Chief Technology Officer for the United States of America
Almost one year ago, in November 2007, Barack Obama claimed that if elected he would create a new position in his cabinet for a Chief Technology Officer. The current role under the Bush administration is called the “Cybersecurity czar”. This role was mostly concerned with defense against cyber attacks on network security. The new CTO position for Obama would be to help our “government officials hold open meetings, broadcast live webcasts of those meetings, and use blogging software, wikis and open comments to communicate policies with Americans, according to the plan.” (Venture Beat article, Nov. 2007)
This past week, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt was offered the chance to be the United States of America’s first Chief Technology Officer and he turned it down. His reason is that he likes it too much at Google.
I find that statement easy to believe. But who wouldn’t want to be on the ground floor of steering the government and all its statewide programs toward the Web 2.0, cloud, and 21st century??
I know there has been talk in our own state associations that they need to pick up the pace! With the push from the federal side, they may have to pick it up much faster!! Could it be that this new position will help? And what impact will this have in our schools and classrooms? To have government learning, unlearning, and relearning along with the people and for the people?
Change, indeed!
November 9th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Your post is very timely. I like the fact that Obama puts that much emphasis in a system that is not going away. Technology is here to stay. It is inevitably going to creep into every facet of everything we do. The push is to be transparent and efficient in all of our dealings.
You are dead-on when you say there is a push for the Texas organizations and state departments to not only adopt these ideas but accept them as the norm. My push for the state department is through advocating and working with those in the legislature. My push for the organization is to run for the board. If we do not step up as individuals to affect positive change, how can we accept the current seat holders to care?
November 9th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
I concur with woscholar that a transparent DOE is a better DOE (sort of the open source democracy that Douglas Rushkoff writes about in his essay http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/opensourcedemocracy2 ).
In my fair state of Indiana, we’re talking about adopting the 21st Century Skills and it seems that this is only a step or two backward. What I would love to see more of, though, is classroom teachers being more a part of the process of technology infusion, planning, and dreaming…we don’t seem to have enough dreaming these days, you know?
Good luck in Texas.