Friday, February 27, 2009

How I See It

Priorities for a national CTO: The first 100 days

Video Gallery

In their own words: Chris Dyl, CTO, Turbine Inc.

In their own words: Sanjay Vakil, founder, LuckyCal Inc.

Flash Slideshow: Mass High Tech All-Stars Thought Leadership Roundtable

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As has been covered extensively over the past several months, President Barack Obama has announced plans to appoint a first-ever national chief technology officer. As a CTO, I was asked recently what my suggestions and recommendations would be to President Obama and the person appointed to this position. While I’m sure there will be no shortage of opinions on where the new CTO should focus his or her attention, I think a more important question may be: How do we judge the success of such a person? 

An important metric of a new administration is always a review of what gets accomplished in the first 100 days in office. Our new president is off to a running start with a raft of strong appointments, executive orders to clear out the ethical mistakes of the past eight years, support for energy independence and environmental protection, and efforts to prevent our current economic condition from worsening. Given that, what sort of activities should we demand from the first 100 days of a national CTO?

Many of the ways I expect to judge a national CTO at first are simply based on his or her background. First and foremost, it’s absolutely necessary that the national CTO candidate have a strong technology background. This sounds like an obvious standard, but, as anyone who has held the position knows, the role of a CTO frequently trends more toward marketing than technology. While this is important in business, for the federal government the CTO must be much more than just a persuasive technology evangelist — he or she must have a deep understanding of the technologies being considered and be willing to recommend tools that are best for the problems being solved, not just the ones that poll the best. 

In high tech we have seen what disasters non-technical leaders can bring to a company, such as the destruction of Hewlett-Packard Co. by Carly Fiorina or the near-death of Apple Inc. at the hands of John Sculley. This is already the common case for government — for example, ex-Sen. Ted Stevens’ immortal “the Internet is not a big truck, it’s a series of tubes” speech while chairing the Senate committee responsible for drafting legislation regarding the Internet. We can do better. We must do better.

Names like Eric Schmidt have been bandied about lately; this is certainly on the right track. Look at the examples set by past presidents of institutions such as MIT and Harvard University: sharp technical minds like Jerome Wiesner and Paul Gray. We need a candidate of this caliber. Former Harvard president Lawrence Summers is already part of the president’s senior administration. We need to continue this line of thinking and appoint someone with this sort of background to lead our technical priorities.

Once in office, the national CTO will have to cope with the same challenges facing the entire federal government — issues like a botched digital TV switchover and an enormous stimulus and spending package. Businesses like Qualcomm Inc. are depending on the digital TV switchover to launch new services in the 700 MHz spectrum, and these will be delayed without rapid action.

In the first 100 days, the national CTO must prove to be a strong technical leader capable of pushing sound decisions through the bureaucracy of Washington. He or she must ensure the digital TV switchover is ironed out, push for proper IT infrastructure as part of the economic package — as opposed to wasteful “stimulus spending” with obsolete contractors — and vehemently defend the principles of net neutrality, open standards and minimal regulation in order to prevent initially good technology choices from being co-opted by special interests. The national CTO must have the background and intelligence to advocate appropriate technology and policy choices, informed by top technical experts, while having the charisma and skills to evangelize these choices within the twisty passages of our government.

 

Jered Floyd is chief technology officer of Permabit Inc., based in Cambridge.