The precise job description is not yet clear, but how could it be? Technology’s role in American society is boundaryless and constantly increasing, so delineating the CTO’s role is going to be hard. Is it confined to information and communications technology, or should also include other blossoming flields like energy and life sciences? And is the mission to make policy, to allocate resources via something like a venture capital fund, to take control of large portions of the federal government’s IT spending and personnel, and/or to to be an advocate for enlightened use of technology in both the private and public sectors?
Good arguments can be made for any of these roles, and I hope that the US CTO is given a broad charter. But the office could still be an extremely valuable and important one even if it has a narrow mission. Let’s say that this is the case, and that the position comes with only a small staff and budget. The fear then is that it would descend into irrelevance because it would have no real authority or clout, and would be at best a bully pulpit.
Maybe. But I can think of at least three ways in which the office of the US CTO could do critical work even if it doesn’t control vast resources (these activities, of course, are highly complementary and would feed off each other):
Increasing transparency and accountability. There are many ways to use technology to make the work of the federal government more open and visible to the people. The city of Washington, DC is a leader in this area, having made over 200 data feeds about the municipal government available for download and mashup.
My father’s political hero was Harry Truman. I thought this was just Midwestern pride until I read David McCullough’s biography and learned about the Truman Committee to investigate fraud, corruption, inefficiency, and abuse among military contractors during World War II. The committee, which started as Truman himself driving around the country in his Dodge to bases under construction, is acknowledged by the Senate’s web site as "one of the most productive investigating committees in [our] entire history." This same page also fesses up, though, that congressional leaders assured President Roosevelt that the committee would not be able to cause much trouble because it had a budget of only $15,000. Give ‘em Hell Harry found a way to make that money work hard, to the massive benefit of our country. Imagine what he could have done with a bit of modern technology.
Launching small projects with big impact. ‘Small’ here means inexpensive, at least in comparison to the federal governments overall IT spending, which exceeded $60 billion in 2005. As the Obama campaign well knows, the technologies of Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 can deliver benefits that are hugely disproportionate to their cost.
My favorite example of this within government so far is the deployment by the Directorate of National Intelligence of a powerful suite of 2.0 tools across all sixteen federal intelligence agencies. When the DNI was established many people felt that it wouldn’t be anything more than ‘a thin new layer of bureaucracy,’ which hardly sounds like what our country needs as it faces new enemies. The pessimism was both deep and broad; as Amy Zegart of UCLA said, " "I think it’s pretty telling that both Bob Gates and John Negroponte prefer jobs trying to bail us out of Iraq to the job of trying to fix U.S. intelligence." And while it’s certainly true that Intellipedia and its sister technologies have not done anything close to fixing US Intelligence, it’s also true that, as a report from the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Knowledge Lab observed, "Intellipedia has the potential to change the nature of intelligence analysts’ work." The budget for all of the DNI’s 2.0 technologies has been described to me as ’rounding error’ when compared to the IT budget of any single intelligence agency. I am fully confident that there are many, many more opportunities within government to get huge bang for a judiciously spent IT buck.
Surfacing and sharing best practices. The examples of Intellipedia and the DC government show that there are plenty of good ideas and successful projects out there. A national CTO would add great value by simply highlighting them, showing how and why they work so well, distilling lessons learned and mistakes to be avoided, sharing this knowledge as widely as possible, and generally acting as a technology Johnny Appleseed for the country.
The more I learn about technology and how it’s put into use, the more struck I am by the wide spread in both approaches and results. Highlighting this fact and helping to spread the word about how to get the most from technology are noble pursuits. At Harvard Business School we teach primarily via the case study, and I’ve written, read, and taught enough of them to appreciate just how powerful they can be. The best technology case studies show people both what’s possible and how to get there, and they take away a naysayer’s ability to say "That’s all fine in theory, but it’ll never work in practice." Case studies show what actually has worked in practice, and provide concrete examples that people can read, discuss, and take back to their own jobs. A national library of best (and worst?) practice technology cases, maintained by the office of the CTO and used to educate and evangelize, would be a wonderful resource.
America and the Obama administration face no shortage of challenges and opportunities. Because technology can help with so many of them, a national CTO could also be a great help to the country. Just writing about the office makes me excited about its potential. I think I’ll go over to change.gov and submit an application…
{ 32 comments… read them below or add one }
I definitely agree that the U.S. government badly needs a CTO, but who on earth can we convince to take on such a thankless task?
Dealing with a recalcitrant staff, being subjected to the ignoramuses of Congress, getting filleted by the press whenever one makes a decision that could be remotely claimed as a conflict of interest…sounds like a nightmare, not a dream job.
Still, I hope we can find a brave sucker…er, patriot, to take on the challenge.
Good post, Andrew. I like the comparison to Harry Truman, and it’s worth thinking about how other fine presidents (Grover Cleveland and Theodore Roosevelt, especially) took great strides to bring transparency to government — not by massive reforms like the New Deal or the Great Society, but by improving the mechanics and accountability of governmental bodies.
Beyond that, you’re surely right that *anything* the federal CTO’s office can do to harmonize the government’s IT operations stands to produce huge returns on the investment. Improve the government’s IT-related productivity by even 3% and . . . well, the mind boggles.
Andrew, I admire your passion and ambitions. Although I live at a much lower level of academia, I get excited by the ideas expressed in your posts. To think of influencing IT policy at our organization is exciting, but to do that as a public service would be astounding.
I am getting on this bandwagon with great hesitation. I’m not against it, but I am not quite for it either. For certain, I am glad this discussion is taking place. I find plenty of things with which I agree and could support, but can’t shake this feeling that there are some fundamental issues being swept aside by the momentum of said bandwagon. It does not follow that because we have the “most technically advanced, innovative, and computer intensive economy on the planet” that we should have a national CTO. In fact, we’ve achieved this status without a CTO. More at issue is that we have a government that relies heavily on technology. Therefore our government should have a strategy for technology. Therefore…what? Does it require a CTO, a new “czar?” Perhaps.
Boundaryless? When it comes to government this is they key issue, right? You seem to suggest that because we are an innovative country touching all kinds of technologies then having one person at the head of all it is the right thing to do. Our government is increasingly following the model that the way to address complex matters of strategic importance is to put a person in charge of it. I’m not so sure. I’m hearing/reading some argue for a CIO instead of a CTO. I think that comes from a desire to constrain the scope to IT, which is probably a more manageable scope but still comes with a ton of baggage. Information czar? Now, I’m not trying to set up a big brother argument or anything like that. My concerns are much more practical. Never has it been said nor will it be said that government bureaucracy is the solution for more/better technology advancement and innovation. I feel where you are coming from on this, but I’m not quite ready to follow where you are going. I’ve have also cited DC OCTO as a great example. (And don’t forget NOAA was been doing the same thing quietly for a long time now.) I, too, call for more government transparency in the form of open data. I like what I am seeing on ObamaCTO.org. And so now we are all asking the question, “whose responsibility is it to get this done and how?” In my mind the answer is always “the people.” Government’s minimal responsibility is to not impede us. Beyond that the Obama administration can facilitate policy and action within the mechanisms government already has at its disposal. Just make a point of letting and funding contracts to get the work done and it will get done.
The national CTO is a great idea and you highlight the great point of how does he become effective and not just a figurehead. Although at this point I believe figurehead is better than nothing. As far as mission, I believe the two greatest areas are attracting tech talent and Clean Technology. We still have a huge deficit of good engineering talent in the country and have made it more difficult in recent years for capable people to immigrate here. Also CleanTech needs a CTO because it is such core technology, the government needs someone who can explain to them what can and can’t work. And, by using social media, the CTO could in effect have a staff of thousands to help make decisions and raise pertinent issues.
AP
I agree with you 100% here. I’m really surprised that Clinton never appointed a CTO. He seemed to really be with the times, and having been around for so much economic growth related to technology, you would think he would have done this. But like you said, better late than never.
What do you think about Eric Schmidt as CTO? It would be hard to pry away the talent from Google, Microsoft or Apple, but could be really beneficial to the country if they could.
:coolsmile:
Andy– Another great post. Appreciate the props for Intellipedia. Indeed the cost of installing and maintaining something like MediaWiki (the software which runs Intellipedia) for an enterprise is low. Adoption is the greatest challenge. I think a CTO appointed by the White House could have two valuable contributions. One is returning government information to the people through technology. We are emerging from a period of secrecy never before seen in the Executive Branch. This out-going administration has classified more data than any other administration prior; including Nixon. There is an information and quality of service refund due to the American public. Second, rationalizing and disciplining the requirements and spending cycles of the government. The USFG buys and re-buys so much technology to serve the same requirements it is sad. At the very least, there should be an easy way to see what technologies, licenses, cost, and vendors have been secured with public funds. The contract award and publication process is not a sufficient mechanism to get the transparency we need.
While we’re at it, I’d love to see the Obama Admin focus on building national support and infrastructure for innovation. The UK has put innovation front and center by funding initiatives across the public, private and NGO sectors.
Fascinating analysis – thanks!
I think the first area (transparency) also requires some role around modernizing intellectual property and patent legislation in a way that encourage American innovation and invention. We need to better balance traditional business/distribution models with opportunities to innovate and provide consumers with fair use. The examination of IP law goes hand in hand with the opportunity to better exploit IT innovation in America.
Secondly, I think the Open Source community could find its single biggest customer and backer. The idea of using peer reviewed software in completely transparent developer forums for things like e-voting would eliminate some of the sketchy activity that’s plagued past interventions. This could be a tremendous opportunity to look at health care modernization, e-voting, more efficient taxation as systems opportunities that the American people take on in a NASA-like mission to the moon.
Great discussion. Where do I endorse your application?
America has produced so many technology greats like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and others. However, their talent was never (or very seldom) harnessed by the US government. This is true for most of the countries as well.
India did this once when in the 1990s, Rajiv Gandhi, our then Prime Minister, took the help of Sam Pitroda to usher in the telecom revolution in India. And the benefit is there to see…
Andy, you are absolutely right to say that US requires a CTO.
Professor McAfee. You will have my vote if decide to apply for the job!
In fact I brought up your name in one of the earlier NYTimes blog post on this topic:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/john-doerrs-advice-for-barack-obama-hire-bill-joy/#comment-83567
Shameless plug: Below is a Facebook group that was formed to collect ideas for the future CTO:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=48985258136&ref=ts
Whenever I visit change.gov I with we would have politicians who recognise the importance of technology in Germany as well. And now you folks are even going to get a Chief Technology Officer!
It’s a great idea. The more tech people in the government the better, as they are underrepresented considering the recent impact technology had on society.
There are some serious questions about the actual power and clout of this CTO. Telling people you are the US CTO sounds cool on the cocktail circuit but there’s a big difference between figurehead coordinator and line authority collaborator.
Here’s my Jeff Foxworthy-like list of “you know you are a czar when:
you know you’re a czar when an agency head can ignore anything you say
you know you’re a czar you can’t task anything
you know you’re a czar when you can’t fire anyone
In my opinion the most important assets US has are technology know-how and innovation and today technology is playing more important role in the economy than ever before. Considering this a CTO on a government level does make sense.
Great piece. Like you, my interest is primarily in social media technologies, and I have to continually remind myself that this officer will be responsible for policies that touch technologies far beyond the Internet. That said, you’re right that Web 2.0 technologies are far too valuable to ignore right now.
I just presented our social media strategy to the good people at USA.gov and GobiernoUSA.gov last week and the response was fantastic. There’s a palpable buzz in DC that social media adoption is imminent, and people seem more excited than scared by it.
Re: sharing best practices, webcontent.gov seeks to highlight Internet best practices for government web managers. It would be a great place to store case studies as well. That said, I would like someone in Washington to have the authority to look at best practices and rate government agencies’ web sites and services.
We’ve gone through the “let’s get a website because we should have one” phase. Now it’s time to reassess, and figure out exactly what information each agency possesses and how can we leverage the Internet to make it more useful. Someone needs to be able to say “you’re doing it wrong, do it like this.” No one has that authority right now.
I agree with you but IÂ’m not really surprised that Clinton never appointed a CTO !
My suggestion is a CTO is nice, but who’s going to liaise with the people? The CTO will be a decision-maker and implementer, not a social media person. Thus, the White House also needs a Chief Marketing Officer. Or a Chief Community Manager, even.
I completely agree with the point that it is absolute necessary to appoint a chief technology officer for this country.
Your thoughts and reasoning on why USA needs a CTO are apt. I will go another step forward and say these are the reasons (plus couple of more) why even a country like India needs a CTO. One step further, there is need for such a CTO for every country. How about a council of CTO’s across the countries like the UN?? Now we are thinking global and local. The government which is for “the people” can instill and implement better programs and improve quality of implementation by the sheet implementation of the CTO concept. Enhanced “people / citizen specific” IT usage will lead to convergence of solutions of various agencies and multifold upliftment of the people.
IT's a Good an interesting discussion . I totally agree too with the point that it is absolute necessary to appoint a CTO in US
Still, it’s baffling as to why the President is taking his sweet time to appoint a CTO, when there are simple issues that a CTO could be working on. Online Payday Loans Canada
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I do also agree with your thoughts .
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In my mind the answer is always “the people.” Government's minimal responsibility is to not impede us. Beyond that the Obama administration can facilitate policy and action within the mechanisms government already has at its disposal. Just make a point of letting and funding contracts to get the work done and it will get done.
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If you want to have a great future you have to start thinking about it in the present, because when the future’s here you won’t have the time.
Well an internet Czar would be helpful for sure.
I think this is a great idea, but we don't need some big pompous big name. We need someone who actually understands technology and how to use it to better our country