What IT Wants From The Next White House

JOHN CHAMBERS Bio: Chairman & CEO of Cisco Systems Inc., San Jose, Calif. Endorsing: John McCain The Skinny: As a senior technology advisor to Republican candidate John McCain, Chambers has a dog in this fight. But the Cisco CEO favors Networking over partisanship in government's efforts to leverage IT's 'enabling capacity' to achive national goals like 'expanding health care to all people on our country.'

WHAT HE WANTS FROM THE NEXT PRESIDENTIAL ADMINISTRATION:

Technology should be separated from politics, and I think our industry, better than most any of the key traditional business industries, has done a good job of that. We get along very well with the Democrats and the Republicans, and while I personally support Sen. McCain and think he would make an excellent president, we'll get along with a potential President Clinton and a potential President Obama.

So for the next president, a key thing will be the ability really to say, 'How does high-tech enable a nation's strategy, be that health care, education, job creation, etc.?' What we would hope to see in the next president, be they Republican or Democrat, is somebody that really understands how to use technology to address growth opportunities, job creation, more economic stability, productivity which translates into better standards of living, and giving this opportunity to more and more people. And an ability to tackle the tough issues, such as health care, etc. ... expanding health care to all people in our country, I think should be a major national goal.

And an enabler of that should be high tech, because if you can take 20 or 30 percent of the costs out of health care and use the savings to provide services to those that aren't getting covered, you could not only provide a higher quality of health care, you could do it in a way that gives access to it to all Americans.

Next: Paul Otellini