larry Lessig notes, the Tech Czar might play a role in "helping advance public policy questions like those surrounding global warning." Ed Felten says "the CTO could offer advice to the president on all areas of technology."

    Perhaps it is presumptive to conclude that the idea of appointing a CTO is a bad one. But with people like Vint Cerf and Lawrence Lessig supposedly on Obama's short list for the CTO position, I'm worried about the prospect of somebody who wants to make the Internet a public utility serving as the President's chief adviser on tech policy issues.
  • MikeRT
    A good first move for the CTO would be to open up the federal government to more development environments besides Java EE. Right now, .NET is starting to become accepted, but much of the federal government is wedded to Java as the be-all, end-all solution, even when it's not appropriate.
  • The tech czar proposal is more realistically a matter of promoting NIST to a cabinet-level department rather than the agency of the Commerce Department that it is today. I don't think that's a bad thing, as technology efforts are currently diffused among several federal departments and often operate at cross-purposes with each other. NIST was a champion of OSI, for example, when DoD was a champion of TCP/IP.

    See: http://www.nist.gov/
  • I, for one, think the Federal government could really use a CTO--if indeed that means simply designating someone who can Federal agencies get their act together online. The FCC's website, for example, is an atrocity. Just because we libertarians don't like government doesn't mean we should want its operations to be inaccessible.

    But that's very different from having a "Czar" in charge of telling the private sector what to do, which seems likely to lead to an increase in regulation.
  • 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.
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