The CTO and CIO of the United States

Welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulette. I'm an editor here at how stuff works dot com, and sitting next to me, as usual, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Hey there, and uh, I think we have some official business to get to. We do very official, yes, well at least not quite official at the moment, but it's going to be official very soon. And this is uh for our for our listeners in other countries, UM, please

humor us. We're going to talk about the United States specifically in this podcast because our President Barack Obama has decide to to um to to create a couple of new positions in his cabinet that are going to undoubtedly have an effect on the way we access the internet. Uh. The way internet um is uh well, kind of oversight of the Internet from a government level, lots of different things that are gonna really have an impact on us as consumers. That's right. Um. And this is uh complete

departure from the past. I mean, Um, among the things that the former president, George W. Bush was criticized for was not being very technical. Um. And uh, you know, it's it's sort of well known now that Barack Obama's presidential campaign was extremely technical. He was everywhere on Facebook and on Twitter and all sorts of other social media to recruiting volunteers, trying to get votes. Um. And uh, you know it was a bit of a culture shock

for some of the staffers when they entered the White House. Um, because you know, by nature, the federal government has to be, especially in the White House, he has to be somewhat restrictive as far as technological policies because you know, some of the stuff were to leak, you know, state secrets. That's some pretty serious stuff you don't want just bouncing around on the internet. Yeah. I've seen the documentary twenty four and according to that, it's really dangerous to let

that information get out. Also, there's always a mole. There's always a mole. Really, Yeah, that's a completely different. Oh well, that's true. But anyway, what we're getting at here is way back in November two thousand seven, then Senator Baraque Obama announced that he intended that if he were elected, to appoint a Chief Technology Officer or c t O. And um, that was that was all a big deal.

And of course, now he has been elected, he has not yet as of the recording of this podcast, appointed a c t O, but he has a pointed a Chief Information Officer or c i O. And um. Actually, uh, that kind of relieves me in a way. UM. And I'll tell you why. It's because the parameters for the job of c t O we're so wide that I was convinced no single person could accomplish all of those tasks.

But if he has a c I O and a c t O, then some of those duties can be split across two different people, and suddenly it becomes much more manageable. Um and uh. And some of those duties included here. I've got a list actually from this is

from Congress. Okay, it's a Congressional reports. So the first role would exploits explicitly articulated on President Obama's earlier campaign and transition websites might be described as a supra Chief Information Officer with the mission of using information technology to improve the delivery of government services, increasing trans cureency of government policy making, and opening channels for increased citizen participation in government, as well as ensuring that the nation's information

and communications infrastructure is robust and secure. In this capacity, a c t O would also ensure that best practices are identified, shared and implemented across agencies. That's one role. Role number two it might be described as an advocate for technological innovation in support of national interests such as economic growth, job creation, improvements to quality of life, national defense,

and homeland security. Some have speculated that President Obama might charge a CTO with a wider scope of responsibilities, including development and advocacy of national I c T policies like net neutrality and broadband access technology policies intended to spur innovation and economic growth, intellectual property enforcement, and oversight of a federally backed venture capital fund to support deployment of clean technologies. So that's a tall order, yep yep um.

And another one of the reasons that I read about was basically to promote the use of broadband in underserved areas the United States is and broadband penetration. About twenty three out of every hundred people are served with some sort of broadband, at least according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. So, I mean, there's a lot to do as far as getting technology, especially internet technology, more widespread use in the United States. So let's start.

Let's break this down and talk about both of these in turn. We'll start with the Chief Information Officer. I blogged about this guy earlier, so I should be able to talk about him a little bit. So you've got the information on the Chief Information Officers. Yes, I even have his correct title. He'd he'd be proud of you, Yes, I would hope. So his name is Vivic Gundra. And uh, okay, here's where I get a little ill because Vivic is the same age as yours. Truly, really, I'm the same

age as the United States Chief Information Officer. No, no, no, I'm older than you. I know you're older than I am. So you're older than the United States Chief Information Officer. I'm going to retire after this podcast, I know. Isn't that incredible? Okay, So granted, now when you're talking about things like the Internet, I T infrastructure, that kind of stuff. Uh, you really are looking for people who have their their finger on the pulse of what's going on right now.

So I guess it kind of makes sense that he's going young with this. It's just kind of sobering when you start seeing people who are in charge of a very important positions who are the same age or younger than you are, and then you start questioning what you've done with your life. Anyway, So he's a thirty four years old. Um. He was born in New Delhi. Then as his family migrated to Tanzania, and then at the

age eleven he moved to the United States. And before he was appointed the Chief Information Officer of the United States, he was the uh ct OH, the Chief Technology Officer for the District of Columbia, and so that's he was actually in charge of eighty six different agencies there. Um he was they all reported to him essentially in his role as CTO. And before that, he was the Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Technology for the Commonwealth of Virginia.

So he's held some pretty serious high end tech positions. And this is a man who knows his stuff, And he's already come out and talked about the sort of things that he wants to do as the c i O of the United States, and it's a big list. Um. Part of that is, like we we talked about transparency earlier. That was one of the things that Congress said Barack Obama wanted in his c t O. What looks like the c i O is gonna handle that part of

the equation. Uh, And when we're talking about transparency, we're saying that it will be his responsibility to make sure that public information is easily available to the citizens of the United States, that you don't have to jump through hoops in order to find information that should be publicly available.

To that end, he's trying to establish a website called data dot gov, which will kind of be a clearing house of all this information, hopefully organized in such a way that it's easy to navigate and find exactly what you're looking for. So this is a big deal. I mean, it's going to theoretically give the average citizen a chance to see the decision making process that goes that's involved

in creating policies. And uh, you know that this really does fall in line with what Barack Obama had done previously, his idea of communicating to the people and making things as clear as possible so that the people know what what they're elected officials are doing and why they're doing it, because a lot of times, you know, well, people will elect an official based upon apology, a party affiliation, and

and maybe a few policies. Like you, you happen to know that person's stance on a particular issue, but beyond that, we kind of let them do their thing, and then we get upset when tax time comes around. And then you know that, we get more upset when elections come around and we decided to throw one group out and bring another group in, but we don't tend to build build a lot of understanding of what's going on throughout

that time. This is an attempt to change that, which I mean now, granted, a huge responsibility is going to fall upon the American citizens to make sure that they actually take advantage of these opportunities. But it's a huge step.

I think that's true. And um, it's been notoriously difficult over the past few years to get it a lot of this information, Um, you know, things that should be available via the freedom of Information Act um, you know, simply because it's it's you know, not ready for h for public consumption, right, you know, in the public area. So this is this is a serious, um, serious step. Yeah.

And and now granted, there's no guarantee that we're going to see a decrease in things like citing executive privilege anything like that. I mean, they're still going to be opportunities for politicians to keep information held back based on numerous kinds of criteria, but state secrets and all kinds of other things that are gonna you know, prevent it from being published at least immediately. Being sometime will tell whether or not this this data dot gov site will

really be a great tool. But it's it's I'm being I'm trying to be optimistic about it because it sounds to me like it could really be an incredible development. Well, I'm I'm interested to know who the CTO is going to be, boy, you and everybody else, you know, looking at a at the Business Week website, Um, I saw an article last fall and they had some pretty you know, because Senator Obama at that time had made public that he wanted a ct O if he were elected. Presidents

and so they started floating some names around. I mean people like Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who actually pulled his name out of the running last fall the surf also another Google guy, Yes, the chief Internet Evangelists, one of the fathers of the Internet. Oh yeah, and that too, yeah. Uh Steve Balmer, Microsoft CEO and a fan of all the developers. Developers, Um, Jeff Bezos. That's Amazon dot Com right,

yes it is. And look at that. And uh, you know Ed Felton from Princeton University and Lawrence Lessig from the Stanford University Center for the Internet and Society, also of Creative Commons fame. Uh you know, all those people's names have been mentioned. And uh, just in January they were mentioning two names that were very probable. Um. One of them was Vivek Kundra, who is now the c i Oh wait a minute, that leaves one name. Who would be ah put Mastere Warrior w No, no, I'm sorry. No,

she's the CTO of Cisco formally yeah. Yeah, with with some seriously uh impressive credentials of her own. Now, so if the c i O is really in charge of information infrastructure and transparency and making sure to promote these sort of things. The ct O. What is the CTO gonna do? This is a good question. There's not not been a lot of discussion, official discussion from Obama's administration to really lay out all the different, um, the different

job duties that the CTO would have. We can we can make some assumptions, I mean it, UH, perhaps forming policies on things like UH like technology innovation and UM, even things like net neutrality, that sort of thing that may be able to shape national policy on those matters. But also other things like kind of investigating sort of the the what kind of technology the government can use, UM,

pushing that boundary a little further. And also another important role will be trying to help create more jobs in the technology field within the United States and UM. Just today when we're recording this podcast, I saw a report from c NET. This was very depressing actually, especially if you're in the tech sector and you're looking for a job, because according to c NET, tech job postings fell forty point four percent in March over a year ago figures

and UH. And also most of those cuts came from full time positions. So if you're out of a job and you're looking for something in the tech industry. Um, there are a lot fewer jobs out there being posted

than there were a year ago. This is a huge problem, and I mean it's it's not surprising because the economy has been so in so much trouble recently, but it's And also you've heard, of course about all the thousands and thousands of of layoffs that various companies have had to do, including companies that had never laid off employees before, like Microsoft and Google both historically had never really done any of these mass employee layoffs until late two thousand eight,

early two thousand nine. So that's a tall order for the c t O. UM. I wish whomever holds that position the best of luck. Well, one thing about these positions is, um they're going to have an opportunity to shape what the next c I O and c t O do because, um, you know, as the originators in these positions, they're going to have you know, people are going to look to what they do, you know, in

successive administrations. You know, assuming that the next president keeps those two cabinet level positions in place, UM, you know, they're going to have a lot of influence on the technological future of the country and the way the government and technology industries interact with one another. So you know

that this is not something to be taken light. I also kind of hope that the CTO and the c IO can work together too to kind of really take a real close look at the way certain mega corporations are kind of throwing their weight around and essentially dictating what political policy is in the in the realms of

the Internet. I'm talking here about I S P S. I'm talking about like the net neutrality that would be it, or maybe the r I double A or the MP double A. I mean, we're talking about gigantic organizations that have been able to pretty much shape the way the u S. Law handles handles situations over the Internet. Are defining what is a crime versus what is not a crime. UH, And you know it's almost like the uh like they're there,

they're making up the rules. It would be nice to have some people who really know the whole background and can really look at the big picture and define what the rules are. Now, maybe those rules won't be the same ones that I would like to see, but at least I know that it would be coming from a

more impartial party. Well, and it's uh, it's true too that the FCC has had a hand in a lot of this in the past, but it's really sort of been a different role than what the c I O and CTO would do, uh, it would take in this case, because they're gonna be a lot more hands on. The FCC has um their fingers and a lot more different

kinds of communication. Um. And it's sort of a I don't know, a peripheral rule in some In some ways it's you know, it's not the same as it would be for for these guys who are going to be completely focused on you know, tech and the Internet. And I do have one more hope for for them. Hopefully they can get this straighten out. I really hope that somebody can identify who took that poor Walrus's bucket. Yeah, I do too. I mean that that bucket has been missing for quite some time and is in a lot

of distress. I've seen pictures, many of them. I can't believe you brought that up. I'm really surprised that you can't believe I brought that up. Well, I was also going to say, on a more serious note that they do have a big job ahead of them, and of course not all of these questions will be answered very quickly because when you think about Internet, of course is a global entity. It does not belong to the United States.

There's a lot of lawlessness on there. It just comes from being a multinational entity made up of basically a whole bunch of individual people. Right, So, so they're going to be some limitations they'll be working with just based upon what the Internet is. So not to mention just getting started. Yeah, it's The're not building on anybody else's work, right, This is you know, it's so much of Obama's administration is really all about building from the ground up that

it's sometimes really overwhelming. Um, I can't I'll be a maze. I'm really looking forward to seeing where we are in four years, just to see how much of that is successful, because to me, when I look at it just looks so monumental that I can't even imagine it. Lest we sound partial. Um, you know, honestly, I think these positions are would be useful to anybody, you know, Democrat, Republican, Tory,

wig federalist, federalists, you know, anarchists, maybe maybe even like libertarian. Yeah, but I mean, you know these are you know, so many of us depend on technology. I think this is a good step for anybody to to put into practice. It's much better than ignoring it. Yeah, definitely, Sea So well that was that was a good discussion on the old ct O and c i O. So that brings us to listener mail. So listener mail. This one comes from Matt, and Matt says, hey there, it's my line, Matt.

So I listen to your episode on niche social networks and I have one that is growing very fast, my leaky dot com. It springs off of the Harry Potter news site, the Leaky Cauldron dot org, and it has been growing steadily since January. Well, we have a few Harry Potter fans in the office, so I'm going to spread this information around so that we can see how many of them, uh you know, brandished their wands online, so to speak. Maybe I should have a warded that differently. Well,

too late. Now, if any of you would like to send any comments or suggestions or corrections or anything of that nature to us, you can do that at tech stuff at how stuff works dot com. Remember we also have blogs at blogs dot how stuff Works dot com, slash category slash tech stuff, and you can find a lot of this information on our website, how stuff works dot com. We will talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how staff works dot com s