Obama signaled his intention to name a national CTO in an eight-page Technology and Innovation Plan posted on his Web site,www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/. The CTO would oversee federal government IT infrastructure and policies, promote government transparency, lead development of a national interoperable wireless network for first responders and promote technology-related economic development.
Among the names circulating for the new post are Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Amazon.com CEO Jeffrey Bezos. But as some observers have mentioned hard-charging industry executives may not be the best fit for the job.
As many current and former government CIOs will tell you, the transition from private sector to public sector is often jarring. Private-sector transplants tend to be shocked at the amount of politics and bureaucracy they encounter in government. It's not that they can't succeed; indeed, many of today's most successful government CIOs have a mix of public- and private-sector experience. But placing an entrepreneurial Internet CEO in the middle of the nation's most complex bureaucracy could be a recipe for frustration, if not disaster.
Tod Newcombe, editor of Public CIO, Government Technology's sister publication, accurately pointed out in a recent Web editorial that a national CTO must understand the inner workings of government just as well as he or she understands technology.
Two Potential Nominees?
Both men have talked extensively with Government Technology over the past 18 months. And both could bring valuable skills and experience to the post.
In less than two years, 33-year-old Kundra has established himself as one of government's most forward-thinking CIOs. He's drawn widespread attention for adopting hosted applications and applying low-cost Web 2.0 tools to government tasks.
"Look at what we did with our most recent procurement around project management," Kundra said in an April 2008 interview. "We decided to go with the cloud model instead of buying a ton of servers that would have taken six or seven months to procure, configure and deploy. We were able to do that immediately. When we look at the platform in terms of collaboration, everything is going to be in the cloud. And as we look at the whole data center model, the question really becomes, one, why do we need a data center? And, two, what are such critical applications that they must be hosted within the government eternally?"
Earlier this year, the District of Columbia signed a contract with Google that will provide the company's Internet-based e-mail, spreadsheet and word-processing applications to all 38,000 district employees. As part of a broad city government transparency initiative, Kundra developed and published performance metrics for city agencies and experimented with posting YouTube videos of procurement conferences.
He also created an innovative "stock market" model for evaluating and managing city IT investments, which reportedly is being studied by Obama's transition team as a potential national model.
"That means we evaluate the management team running the project and how happy our customers are," Kundra explained. "We also evaluate the performance -- whether the project is on time, on budget and is delivering value -- and decide whether we are going to hold on to the project, invest more or kill the project. It's similar
to what investment portfolios would do as far as sell, buy or hold. That's brought in a lot of scrutiny and has moved us aggressively in terms of killing projects that won't deliver."
Clearly Kundra would be a voice for innovation. His use of low-cost Web 2.0 applications to increase government transparency could appeal to the tech-savvy Obama. And Kundra's focus on efficiency and results certainly fits the current economic climate.
Kundra also knows his way around government bureaucracy. Prior to joining the district's government, he was assistant secretary of commerce and technology for Virginia. Before that, he was director of infrastructure technology for Arlington, Va., with a few private-industry stops in between.
Father of the Internet
Cerf's government credentials aren't as solid, but as a researcher, he's worked extensively with the U.S. Department of Defense and other federal agencies. And Cerf understands Internet technology perhaps better than anyone else out there. Often called a father of the Internet, he co-developed the Internet's basic architecture in the 1970s.
More recently, Cerf has been a vocal proponent of Net neutrality legislation -- which is designed to ensure equal access to Internet bandwidth and applications -- and Internet protocol version 6 (IPv6), which would dramatically expand the number of available Internet addresses. Obama supported Net neutrality legislation as a U.S. senator and has said he would back such a measure as president.
"I believe that the economic energy behind the [Internet] has been aided by a very open kind of environment where standards are openly available; any platform is free to implement these standards, and then access the Internet," Cerf told Government Technology in a late 2007 interview. "I'm worried that the U.S. government, or other governments around the world, may fail to fully understand how important that openness is to the economic benefit of the network. In the absence of a regime which preserves that openness, the Internet could easy move into a very constrained mode, which makes it look more like cable television. Personally I don't think that's a good thing."
That view extends to the wireless world, where wireless providers currently dictate which applications are available their subscribers.
"If you have a device that's capable of doing Internet, it should be able to use any Internet service. If it's capable of using the Internet at all, you should be able to download new applications and run them," Cerf said. "In the wireless world, that isn't the case. The platforms, even when they're Internet enabled, are not open in the sense that you may not be able to download a new application unless the wireless provider agrees and puts it on the platform for you."
Cerf also is working with NASA on Disruption-Tolerant Networking (DTN) technology, which would be used to provide Internet-like communications for spacecraft and planetary outposts. The so-called Interplanetary Internet -- which passed its first deep-space test in November -- is designed to withstand the delays and disruptions inherent when communicating across interplanetary distances.
Cerf's DTN research dovetails with Obama's desire to use technology to bolster the nation's economic competitiveness. The same research also is improving IP-based communications for first responders and emergency crews by making these technologies more tolerant to delays and disruptions.
Finally Cerf's role at Google -- which he describes as an "intellectual bumblebee" that gathers and cross-pollinates ideas -- positions him as a keen observer of Internet trends and demographics. As national CTO, Cerf could provide Obama with vital insight on reacting to technological changes and exploiting economic opportunity.
Do We Need a CTO?
Of course, handicapping potential CTO appointees is relatively meaningless if the post itself proves ineffective. At least one veteran Washington observer -- David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent for The
New York Times -- questions how much impact a national CTO would have. He said it's unlikely the CTO would gain budget authority over the huge amount of IT spending that's spread across federal agencies, and lack of that authority would render the post relatively powerless to shape how the agencies use technology.
"Any big problem in the U.S. leads to calls to establish a 'czar.' But if they don't have budget authority, it doesn't work," Sanger said at a Center for Digital Government leadership retreat in November. "The bigger the problem, the harder it is to fall to a czar solution. And there's no part of the U.S. government that doesn't include IT infrastructure."
Others wonder how the new CTO will interact with the FCC chairman, who traditionally influences national telecom, media and technology policies.
Still, there are compelling reasons to create a national CTO position. With strong executive backing -- which Obama would presumably provide -- such a post could encourage technical innovation that's vital to economic competitiveness and provide coherent IT infrastructure policy the nation desperately needs. Kundra or Cerf would bring valuable skills and experience to the task.
