What The Channel Wants To See In The National CTO

Whoever President Barack Obama decides to select as the country's first national chief technology officer, rest assured that person will have his or her hands full right from the get-go. Since the president first announced his decision to create the position, some of the biggest names in IT have been mentioned, including Microsoft's Bill Gates, Google's Eric Schmidt and Symantec's John Thompson. In recent weeks, speculation has centered on two alleged finalists: Padmasree Warrior, CTO of Cisco Systems, and Vivek Kundra, CTO of Washington, D.C.



Regardless of who gets the job, perhaps the more important question is what, exactly, that job will entail. The description on the Obama transition team Web site Change.gov said the first CTO must "ensure the safety of our networks and 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."



Seeing as no one in the Obama administration has publicly discussed exactly what that means, Channelweb.com editors took a quick spin around the channel, asking VARs, vendors, distributors and other IT experts what they'd most like to see from the CTO.

"We've got multiple segments of government all with their own CTOs. Why do we need a CTO of CTOs? It's not like the government has been buying technology without rhyme or reason. I'm not sure a CTO tech czar will add anything without having budget responsibility."

"A good CTO has a good mix of both understanding technology and also understanding the market. A good CTO choice would understand how we can highlight advancements in technology and bring these advancements to the world. If you look at technologies such as search and social computing -- a good CTO for the U.S. will look at ways in which we can better exploit the use of such technologies on a worldwide basis to better participate in global relationships and help to drive adoption of U.S.-based technologies in more global organizations."

"The U.S. penetration of high-speed, affordable Internet access to the home is woefully inadequate when compared to some other areas of the world. Japan and Korea are good examples of affordable, extremely high-speed Internet access provided in a ubiquitous fashion. Long term, this becomes a competitive disadvantage for the U.S. in the global marketplace. I would hope a U.S. CTO would be prepared to address this issue."

"What would it take to have high-speed broadband Internet in every school in the country? How would this change the quality of education, the nature of education and how can we use this to get kids excited about technology and being a part of this country's future technology? This is an opportunity to speak to the younger generation in a way that is very different. I think the opportunity there is huge."

"As CTOs in private technology companies focus on R&D, so should the national CTO's priority be to recommit to R&D and develop and invest in rebuilding the degrading science, technology and math/engineering foundation of the United States. As an example, allowing more high-tech H-1B visas to be awarded to deserving scientists will help the U.S. compete with countries that are churning out and retaining world-class engineers."

"The national CTO should be an advocate and a voice for the nation's technology industry. This person will have a pulpit and they should use it to the degree necessary to create the ideal environment for the industry to flourish; whether it's the right kinds of R&D, tax credits, keeping trade and tariff barriers low or affirming the free flow of skilled labor. We moved from an agrarian society to the industrial revolution and from there to an information society. The CTO should help the industry position for the next wave."

Rattner wrote an open letter to the incoming CTO, urging him or her to make education/research a major priority, extend R&D tax credits that expired on Dec. 31, 2007, create tax incentives for business operations to become carbon neutral and "stimulate environmental breakthroughs" and "make fast, affordable and high-quality broadband deployment a reality for all Americans."







On health care, Rattner urged the CTO to "implement a new national health-care network system that fully connects doctors, hospitals, labs and patients by 2012. Intel also supports funding to train 10,000 health IT specialists. New health IT equipment and training can help reduce costly medical errors and drive down health costs. Intel also supports the funding of the National Institute of Health (NIH) as it conducts extensive research on technology solutions that enable independent living for seniors. And, we encourage the president to take steps by executive order to embrace, through pilot programs, electronic health records for military and federal service workers. Digitizing health records on a nationwide basis can potentially provide multibillion dollar cost reductions in our health-care industry."

"We must improve the state of private and public R&D labs in the U.S. Owing to the competitive nature within business, companies today are cutting back on the amount of money they allocate to truly forward-looking R&D and instead focus on creating the next, latest update to an existing product. Universities and government labs, which used to be the bastion for groundbreaking basic research, are increasingly being pushed toward applied research. While the commercial value of basic research often doesn't emerge for 15 to 20 years, it still remains paramount to maintaining U.S. competitiveness long-term.

"Moreover, overall government funding for R&D has declined markedly -- all at a time when other countries are investing heavily in R&D. What's clearly needed is a new, collaborative way for companies, the government and academia to partner, invest in and develop new approaches to advancing applied, basic and cross-disciplinary basic research."

"I'm hoping that for one, they get someone in there that does get it -- that is an evangelist and a visionary. Maybe it's a CTO from a major company that really came out with a vision that's not just hardware. How are we going to leverage the cloud and drive change? And that means push for change in education, hospitals, government ... I mean, how long have we been talking about electronic health records? Or collaboration around schools? And what the hell have we done? Nothing. Green goes back to the '80s. If all they have is a figurehead, we throw a lot of money at a problem and nothing's going to happen. If you don't come to the meeting with a plan that shows me how you're going to drive change ... we're right back to where we are."

"I think having someone in the White House that has a tremendous technology background and understands education, training and incentives -- I think that's appropriate for our country but also bodes well for our industry. Some departments and budgets [in the Cabinet], their role is best suited to be a complement to other positions. Think of secretary of education or the Department of Homeland Security -- there are a number of areas where just having an internal resource available would provide value not just in technology but in specific decisions and policies."

"What I'd like to see there is someone that has strong ties to the business community but not evangelizing technology for technology's sake. I want to see investing in tech for the long-term, meaning skills development so that we have a very tech-capable workforce going forward -- driving the public and private investment as well as the workforce development. I think things like unified communications, virtualization and security are some of the big drivers of change today. There can be some commonality throughout government as to how those are going to help people achieve basic business objectives. The business of IT within government is run by agency CIOs so I think a tech czar would be a consensus driver. It's going to have to be sort of a soft power."