Where Are All the President's Technologists?
BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, March 4 2009
To the suprise of, um, exactly no one, Julius Genachowski was nominated today by President Obama to head the Federal Communications Commission. And word is that DC CTO Vivek Kundra will also finally get his nod as OMB e-government administrator shortly. But Mother Jones' Jonathan Stein has talked to tech advocates and other interested parties who are getting a bit antsy that the White House still has not named someone to the long-promised post of Chief Technology Officer -- despite the fact that, as Stein writes, "Obama has already given the CTO homework." By presidential memorandum, the CTO has until late May to draft an Open Government Directive.
For the time being, it seems that that first CTO assignment has been handed over to law professor Beth Noveck, who has set up temporary shop in the Office of Science and Technology Policy. But don't look for the OSTP website to provide much reassurance that there are sufficient hands on deck: the "Leadership & Staff" page is drop-dead blank. That said, Noveck seems to have a least some support. Federal News Radio's Jason Miller reported mid last month that GSA Interagency Policy and Management Director Michele Heffner is on a three-month detail at OSTP. The concern, though, is that, as Stein quotes the Sunlight Foundation's Ellen Miller as sharing, an eventual CTO won't feel a whole lot of ownership over a open-government agenda he or she didn't have a hand in creating.