Cisco CTO Said To Be Among Obama Tech Chief Finalists

Since the announcement during his campaign that President Barack Obama would appoint the first-ever national chief technology officer, the rumor mill hasn't spared anyone in IT, including big names like Microsoft's Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Google's Eric Schmidt and Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos.

Now that Obama has been sworn in, the appointee for the chief tech position in government is said to be down to two finalists, with a news report from BusinessWeek suggesting they are Padmasree Warrior, current CTO of Cisco Systems, and Vivek Kundra, CTO of Washington D.C. Various news outlets suggested that the official word could come as early as next week.

Warrior, a former CTO at Motorola, joined Cisco in 2007 and once served on the mayor's technology council in Chicago. Kundra became the District of Columbia's CTO in March 2007. Before that, he was assistant secretary of commerce and technology for the state of Virginia and vice president of marketing for Evincible Software.

Another top prospect, Obama campaign and transition team tech chairman Julius Genachowski, reportedly turned down the CTO job and is rumored to be Obama's choice to chair the Federal Communications Commission. Former FCC Chairman Kevin Martin resigned last week and Obama Thursday appointed FCC Commissioner Michael Copps to be acting FCC chair, according to Reuters.

What most everyone wants to know, regardless of who the appointee is, is what the CTO position itself will entail and whether a national IT chief would wield any actual power among government decision-makers.

According to the description on the Obama transition team Web site Change.gov, 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." The president hasn't commented on what specific authorities the CTO position will include.

In an open letter to "the incoming Obama CTO," on Monday, Justin Rattner, director of Intel's Corporate Technology Group, suggested the appointee organize his or her priorities around education and research, the environment, health care and broadband.

Rattner's specific recommendations included doubling the Department of Education and National Science Foundation research budgets, calling for a multiyear extension on strengthened R&D tax credits, supporting the interoperable national health network and creating new health IT equipment and training, urging better tax incentives for meeting green IT standards, and continuing "government regulations and policies [that] enable, not impede, the broadband revolution."

Obama CTO, a polling Web site launched by software developer Front Seat in November, lists ensuring the Internet is widely accessible and network neutral as the priority most voters want to see from the CTO. Rounding out the most voted-for priorities are ensuring privacy and repealing the Patriot Act, repealing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, completing the country's move to the SI metric system, opening government data to programmers, kick-starting research and innovation in energy, and getting broadband to every community in America.