Comments on: Nominations, please

By: Bob Wyman

Bob Wyman — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 16:50:07 +0000

Our country’s first CTO was Vannevar Bush, who served during World War II under Roosevelt as director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development. (The Manhattan project was only one of many projects that OSRD was responsible for.) Bush is also the guy who, in July 1945, wrote the Atlantic Monthly article “As We May Think” which was the seed from which hypertext and the Web grew.

It would be difficult to find a CTO today who could follow Bush’s example.

bob wyma

By: Dave M

Dave M — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 17:39:32 +0000

Leonard Nimoy.

By: Doug Chase

Doug Chase — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 16:07:02 +0000

Paul above has it right, but I’d be giddy to see Ed Felten, Susan Crawford, or Larry Lessig nominated.

By: Garbanzo

Garbanzo — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 23:11:04 +0000

Huh? Clearly, the readership of this blog is very short on folks with real technical management or executive experience. Having known several CIOs of large governmental organizations, the big task of a government CIO is to get things done in a highly bureaucractic and slow-moving world with an unlimited pool of key stakeholders but no real power. Vision is fine, but the IT world is long on idea and short on execution. On the federal level, a competent CIO who could improve the government’s basic “blocking and tackling” would be far more impactful than some dot.commer (a CIO under the 25! Geez, what a naif!).

This isn’t a beauty contest — this position would be quite grueling. Making the federal CIO function like the director of national intelligence really isn’t a viable option (i.e., ripping all the department-level CIOs and having them report into the federal CIO), so there’s going to be dozens of dotted line reports in the Office of the Federal CIO. What a governance nightmare! As for candidates, probably someone who’s run a large technology company or better yet, someone who was a former CIO who has since ascended to the CEO level of a public company.

By: Teresa Valdez Klein

Teresa Valdez Klein — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 19:17:25 +0000

Sounds more like a Web transparency ombudsman than a CTO proper, but I agree that Lawrence Lessig would be awesome.

So would Scoble.

By: Mark Murphy

Mark Murphy — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 16:45:42 +0000

Agree w/ Michael. We need somebody outside of industry titans who still has vision. I like the Doc Searls and Lawrence Lessig suggestions. Joi Ito might be interesting, though he may still be a Japanese citizen. James Boyle is another possibility.

By: Unclejayexplains.com

Unclejayexplains.com — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 05:54:32 +0000

Jeff Goldblum. He saved the entire world with a Mac Powerbook G3.

By: LC

LC — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 04:02:33 +0000

The CTO needs to understand the importance of nationally available, affordable, fast broadband and net neutrality.

So that means people like Andreesen, Vinton Cerf, Berners-Lee: people involved in the design/development of Arpanet, TCP/IP, http, browsers - all the backbone stuff that makes the internet work because it’s not owned by a profit-making company.

By: Dave_Violence

Dave_Violence — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 19:32:00 +0000

Preferably someone with a Ph.D. in a branch of engineering. With experience as a college professor as well as experience as CEO of a large commercial venture. And with experience working for the Federal government.

…and a viral 80+ years old.

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 00:55:31 +0000

I would say Lawrence Lessig, although I’m sure there are other equally qualified candidates. Hiring an actual industry leader (Balmer, Bezos, Gates, etc.) to regulate the industry he used to work in and will likely work in again seems completely at odds with Obama’s stated intention of ‘fixing’ Washington. We need someone like Lessig, who has an in depth understanding of how law and technology interact. We don’t need an actual technological innovator in the cabinet, so much as we need somebody who understands how the government affects technological innovation.

By: KSee

KSee — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 23:43:48 +0000

Anyone under the age of 25.

By: carson

carson — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 21:30:17 +0000

Andreessen, without question.

http://blog.pmarca.com/2008/03/an-hour-and-a-h.html

By: Dave O'Flynn

Dave O'Flynn — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 21:24:50 +0000

Lessig.

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:53:27 +0000

Sadly anyone who would actually do a good job is probably not foolish enough to take the job. Which is generally true of any high ranking federal job.

By: Alex Howard

Alex Howard — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:53:12 +0000

I like Dan’s list of choices.

Is Bill Gates busy these days? He might be as polarizing to the tech community as Hillary is in politics. The EU might have an opinion on such stewardship, of course. Every candidate will have of course baggage and bias… some have more than others.

By: Eric Jaffa

Eric Jaffa — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:41:16 +0000

“Obamaâ€™s CTO…would ensure government officials hold open meetings, broadcast live webcasts of those meetings, and use blogging software, wikis and open comments to communicate policies with Americans, according to the plan.”

I nominate Adam Bonin. He’s a lawyer for the Daily Kos blog and an advocate of making more information related to politics available online.

By: Richard Carter

Richard Carter — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 19:48:01 +0000

Doc Searls. I trust him.

By: Dan Croak

Dan Croak — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 19:41:55 +0000

Jeff Bezos, Ray Ozzie, Joe Trippi, and Pierre Omidyar might make the short list. They’ve all shown visionary technical judgment and worked at the top of large organizations.

By: lil j

lil j — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 19:21:34 +0000

me.

By: Harrison

Harrison — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 19:12:27 +0000

Jeff Bezos. True, he’s not strictly a tech guy, but he knows how to manage a huge organization effieciently.

By: Steve K.

Steve K. — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 19:02:11 +0000

Steve Ballmer.

Because his name is Steve …

Ballmer.