Silicon Valley's First Puppy: The National CTO

President-Elect Obama's first few days after his historic victory saw him and his team dive into appointing a chief of staff; vetting potential cabinet officers; holding a press conference; discussing the recession; and, facing various challenges by foreign regimes.

It also saw a new national obsession about what type of puppy the Obama's might bring to the White House. From Entertainment Tonight to Politico, you couldn't escape discussion about Malia's dog allergies.

Okay. Fine. A little levity and humanizing is a good thing after a grueling 20-month campaign.

But. I just can't handle the geek world's equivalent of the First Puppy story: The who-is-going-to-be-Obama's-national-CTO?! -(OMG!!!) story.

You would think that Obama was proposing that he was going to name the Ultimate King Tech Policy Ruler of the World. Internetnews gasps:

One highly touted area of President-elect Barack Obama's platform has been his pledge to appoint a chief technology officer for the nation -- a move that may have dramatic implications for driving sweeping changes in tech policy and the country's economy.

And, as of this moment, there are more than 200 stories about this position on Google News.

Much of the hype around the proposed job was the simplistic speculation that Google CEO Eric Schmidt might take the job. After all, he very visibly threw his support toward Obama in the final weeks of the campaign and is on the transition's economic advisory board. He must have been angling for this lofty job seemed to be the conventional wisdom. Yet, the other day, Schmidt said he shouldn't be considered for the gig because of his happiness at Google.

That could very well be true. But, let me give you another reason he's not going to do it. Here is what we know about the proposed job from Obama's transition Web site:*

Obama will appoint the nation's first Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to ensure that our government and all its agencies have the right infrastructure, policies and services for the 21st century. The CTO will ensure the safety of our networks and will lead an interagency effort, working with chief technology and chief information officers of each of the federal agencies, to ensure that they use best-in-class technologies and share best practices.

No doubt that this is an important job. But, just by looking at this description, it is also a relatively boring (compared to being CEO) and potentially bureaucratic position without cabinet-level authority. [UPDATE: I have gone back and looked at articles about the CTO since Obama first announced his tech policy plan last year and many, many of the pieces refer to it as "cabinet-level" (like a the National Security Advisor). However, I can't find any official verification of this --which would change the dynamics of the job to say the least. Am I missing something? ]

Just when I thought I was going crazy about the coverage of the CTO, Dan Farber (very politely) brought some proper measuredness into the discussion:

Based on the job description, it could be difficult to find a worthy candidate from the private sector willing to take on a task of such enormous scope in an environment known to chew up and spit out White House policy czars...The Obama administration's CTO job could be one of those bureaucratic positions that ends up consumed by turf wars rather than making real progress against initiatives.

Is all this excitement over someone who is going to work with the Department of Agriculture to make sure that their server procurement policies are best of breed? If so, go geeks. I have no right to dampen that enthusiasm.

But, if it's because there is a misunderstanding of what a National CTO might do and, more importantly, what they will not do, than we we all need to simmer down a bit.

Of course, this doesn't preclude that the job position for the CTO will change. All we are working on is the mentioned job description.

This is why John Doerr suggested Bill Joy as his pick for CTO. He did this both as a way to savvily surf the wave of attention to the position and to make the case for a tweaking of the job to have an express focus on clean technology. Worst case scenario is that he plainly stated his interests for this new administration while attention is rapt.

Still, there is so much else to focus on in President-elect Obama's well-considered technology agenda. And, just as importantly, appointment speculation energy from the tech world might be better spent on ensuring that an innovation-savvy, say, Commerce Secretary was appointed. How about future FCC commissioners? All will be incredibly critical to the issues that we chatter about here. And, btw, so will be the Energy Secretary, head of Health and Human Services, and, yes, even the Secretary of Agriculture (and so on). If the cabinet secretaries are tech savvy and see innovation as a leading way to help solve the issues that their departments are charged with, then both the tech world and average Americans will benefit. And, the new national CTO will have a heckuva easier time in creating cross-agency best practices.

So, who should be the national CTO? I have no idea. But, considering that the role sounds like the Mother of all Integration jobs, why not hire a successful CTO of a massive conglomerate with the experience of bridging dozens of autonomous divisions? Or, how about the well-regarded former CTO and current CIO of FedEx? (speaking of which, should this be a CIO job or a CTO gig? -- but I digress....)

*Note: When this was written, the technology agenda on the Obama transition site was "not available right now." However, I could find it via Google cache.

(Flickr photo by Dunechaser)

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