Comments on: No “Technology Czar,” Please

By: Preethi

Preethi — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 02:32:44 +0000

Obama is expected to create a position of chief technology officer. Technology commentator Mario Armstrong tells Renee Montagne that the position is important because some agencies already have chief information officers, and the effort needs to be centralized to make sure everybody is using the latest technology

By: Deepak

Deepak — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 01:45:06 +0000

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.

By: MikeRT

MikeRT — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 21:29:12 +0000

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.

By: Berin Szoka

Berin Szoka — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 21:25:50 +0000

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.

By: Ryan Radia

Ryan Radia — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 20:11:54 +0000

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.

By: Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:55:47 +0000

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/

By: Jerry Brito

Jerry Brito — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:08:17 +0000

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.