Obama Appoints Non-Tech Guy As CTO

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "President Barack Obama has named his chief technology officer, and the appointee is not a Silicon Valley name like so many predicted. He is Aneesh Chopra. As the Secretary of Technology for the Commonwealth of Virginia, his job has been to 'leverage technology in government reform, promote Virginia's innovation agenda, and foster technology-related economic development with a special emphasis on entrepreneurship.' But Chopra's not a tech guy. Before he got his secretary job in 2005, he was a managing director at the Advisory Board Company, a public-market health care think tank, as well as an angel investor." O'Reilly Radar is running an article discussing why Chopra is a good choice for federal CTO.

Comments

Open Source Alternatives

[micromegas]

What is his stance on the open source revolution? Linux/Open Office/Open Source solutions can contribute to massive savings for school districts but it's been beaten down/back by those with financial interests.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[mpeskett]

From the linked article, I'd say he's onboard with Open Source
(easiest quote to find: Virginia having "the first officially-approved open source textbook in the country")

I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing that he's not a tech guy himself; he won't be expected to go out and do the techy work. What the job requires is an understanding of technology and government, and the ability to get stuff done by supporting the right things, managing people... in short he doesn't need to be a geek so long as he has the right geeks working for him.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[PopeRatzo]

I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing that he's not a tech guy himself

Let's not screw around here: Is he Mac or PC?

If we can't find a reason to hate this guy, there's going to be a lot of unhappy people.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

he doesn't need to be a geek so long as he has the right geeks working for him

Is that really true? I'm a lawyer. No way on God's green earth would I work under the supervision of a non-lawyer.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[samriel]

The purpose of a school is NOT to teach students how things work right now, but how they will work in the future. How do you know that OSS won't become more accepted, if not the norm, in tomorrow's industry? Your Linux conspiracy theories are just as bad as anti-MS ones.

FOAD AC.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Anonymous Coward]

His trolling aside, how do you know the OSS will be the future. It's all speculation at best.

Why not a well-rounded approach instead of focusing on one OS type?

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[CastrTroy]

The purpose of school shouldn't be teach students to be drones that can't think for themselves. It should be "teach them how to learn". Everybody I grew up with learned on DOS, UNIX (icons ftw) and Apple. We had little trouble adapting to the changing computer world. Now if people learned on Linux right now, they would have a lot less catching up then we ever did, even if they had to switch to windows for a job. Tech concepts and not memorization and you will get a lot further.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[mpeskett]

I think you can understand technology enough to be an effective CTO without being a hands-on tech guy yourself.

He's demonstrated by his history that he "gets it", so let's hope he does a good job here too.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Quothz]

What is his stance on the open source revolution?

Well, in Virginia he pushed (and succeeded) to get an open-source textbook approved for schools, the first in the US.

I'm unaware of any particular stance he's taken on open source operating systems. He seems to be a bit of an Apple fanboy, tho', judging by the attention he's given the iPod and iPhone.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

What is his stance on the open source revolution? Linux/Open Office/Open Source solutions can contribute to massive savings for school districts but it's been beaten down/back by those with financial interests.

He seems to be fairly OSS neutral, at least as the Slashdot community would interpret it (which is very pro-OSS from the average). He has supported several projects in the past that provide some hope, including the open source physics textbook. He also has supported numerous innovative projects that use existing closed source technologies, like education partnerships with Apple using iTunes. He was recommended for the position by several strong OSS supporters and he seems fairly competent.

As for Linux and OpenOffice I don't know that he has shown any specific support for those projects.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Quothz]

Let's not screw around here: Is he Mac or PC?

He's a Mac, no doubt. He's been involved in use of the iPod and iPhone in education, he's fascinated by social networking systems, and he likes to gloat about how Virginia had the first settlement of what would become the USA.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Let's not screw around here: Is he Mac or PC?

He supported a partnership with iTunes with education in his state and a project to produce educational apps for the iPhone. I'm thinking he's a Mac, or at least a Mac user.

If we can't find a reason to hate this guy, there's going to be a lot of unhappy people.

I like some of Obama's appointees and others I strongly dislike. This is another one that at least doesn't seem terrible on the surface. We'll have to wait and see if he does any good.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Anpheus]

Don't you work for non-lawyers all the time? They defer to you because you -are- a lawyer, but I think you might have to rescind your comment :)

I do IT, and not everyone in the chain of command knows more than I do about IT. They do know more about other things, like management, or sales, or marketing. My job in IT is to enable them to do their jobs, and so I have to know a little bit about their job, and they have to know a little bit about mine, but that's all.

If we were to live in some upside down world where we demanded everyone paying us had to know more about what we're doing than we do, no one would get anything done. Why are they paying you if they know more than you?

And this applies to you too, Ray. Your clients pay you, or your firm, or however you have it set up, and they don't know nearly as much as you do. If they did, they wouldn't be paying you.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[gbjbaanb]

I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing that he's not a tech guy himself;

I'm certain its a good thing. Tech guys tend to focus more on the tech side of things - look at this, that or the other flash stuff we can do. some of that is good, but a lot of it is useless to the end-user. Techn guys tend to get a bit put out when they show their cool new tech to the end user only to be told that it doesn't help much at all. (I've been there myself :( )

As he's not one of those guys, he's going to be far more concerned with what technology can do for us end-users, how much it costs, how well it helps us - not the other way round.

I for one, welcome our new human overlords!

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[cayenne8]

"If we can't find a reason to hate this guy, there's going to be a lot of unhappy people."

I dunno...with a name like Aneesh Chopra, I gotta think he'll help promote more H-1B visas...just what we need with declining employment opportunities in the US.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Timothy Brownawell]

he doesn't need to be a geek so long as he has the right geeks working for him

Is that really true? I'm a lawyer. No way on God's green earth would I work under the supervision of a non-lawyer.

Supervision as in "we should handle this case in this way", of course. But what about things like "case X will have a huge impact, so focus on getting it right and let the newer people handle A, B, and C."? Ie, setting general policy rather than direct supervision.

If this guy can prioritize between "nobody's databases can talk to eachother" and "we can't get bugfixes for Important Software X because the vendor went bankrupt" and "new employees are stting on their thumbs for 8 weeks while their computer accounts get set up", then as long as he doesn't meddle beyond saying "how much will it cost to fix this" and "fix this next, because it gets us the most bang for our buck" it doesn't really matter if he personally doesn't know anything about how to fix it.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[binarylarry]

I'd say teach using things like Ubuntu, Open Office, etc. for the most part. Then have some specific classes that teach the differences between Ubuntu and Windows, Open Office vs Microsoft Office, etc.

By doing so, you can literally give the students all the software they need at home, from which they'll learn all the skills they'll need.

And with the class that specifically covers Microsoft's products differences, they'll know the quirks of said products and it will require far less money, because they won't need to purchase Microsoft products to go to school.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Don't you work for non-lawyers all the time? They defer to you because you -are- a lawyer, but I think you might have to rescind your comment :) I do IT, and not everyone in the chain of command knows more than I do about IT. They do know more about other things, like management, or sales, or marketing. My job in IT is to enable them to do their jobs, and so I have to know a little bit about their job, and they have to know a little bit about mine, but that's all. If we were to live in some upside down world where we demanded everyone paying us had to know more about what we're doing than we do, no one would get anything done. Why are they paying you if they know more than you? And this applies to you too, Ray. Your clients pay you, or your firm, or however you have it set up, and they don't know nearly as much as you do. If they did, they wouldn't be paying you.

My clients pay me; they do not "supervise" me. When I did work under supervision (1974-1983) it was the supervision of people who did exactly what I did but had been doing it longer. That is the only kind of supervision I could accept. It was one of the main reasons I went into a "profession".

I consider information technology a profession, and entitled to the same level of respect and dignity. If you know what you are doing and have someone "supervising" who doesn't fully grasp what is going on, and doesn't understand where you are coming from, it is degrading, insulting, and counterproductive.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[whiledo]

You may not, but I know you know that this is how legal departments in companies work. When a specialized department is part of a more generic whole, at some point working your way up the hierarchy you have to eventually find someone who isn't in the same specialty. There are legitimate arguments to how high you should have to go before you get to that point, but it will usually happen in any large organization.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Omestes]

You grew into OS office software and can go back any time, if needed. Those kids won't be able to do that. You'd effectively be crippling them.

Are kids dumber now that they ever were? The first computer I had contact with through school was an Apple IIe, did this crush my ability to learn to use Windows when it finally came out? Really, that is one of the most innane arguments I have heard. If we expose our children to many different computers/OSs/software suites, it leaves them with adaptability.

Hell, it wasn't until rather late in high school that I actually found a computer, in school, using Windows, with Office on it, and all the other "standard" stuff, before that there was some nice DOS boxes, a few early Macs, a TON of Apple IIes, and I even think a lowly C64 and Amiga in there. All of these with their seporate and very different OSs, different "productivity" software, and different ways of interacting with the computer. I, for some reason, doubt that this hindered my ability to exist in society much, much less... you know... use a computer. It probably helped greatly with the second bit, since it kept me from getting locked in to any particular scheme of computing.

Children are adaptive by nature, and the more we make them experience novel situations, the smarter they get. It forces them out of the rote "click x in menu y to do z", and into the the actual basis of the experience itself into a "I want to do z, now what?" mindframe.

I know several people who can't use the GUI in Ubuntu/Gnome, just because it doesn't look exactly like Windows, even though it almost exactly the same mechanically. I would rather our children don't become this.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[aesiamun]

If that's true then we can continue teaching them Microsoft Windows in the class room instead of Ubuntu and Open Office and they will be able to do the same thing, "I want to do z, now what?".

Otherwise, you're teaching them GNOME under Ubuntu and if they have to move to a Windows interface, they will be as confused as if they were trained on Microsoft and have to move to a GNOME based user interface. Chances are, they'll run into a Windows interface far more often than a GNOME interface.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[SanityInAnarchy]

Schools are meant to teach pupils how to function in the real world. Not your little OSS fantasy world.

If a generation of students were trained on OSS, that "fantasy world" could become a reality.

You grew into OS office software and can go back any time, if needed. Those kids won't be able to do that.

OpenOffice looks and feels very much like most versions of Office. I see no reason they wouldn't be able to adapt, especially if they were trained on how to learn and discover different systems.

You'd effectively be crippling them.

More so than current schools, which only teach MS Office?

it'll be in the form of new clever minds in the workspace that have no idea how to use the software actually used there.

...or these clever new minds would be able to clearly evaluate which software is actually best, not merely which "is actually used", or which is already there, or which they are familiar with.

That is more difficult to teach, of course, and switching to open source won't magically cause it. However, saving money on commercial software could mean more of a budget for actually teaching.

If you want to promote OSS, then do just that. Don't try to force people into it. Lead them into it.

If you want to promote commercial software, then just do that. Don't try to force people into it. Lead them into it.

Except that, the way classrooms are stacked, students are exactly as much "forced into" that, as you are afraid that they'd be "forced into" using open source.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[rubycodez]

all the schools around me use eMacs and iMacs. Use your brain.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[yascha]

My only concern would be that he gets snowballed by quotes on technical things.

Provided Chopra is a good judge of character, this could be a brilliant decision by Obama.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the argument is more that the schools should be spending their money on, say, teacher's salaries instead of Microsoft Windows.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Mix Master Nixon]

Are kids dumber now that they ever were?

Yes. And getting dumber. (Though this might vary by locality.)

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Omestes]

bingo.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Kulfaangaren!]

Oh thank you god! Finally someone who actually agrees with me on what the purpose of education is. Teaching should be about stimulating the kids to want to learn, to want to find out the whys and hows!...and give them the tools to do so. Off course it is an other matter in higher education, but that is besides the point here as people seems to be talking about creating mindless drones belonging to one camp or the other.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be stupid... Schools are meant to teach pupils how to function in the real world. Not your little OSS fantasy world.

Fuck that. I work doing end-user support for people largely in their 20's-30's and half the time I have to step them through minimizing windows so they can get to the support link on their desktops. These are people whose *only* computing experience has been on Windows and they still don't know jack shit about its basic mechanics. Exposing children to OSS can only help, even if simply by making them actually think about what they're accomplishing with a computer rather than "Oh my god the icon for the internet isn't on my desktop what do i do oh go oh god oh god."

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[foobsr]

The purpose of a school is NOT to teach students how things work right now, but how they will work in the future.

The purpose of a school is to enable students to cope with change.

... yes, I dream on ...

CC.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[SanityInAnarchy]

Well, there's also the whole "iTunes U" thing. How well does that work for those who can't or won't use iTunes? DRM-free is only part of the solution -- basing it on actual standards, so third-party clients can be used, is the other part.

Never mind the whole iPhone App thing...

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Ash Vince]

I dunno...with a name like Aneesh Chopra, I gotta think he'll help promote more H-1B visas..

So because he is of Indian descent he must have a particular point of view? There is a name for that sort of prejudgement: Racism.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Anonymous Coward]

Does he owe taxes?

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[SanityInAnarchy]

I do IT, and not everyone in the chain of command knows more than I do about IT. They do know more about other things, like management, or sales, or marketing.

However, they have to know at least enough about IT to be able to know what they know, and to know what they don't know. That way, they know when to defer to you.

For example: A marketing guy may know that a 20 ghz (single-core) machine might sell much more than an 8-core 2.5 ghz machine. However, as a tech guy, you know that the 20 ghz machine is likely physically impossible. I'm actually OK, though saddened, when the marketing guy doesn't know that, too. But they have to at least have the humility to believe you when you say it's impossible.

So, the main question here is: Does this guy know enough, and have enough humility, to know when and how to delegate?

Your clients pay you, or your firm, or however you have it set up, and they don't know nearly as much as you do.

There is a difference between clients and management, however.

I've been fortunate, in that for about the past year or two, I've been working under someone who has been a programmer. He didn't always do that, and he may not have been the most skilled among us, but at least he can speak the language.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Tubal-Cain]

...or these clever new minds would be able to clearly evaluate which software is actually best, not merely which "is actually used", or which is already there, or which they are familiar with.

Excel databases, Screenshots in Word, GUIs on a server, IE for anything, Windows-based ATMs, emacs as a text editor...

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[SanityInAnarchy]

If this guy can prioritize between "nobody's databases can talk to eachother" and "we can't get bugfixes for Important Software X because the vendor went bankrupt" and "new employees are stting on their thumbs for 8 weeks while their computer accounts get set up", then as long as he doesn't meddle beyond saying "how much will it cost to fix this" and "fix this next, because it gets us the most bang for our buck" it doesn't really matter if he personally doesn't know anything about how to fix it.

As long as he actually accepts the "how much will it cost" figures -- and also the "how much will it cost us not to fix this" figures. The Daily WTF is rife with stories of management deciding it wasn't worth a few thousand dollars to fix a problem which, in the long run, ended up costing a few million dollars, and a few years of delay, because it wasn't fixed when IT said it should be.

I value guidance between those tickets, when I honestly don't know which I should be focusing on. However, when I say "This one must be fixed today," I like to be heard. And a technical guy is more likely to understand both that I know what I'm talking about, and how severe a given technical problem actually is.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[he-sk]

Really? You want to waste the student's time by teaching them the diff between Open Office and Microsoft Office? Perhaps with 5-year-old textbooks? I'll bet your students will be super excited! Not.

Why not teach them the difference between Photoshop and Gimp? That, at least, would have been useful for me, because as an amateur photographer I kinda got sucked into PS and now it's keeping me from switching back to Linux from OS X. Wait, there was no GIMP when I was in school. /sarcasm

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Anonymous Coward]

If you know what you are doing and have someone "supervising" who doesn't fully grasp what is going on, and doesn't understand where you are coming from, it is degrading, insulting, and counterproductive.

That's why it's a job and not a Sunday in the park.

My boss doesn't know anywhere near as much about technology as I do but -- and this is the crucial bit -- he trusts my opinions and my judgment. (As well as that of my peers.)

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[binarylarry]

Text books? WTF?

Grandpa, your time has come and went. Deal with it.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[The Clockwork Troll]

Has went? I guess Grandpa took all the grammar books with him, too.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[am 2k]

Since you didn't provide it: More information and sources

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[networkBoy]

Are you sure?
Would you work under someone who had an MBA, was a pre-law, and was responsible for the legal department at a largish company? Because that's the exact structure of my company's legal department. Last I heard our head council had wide latitude, but technically worked for a MBA toting pre-law.

Point is, in any large organization you need someone to make the translation from management to rank and file. That person needs aptitude in both, rather than narrow specialty in one. I have had many managers in my tech life. The best ones were not technologists, they were managers that understood tech. In this case I hope that's how this guy is, a solid manager, who understands enough about technology to identify the right people to hand tasks to and trust them with the results.

In a small firm, especially one focused on the law business I would agree with you 100%. The head boss should be a lawyer, and the structure works from there, but in a large organization, that won't hold up, same thing here... the government is a non-trivial sized organization.
Respectfully,
-nB

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[besalope]

Are kids dumber now that they ever were?

It's not that they are just dumb, they are also lazy. Those that actually want to learn the software and technology will thrive in this adaptable environment, but those that are more obsessed with sports or their own popularity will flounder and fail under the amount of choices available to them.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[TheLink]

Maybe the leaders have got smarter and realized raising the average IQ of a population beyond a certain point doesn't help them.

They just need a few smart people for the brainy stuff. The rest they can use for other stuff.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Are you sure? Would you work under someone who had an MBA, was a pre-law, and was responsible for the legal department at a largish company?

N.F.W.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is exactly why so many IT people are seen as being a far cry from social, or downright angry people. They just had some idiot call them and spend fifteen minutes of their time to find out they DID hit the caps lock button, and HEY! what do you know, there's an indicator light. And the part that makes them really upset is when it was their IT manager.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

My boss doesn't know anywhere near as much about technology as I do but -- and this is the crucial bit -- he trusts my opinions and my judgment.

Which is very nice for you, but it's only nice for the company if the tech people in your company

(a) are always right about everything
(b) are never wrong about anything,
(c) have nothing left to learn,
(d) need no leadership or guidance, and
(e) are all well qualified to perform their tasks.

Personally, if I were a shareholder in such a company, I would rather have someone in charge of technology who actually is a technologist, who understands what technologists do, and can understand their problems, limitations, challenges, and abilities, and who can separate the wheat from the chaff -- i.e. recognize which employees or prospective hires are the real thing and which are BS artists.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[sgt_doom]

Not racism, dood, but good future intentions. If Mr. Chopra aids in the complete offshoring of the US Congress, plus any and all administrations, government workers, etc., that can only be a good thing.....no more clowns for those EVIL lobbyists who actually run the country to be around to take their money.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[colinrichardday]

and he likes to gloat about how Virginia had the first settlement of what would become the USA.

The residents of St. Augustine might beg to differ, as might the cliff dwellers of the Southwest, for that matter.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[pipingguy]

Well said. The only "senior" people who absolutely need supervision (even after 40 years' experience) are politicians.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Toonol]

Ideally, government appointees should have so little power that it doesn't matter to anybody whether they're competent or not. Heck, that was supposed to be our defense against congress.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[colinrichardday]

I had trouble loading that textbook.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Thinboy00]

[snip]

It's not that they are just dumb, they are also lazy. Those that actually want to learn the software and technology will thrive in this adaptable environment, but those that are more obsessed with sports or their own popularity will flounder and fail under the amount of choices available to them.

Good. That's their problem. Don't want to learn? Fine, don't learn... but don't expect an easy "A" on your report card either.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Thinboy00]

Excel databases, Screenshots in Word, GUIs on a server, IE for anything, Windows-based ATMs, emacs as a text editor...

*sigh*... Holy wars begin here...

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Thinboy00]

all the schools around me use eMacs and iMacs. Use your brain.

I didn't realize how strapped for cash the government was. How the fuck do you get OS X on that/those (or do you?)?

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[pipingguy]

Just imagine if those upon whose shoulders we stand had to use a specific brand of pencil in order to document their great ideas.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Zancarius]

So because he is of Indian descent he must have a particular point of view? There is a name for that sort of prejudgement: Racism.

I don't think it's necessarily unreasonable to make assumptions that people of certain cultural, ethnic, or national backgrounds are more likely to hold specific views. If someone made the assumption that I would be more lenient toward Australians (I'm American), they might be right: Part of my heritage is Australian. Would I consider it racist if someone speculated about my leniency toward Aussies? Of course not. Let's put it another way: Would I be offended if someone assumed that my own heritage meant I would be more likely to consider importing Vegemite into the United States as a policy position? Not at all.

The reason people make such assumptions is largely because they are correct; we are often a little more "fair" toward people we can better identify with. Go to a Mexican restaurant (run by individuals who are authentically Hispanic--not those crummy knock-off big chain restaurants) and tell me if the owners might be a little more friendly and outgoing to someone who speaks Spanish; Go to a German establishment and see if the owners are a little more friendly and outgoing to someone who speaks German.

It's unfortunate that making general assumptions about a person's ideology based upon their cultural background is considered racist. Sometimes those assumptions can be helpful, such as with personal space: Arabs tend to stand much closer together when talking in the company of friends of associates--distances that we Westerners are not altogether comfortable with. It is not racist, then, to assume that someone who is Arab may stand closer to you when they're talking! In fact, you might offend them if you fail to oblige (and back away, maintaining your "personal" space)!

It is not racist to consider that someone whose family may or may not be relatively new immigrants to the US might be a little more open to certain immigration-related activities. In fact, I'd expect it; if they weren't, I'd be worried!

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[turbidostato]

"So because he is of Indian descent he must have a particular point of view? There is a name for that sort of prejudgement: Racism."

Well, then racism is quite an important piece about why Obama himself is in office.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[turbidostato]

"Why are they paying you if they know more than you?"

While I'm with you on the general position, this argument is plain is not so intelligent and answer would be obvious: because knowing more than you (that means all that you know and then more) they can make more money applying all the other "more" things they know but you don't while leaving to you those lessen things you know.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[networkBoy]

fair enough then ;)

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Omestes]

Everyone is lazy.

If a certain amount of kids are lazy we should not be catering to them, but to the ones who will excel. Actually, if they are just lazy then shouldn't we be asking why, and taking steps to fix it, rather than just dumbing everything down for them? Force them to adapt.

My draconian side thinks we should have OSS computers in schools, ESPECIALLY if a majority of children are lazy. Then Linux is what they will expect, and know, and thus get when they have an income of their own. Sure, they'll suffer a bit in the short term, but we all benefit in the long term.

I may or may not endorse anything in this comment.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[sorak]

he doesn't need to be a geek so long as he has the right geeks working for him

Is that really true? I'm a lawyer. No way on God's green earth would I work under the supervision of a non-lawyer.

Isn't the law fundamentally different from technology? One doesn't have to know how to implement a p2p service to know what it does and why it is controversial. As for the law, well, is there a similar analogy? IANAL, but it seems to me that there is no way that you can have a 30,000 foot view and still be useful, when it comes to law.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[lilomar]

Others commented on the OS textbook, the other quote from TFA that mentions open source is:

Chopra demonstrates a deep understanding of the idea that the government is an enabler, not the ultimate solution provider. From the list of initiatives above, you can see that Chopra grasps the power of open source software, Web 2.0, user-participation, and why it's better to harness the ingenuity of a developer community than to specify complete top-down solutions. In a conversation with me a couple of months ago, he expressed his enthusiasm for the idea of a "digital commonwealth," a recognition that technology can help us to come together as a society to solve problems and create value through common effort.

(emphases added)

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Dragonslicer]

When I did work under supervision (1974-1983) it was the supervision of people who did exactly what I did but had been doing it longer.

But what work were you doing at the time? Was that the time that you were learning your profession from the more experienced people in your field? If so, the reason for being supervised was less "working for them" and more "learning from them", which is obviously a case where you'd want the person above you to be able to teach you something.

How many lawyers work directly for large companies (IBM, Microsoft, Sun, etc.)? At some point between any such lawyer and the CEO, someone's immediate boss is not a lawyer. They probably aren't really being supervised in the sense that someone watches everything they do, they're just given a general direction, task, or goal, and their job is to figure out the details of that achieving that goal. If you're managing a group of people, such as engineers, you don't have to be a better engineer than the people working for you, you just have to know enough so that the engineers can do their jobs.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[vlad30]

Are kids dumber now that they ever were?

The biggest difference between back then and now is back then most people who went to the computer classes had an interest in it.

These days most of them take the class so they can get to their facebook/myspace account during schooltime

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[servognome]

If I have a trial which hinges on DNA evidence I don't hire a DNA expert, I hire a lawyer who in turn hires and manages all the experts needed for the legal case.
If the CTO is a techie and makes a suggestion on applying technology to health care or finance, would his opinion be worthless because he's not a doctor or accountant?
The CTO is not a tech job, it is a director's job. Setting direction for the broad application of technology does not necessarily require an intimate knowledge of how the technology works.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

I'm a lawyer. No way on God's green earth would I work under the supervision of a non-lawyer.

Isn't the law fundamentally different from technology?

Yes it is. Lawyers specialize in law. Technologists specialize in technology. But they are also alike in that they can both be very complex, and require vast amounts of study and experience.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

If I have a trial which hinges on DNA evidence I don't hire a DNA expert, I hire a lawyer who in turn hires and manages all the experts needed for the legal case.

Correct, but the lawyer would not supervise the DNA expert.

If the CTO is a techie and makes a suggestion on applying technology to health care or finance, would his opinion be worthless because he's not a doctor or accountant?

It well might be.

The CTO is not a tech job, it is a director's job. Setting direction for the broad application of technology does not necessarily require an intimate knowledge of how the technology works.

You may be right. We don't really know what the job is. But I thought it was the job of the president to set the direction, and the job of the CTO to implement it. If he's going to implement tech policy he should know technology.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

If you're managing a group of people, such as engineers, you don't have to be a better engineer than the people working for you, you just have to know enough so that the engineers can do their jobs.

Well you need to know enough to get the best people, to know if they're doing things right, etc.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[The_Wilschon]

Usually, it helps discussion move along more productively if you actually read before replying. GP advocated presenting children with a variety of different situations, softwares, and interfaces. GP specifically did not advocate presenting students with only Ubuntu/Gnome, as you seem to think...

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Hucko]

Okay, think of it more this way. Geeks are renown for being rather socially inept. They need an interface between them and the people they deliver service to, so that the geeks can yabba away in that technobable (not marketing buzzwords, lawyer bluff or political speak, but actually sentences/phrases that mean stuff to those in the know). This way, the geeks are achieving what needs to be done, yet explaining to the clients/superiors the options and requirements to do their job better.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Artuir]

To offer up a bit of a comparison, this principle is exactly what landed NASA in trouble back in the 80's, and likely before then too. Management not understanding what was being done and somehow, with this lack of knowledge, assessing acceptable risk.

It boggles my mind.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[painehope]

I agree wholeheartedly with you on this. Unfortunately, you will not find anything even remotely resembling that philosophy in any public school that I've attended or even heard of.

Instead, you'll find schools where a lot of kids are afraid to take advanced classes or be on accelerated-learning tracks because the other students taunt, revile, and even physically assault them. One of the reasons that I'm so good with my hands is because I attended Houston's so-called "Magnet Program" in middle school. I went into sixth grade at 4'11" and about 80 lbs., and discovered that I had two strikes against me : I was one of about 5 White kids at a predominantly Black/Mestizo school (seriously, we had race riots between the two groups; I fought on the Black side because most of my friends were Black) and I was in the above-mentioned program (which didn't even bother putting me in separate classes or teaching me different material, so I - to this day - don't understand what the damn point of it was). All what I got out of middle school was the ability to knock out kids that were 16 and still in middle school. If you forgot my name, you could say "the cool White kid", because I was the only one of the Magnet students (who were predominantly White and Asian and totalled about 30, of which 5 were White) who would fight back. So I guess I learned something.

By high school, I was completely disillusioned with the educational system and didn't even bother trying to learn anything (from the teachers, that is) other than Shop classes (which turned out to be useful in the long run, as I can do all kinds of interesting stuff with metal and wood that most CS people can't). I dropped out after my fourth trip through the ninth grade (not due to poor academic performance, but because I was constantly thrown out schools, including the ones for "at-risk" students that I'd get sent to each year), technically while it was still illegal for me to do so (but the school district was so tired of my shit that they turned a blind eye).

Got my GED a few months later, as soon as the law allowed me to take the test. Enrolled in college classes a few weeks later...and discovered a whole new world!

One where the principles you quote were actually practiced. Since I'd still read my school texts, even when I was expelled, and have always been an avid learner, there was very little catch-up for me. School became a much more pleasant experience (even though I attended a university in the middle of Houston's 3rd Ward).

The moral of the story? Public schools suck. They're useless, the teachers are incompetent, the administrators are even more so, and with all this "Politically Correct" bullshit going around now (not to mention draconian "Zero Tolerance" policies), my children (if and when I have any) will be home-schooled. Sure, I'll teach them the same stuff that I learned in school (like how to fight and how to not get caught smoking or selling drugs at school), but I'll teach them what they need to go on to college with open eyes and ears, ready to learn.

I wish I could say that things will be different by the time I have children, but I doubt it. From my friends and colleagues, I've learned that their children have it even worse than I did (my friend's daughter was arrested - yeah, you heard correctly, arrested - for bringing a pair of regular, sharp scissors to school, and she was about 10 or so; another friend of mine went ballistic and pulled his son out of public school when he discovered that his son spent most of his time sitting there doing nothing while the teacher tried to teach baby books to kids that didn't speak English). So until schools stop catering to the lowest common denominator and start hiring qualified teachers (neither of which I see happening in my lifetime), public (and a lot of private) schools will always be useless.

End of story. Class dismissed.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[samriel]

all the schools around me use eMacs and iMacs. Use your brain.

I didn't realize how strapped for cash the government was. How the fuck do you get OS X on that/those (or do you?)?

Many of the mid- to late-model ones came with OSX and OS 9 installed side-by-side. Google + Wikipedia are your friends.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[kcbnac]

Actually, when I was in school (Graduated high school in 2003) I had a "Word Processing and Spreadsheets" class - We did both with Apple's ClarisWorks AND with Microsoft Office, so we learned the concepts of spreadsheets, formulas, paragraph layouts etc - not how to make a pie chart with Office 2000 Professional.

We were taught the concepts, then shown how to do it on two of the (then) major products of the time.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[shutdown -p now]

The purpose of school shouldn't be teach students to be drones that can't think for themselves. It should be "teach them how to learn".

It's not the sole purpose of the school. Teaching about how things are here and now (sometimes even without much explanation, where it is sufficiently advanced to be beyond reach at that stage) is still important.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[servognome]

Correct, but the lawyer would not supervise the DNA expert.

He may not dig into every detail on what the DNA expert is doing on a daily basis; but I would hope he remains informed and manages the experts towards the goals of the case. The goal is not academic proof, it is a legal argument. As such, the lawyer, not the expert, will be the one who makes the final decision on how the case is presented.
The goals of the CTO of the United States are social, not technological.

If the CTO is a techie and makes a suggestion on applying technology to health care or finance, would his opinion be worthless because he's not a doctor or accountant?

It well might be.

If that is the case, nobody is qualified. Directing broad level policy does not mean being an expert at everything, it means understanding what experts say and integrating those opinions into a single direction. Likely a network engineer, doctor, health insurer and patient advocate aren't going to agree about everything. For example the doctor wants information as easy as possible, the health insurer wants the lowest cost, a patient wants to maximize security, the network engineer will describe how much it will cost. The CTO needs to take those inputs and decide what the "best" high level direction.

You may be right. We don't really know what the job is. But I thought it was the job of the president to set the direction, and the job of the CTO to implement it. If he's going to implement tech policy he should know technology.

"In this role, Aneesh will promote technological innovation to help achieve our most urgent priorities - from creating jobs and reducing health care costs to keeping our nation secure."

At his level he may decide that investments should be made in enabling better communication between local, state, and federal police agencies, or that health care information should be more easily accessible by doctors. It's his background in the application of technology (specifically in health care and government) that is important, not the nuts & bolts of how it works.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[he-sk]

Reading comprehension. You fail it.

But assuming for a moment that there will be no textbooks, there will be a test and therefore a curriculum which will be in the form of text in a book.

Nothing to worry though, because teachers who now the diff between office suites grow on magic trees. /SARCASM

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[dangitman]

My clients pay me; they do not "supervise" me. When I did work under supervision (1974-1983) it was the supervision of people who did exactly what I did but had been doing it longer. That is the only kind of supervision I could accept. It was one of the main reasons I went into a "profession".

This only really works because your business is 100% about practicing law. That's not the case for many places, and especially IT workers. Every decent-sized company has IT staff, even if their business is not about IT. One might be the IT staff for a company that produces canned peaches. It's only in companies that are solely IT focused that you could expect all of your superiors to have intimate knowledge of the field.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[he-sk]

I spent a senior year at a US high school and learned who to type a letter in Word Perfect on DOS (version 5 I think). That was really, really boring. But, I also learned to touch type which has proven immensely useful later on.

Then I went back to Germany and did my Abitur. I remember learning about AVL trees and finding an implementation in the Linux kernel somewhere. We also learned about B-trees, but I didn't get it at that point.

Looking back, computer science classes in Germany were much more interesting, if not for the countless bomberman sessions in between.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[dangitman]

Why should we be teaching software packages at all? Students should be able to learn to use those tools themselves. We should be teaching them how to learn, how to read the instruction manual, if you will.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[bjwest]

Sorry, with the "No Child Left Behind" policy, all we do is teach the answers to standardized tests. Children haven't been taught to learn for quite some time.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[donstenk]

So you like your direct supervisor to be a lawyer - fine.

Does the supervisor of a dishwasher need to be a dishwasher as well? Better someone that can set and measure the targets for an efficient dish washing operation whilst hiring good dishwashers to achieve that.

Same in IT.

If all you have is a hammer, etc etc ......

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Quothz]

The residents of St. Augustine might beg to differ, as might the cliff dwellers of the Southwest, for that matter.

Yeah. You might say those were the Xerox PARC of America. ;)

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[kklein]

No mod points right now, so I just have to say this:

Bravo.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[DesScorp]

Oh thank you god! Finally someone who actually agrees with me on what the purpose of education is. Teaching should be about stimulating the kids to want to learn, to want to find out the whys and hows!...and give them the tools to do so. Off course it is an other matter in higher education, but that is besides the point here as people seems to be talking about creating mindless drones belonging to one camp or the other.

Sorry to bust your bubble, but anywhere you go, you're going to find that a lot of learning isn't fun, self-fullfilling personal explorations of the mind. Much if it is dull, gritty, hard work. I agree with you to some extent, but you're not getting much of an education if it all involves things that only stimulate your interest. Math, in particular, can only be effectively taught via a great deal of repetition and memorization and grunt work. As math teachers say, "drill till it kills".

The notion that all schooling can be fun and interesting is a Utopian fantasy. There is no free lunch. Everything worth getting in the world takes a great deal of boring, repetitive work, to one extent or another. And that includes knowledge.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[spiffyman]

Yeah, but NYCL, many of us would work under you. You've got a reputation for being of the right mind, even though you're not a geek per se.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think this is new. Schools should not be limiting the quality of the education they provide because some students are unmotivated.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Dan541]

You'd effectively be crippling them.

Yes, how dare we avoid locking them into proprietary formats.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Dan541]

First we need to educate people to stop saving things in .docx bussiness users are the worst for this. .doc is bad enough but at least it has been fairly extesivly revers engineered so things like open office can utilise it.

I also wish people would stop treating .pdf as a word processor document "I saved that report as PDF but now I need to make changes" arg.. PDF should be treated as a published copy. You don't edit a document you just printed out you make changes to the original then reprint, why the hell can't people do this with PDFs, it takes less time to "export to PDF" than it does to email someone a stupid question.

Forget software some education in document formats would go a long way.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Yeah, but NYCL, many of us would work under you. You've got a reputation for being of the right mind, even though you're not a geek per se.

Well I did attend Bronx High School of Science, and use pocket protectors.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

I don't think the analogy is good. Being a dishwasher is a relatively simple task that does not require years of study and experience. Being a good technologist is complex, and takes a lot of time to develop. I know because I picked up how to wash dishes pretty quickly, but couldn't code my way out of a paper bag.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

I think you can understand technology enough to be an effective CTO without being a hands-on tech guy yourself. He's demonstrated by his history that he "gets it", so let's hope he does a good job here too.

I share your hope, and I think enough of Tim O'Reilly that I value his opinion. But I really wonder about it, too.

Time will tell.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Sneeka2]

Math can't be fun? Some people would beg to differ.

Math can only be taught via memorization? Then you're doing it wrong. You only need to memorize the basics of math, e.g. like how addition and subtraction works. The rest is mostly applying this knowledge in more and more complicated constructs, requiring you to THINK, not memorize. You can memorize formulas, or you can learn their inner workings and the relations they express and the formula is self-evident.

Do you memorize that 4 + 4 = 8?
Or do you memorize numbers and how "+" works?

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[v(*_*)vvvv]

"teach them how to learn".

go to google.com... class dismissed!

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[progliberty]

What you just said sounds like bland Objectivist/Marxist ideology to me. Give us a break. Open Source is practical because there's more money to be made once people get inside your shop door, and not because you charge them just for entering your shop from the get-go.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Viperpete]

The purpose of a school is NOT to teach students how things work right now, but how they will work in the future.

Seems to me, most schools teach you information 5 - 10 years old if not older.

Tried and true.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[rochberg]

The moral of the story? Public schools suck. They're useless, the teachers are incompetent[...] So until schools [...] start hiring qualified teachers[...], public (and a lot of private) schools will always be useless.

Once upon a time, I was a math ed major. There were a lot of interesting things I learned in those classes (e.g., that was where I discovered the writings of Jonathan Kozol, which I recommend). But the most important lesson that I learned was how pathetic teaching salaries are. If I took a technical job in the math/CS fields, my starting salary would be triple what I would make as a teacher.

As long as teachers are not respected as professionals and their starting salaries remain low, the vast majority of people with a true passion for the field and the most knowledge of the material will continue to go into industry. I still love to teach--I am currently working on my Ph.D. and intend to stay in academia--but teaching is too much work for the salary offered.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[sumdumass]

Schools have historically showed children how to use tools to function in the real world.

That's more or less what showing them to use MS office or whatever is about. However, I don't understand why we are insisting that Kids only learn to use a Stanley #2 Philips head screwdriver or a Stanley Hammer. There are many different screw drivers and hammers and some are suited for different purposed better then others. Currently, we teach the concept, the the tool, or we used to. Now it's the use of the one tool, we bring up all this crap about the complexity of switching tools as an excuse for not doing so, then MS comes out with a new office suite and everything you said was bad about switching tools is now automatically true about MS office too.

I think OSS should be part of the education. Knowing word processing and spread sheets is more valuable then knowing MS word and excel. using various tools from different manufacturers also treach thinking skills and all that crap. But there is no reason a student should be locked into one specific piece of software when there are alternatives that do 90% or more of what MS office does and 100% of what the student is required to learn.

Once the programs are installed and set up, it's almost the same to the user. If the concept of the word processing or excel or whatever is know, then it wouldn't really matter who version of whos software you have use.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[McCat]

Sounds like someone has a bit too much pride.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[rubycodez]

yes, they run OSX on the eMacs which are 2005 models with 1.42 GHz PPC which are more than adequate . What, you think schools should be buying new machines every year or every other year? that'd be a waste.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Sneeka2]

Amen.

I wasted four years of my life in a middle school where the only things that mattered were crap like whether you were against or for foreigners or whether you were gay or not. This social setting suppressed any kind of learning opportunity, and non of the faculty were able to do anything about it.

In two years of French classes I barely learned how to count in French. Today I speak about 3.9 languages (2 native-level, 1 fluent enough, 2 basics), and I'd love to brush up on my French again.

Teaching needs to be a lot more about general attitude, common sense and learning how to learn than the rubbish public schools provide these days.

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Anonymous Coward]

you can has no honor making fun of kittens

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[firstnevyn]

Right.. but at some point in asking for some non trivial ammount of resourcing to fix something you're going to need to identify and explain what change needs to be done.. what the risk that is being mitigated is. and what the probability of that risk eventuating is.

IT suffers pretty badly from building Taj Mahals and misconstruing technical risk as business risk.

"We need to fix this and it's going to cost us X if we don't" has to be based on established trust and faith that you've evaluated X correctly. you get there by proving it with data and reports (things IT also sucks at supprisingly hard)

The biggest problem that IT is that people think "This is going to cost us X if we don't fix it."where in reality what's needed for decision making is "We should fix Y because there's a Z chance of costing X if we don't"

Re:Open Source Alternatives

[Sum0]

We learned Fortran in high school. It was assumed that you would figure out the word processor (Framework?...something like that...) on your own. Of course, that was 1985. Does today's new tech-generation really need hand-holding to operate office software? School's should teach programming instead of how to plug numbers into Excel or play with html. If you can write a functional Python script, you can probably figure out how to change the font in Word.

Say it ain't so, Obama

[Henry V .009]

What, does this mean that he isn't the Messiah after all? As usual, the Onion gets it right: The Media having trouble finding Right Angle on Obama's Double-Homicide

Re:Say it ain't so, Obama

[Anonymous Coward]

Underneath all the teleprompter smooth talk, is a chimpanzee. Obama is a talking monkey hired by the RIAA, MPAA, unions, welfare cheats, race baiters, and other parasites to do their bidding. Obama is a corrupt Chicago politician who has all the sincerity of a used car salesman. One of his goals is to enrich himself and his millionaire friends at the expense of taxpayers and productive members of society. But hey, it's "change we can believe in".

Re:Say it ain't so, Obama

[tepples]

Obama is a talking monkey hired by the RIAA, MPAA, unions, welfare cheats, race baiters, and other parasites to do their bidding. Obama is a corrupt Chicago politician who has all the sincerity of a used car salesman.

How would Senator McCain been superior in this respect?

Re:Say it ain't so, Obama

[Bodhammer]

McCain would have been superior because of his ideology that is actually backed up with a lifetime record of achievement supporting those beliefs.

Re:Say it ain't so, Obama

[ProfessionalCookie]

Strawman!

Re:Say it ain't so, Obama

[Anonymous Coward]

McCain's corruption would have caused him to "compromise" by giving in to the Democrats all the time. Obama's corruption would only cause him "compromise" by giving in to the Democrats all the time.

Re:Say it ain't so, Obama

[kklein]

McCain would have been superior because of his ideology that is actually backed up with a lifetime record of achievement supporting those beliefs.

So, would this be the almost-religious fervor with which he preached deregulation, leading to the meltdown of the entire global economy, or some other achievements I and the other rational voters missed?

Re:Say it ain't so, Obama

[kklein]

Did you actually just call a black man a "chimpanzee?" Are you a bigot or some other kind of really stupid?

Re:Say it ain't so, Obama

[Machtyn]

Actually, as a conservative first, I would say that McCain would only be different in that the world and media would hate him for his strong national defense stance or because he's on the opposite side of Democrat, but his national policies (economy, etc) would not be very different from Obama's (with the exception of taxes and turning this country into a socialist economy).

Before exploding in fury

[snl2587]

Please read the last article linked in the summary. It definitely makes the appointment sound intelligent.

Re:Before exploding in fury

[4D6963]

But.. but.. he isn't one of us!

I mean, did Obama even consider the CowboyNeal option?

Re:Before exploding in fury

[sorak]

But.. but.. he isn't one of us!

I mean, did Obama even consider the CowboyNeal option?

I'm sorry. We already had a cowboy president and that didn't work out. I think we're going to stay away from cowboys for the next few years.

first

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama is stupid!

What is he doing?

Uh oh..

[j00bhaka]

Is he the same person who prosecuted The Pirate Bay? If so, our country is doomed.

I'm really curious....

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

about this. My first reaction was that it was wrong not to appoint a technologist as CTO. Then I read O'Reilly's article, which argues cogently that the appointment makes a lot of sense.

O'Reilly is someone for whom I have respect.

I'm really really curious about what the Slashdot community has to say on this.

Usually I'm writing on legal issues, which I know something about.

But I am not a technologist, and I have no expertise in government or in policy.

Re:I'm really curious....

[poetmatt]

taking someone who is not very tech-oriented/aligned and putting them as CTO is just like taking politicians and lawyers and asking them to draft bills on technology.

See how well that's been working for us?

Re:I'm really curious....

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

taking someone who is not very tech-oriented/aligned and putting them as CTO is just like taking politicians and lawyers and asking them to draft bills on technology. See how well that's been working for us?

Hope you get modded up for that one.

Re:I'm really curious....

[sdiz]

If you want to know todays' O'Reilly, try http://www.onlamp.com/onlamp/port25/

Communication from the Open Source Community at Microsoft, ugh...

Re:I'm really curious....

[Anonymous Coward]

Like a lot of Presidents, Obama is bringing talented people on board and then figuring out where they fit. This guy seems like a mini-Obama. The job description is not chief system architect, but rather more about defining a vision, hiring the best, communication, juggling competing priorities and conflicting directives, choosing the right programs to be funded, and monitoring the progress of those in place. Leadership and management, in other words.

Re:I'm really curious....

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

O'Reilly is even more backwards and loud mouthed than most people his age. I can't wait for the old generation to just die out already. Their legacy superstitions and bigotry have encroached far beyond what any reasonable person would find appreciable.

Uh oh. I think that includes me.

Re:I'm really curious....

[Quothz]

about this. My first reaction was that it was wrong not to appoint a technologist as CTO. Then I read O'Reilly's article, which argues cogently that the appointment makes a lot of sense.

This guy is a sensible choice, but perhaps not the best one. On one hand, he clearly is a technophile; he's had some nifty ideas and isn't afraid to hear new ones.

On the other hand, he seems to very much be a politician first and a technologist second. The video embedded in O'Reilly's commentary is telling: in the first four minutes, he uses the word "humbled", passively, five times. He can't resist buzzwords: "begin a conversation for dialogue" indeed. And if I hear him say "long-term strategic roadmap" one more time I'm'a puke.

So... I dunno. He looks good on paper, but he makes me want to scrub my brain after listening to him. He probably is a good choice for getting Obama's nationalized healthcare records system up and running. In other technology issues, I'm'a go out on a limb and predict that he'll turn out to be a fast-talking mouthpiece with very little real impact.

Re:I'm really curious....

[Anonymous Coward]

Oblig. "You must be new here" for assuming /. community reads linked articles.

We will have to see if Aneesh does a "heckuva job" or not.

Re:I'm really curious....

[videoBuff]

Up front, let me say that my response will be colored by the fact that I was in running for a CTO position of a fairly large company. I do not have any government background also.

CTO jobs generally mean different things in different companies. In situations where there is a CIO and CTO, generally CTO works within guidelines and strategies visualized by CIO and other C-level executives. CTO is concerned primarily with operational parameters like capacity building, capability building, and even confidence building.

CTO generally understands current technology trends, has an antenna up for receiving tectonic technology shifts, and can visualize alignment of company's business goals and technology goals.

Somebody from Silicon Valley will have feelers for technology shifts that may be difficult to replicate elsewhere. Aneesh Chopra, from limited background given in submitted story, may excel at alignment, particularly in a government position with multitude of stake holders. He seems quite capable of understanding current technology trends as any person from Silicon Valley.

So the question basically boils down to this - if CTO of USA is mainly responsible for operational issues as defined above, he is an excellent choice. On other hand, if CTO of USA is charged with coming up technology that nobody can even visualize now, there may be better choices.

Re:I'm really curious....

[whiledo]

On the other hand, he seems to very much be a politician first and a technologist second.

Translation: He won't say something politically dumb and wind up resigning in the first year.

Like pretty much 99% of actual geeks would.

Re:I'm really curious....

[oldhack]

"But I am not a technologist, and I have no expertise in government or in policy."

That never stopped anyone around here. Fire away - tell us what you really think.

Re:I'm really curious....

[Polumna]

While his post was insightful and deserves some moderation to that effect, I am going to have to disagree. Lawyers and politicians absolutely should be legislating technology because legislation is their job. I couldn't do it. I think our problem has been that they are doing it wrong, for a variety of reasons.

I find a great deal of irony in your original post and this reply, because while you are obviously a lawyer, your original post demonstrates *exactly* the behaviors I believe are the full requirements I would expect from a great tech executive or politician.

First, you obviously read a tech article on your own, in your free time, displaying interest. Second, you formed an opinion. Third, you reformed your opinion based on a respected expert. Fourth, and most importantly, you went to a large community of experts (to varying degrees) in order to modify your opinion with the input of people with a greater professional interest in the subject than your own.

In all seriousness, Mr. Beckerman, despite being a lawyer and not a professional technologist, you would make a better CTO (or politician) than the vast majority of the rest of us. I would even venture to say that technologists shouldn't be forming large policies for as diverse and large an organization as the federal government. They are more likely to have biases and pay less attention to technologies they are less familiar with through professional experience.

As a side note, if you could chair the FCC or hop on in some tech position at the FTC, I would really appreciate it.

Re:I'm really curious....

[Daniel Phillips]

I am deeply skeptical that a non-technologist can perform as well in this role as a similarly qualified candidate that additionally has a technology background. I am equally skeptical that no such candidate could be found.

Re:I'm really curious....

[Alakaboo]

O'Reilly is even more backwards and loud mouthed than most people his age. I can't wait for the old generation to just die out already. Their legacy superstitions and bigotry have encroached far beyond what any reasonable person would find appreciable.

Uh oh. I think that includes me.

I think the GP must have been flaming Bill O'Reilly, not Tim O'Reilly, the author of TFA.

You've never seemed particularly loud-mouthed or bigoted to me. Don't go away, we need you. :-)

Re:I'm really curious....

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

Is it possible you were confusing Tim O'Reilly with Bill O'Reilly? Tim O'Reilly is a good guy.

Re:I'm really curious....

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

I find a great deal of irony in your original post and this reply, because while you are obviously a lawyer, your original post demonstrates *exactly* the behaviors I believe are the full requirements I would expect from a great tech executive or politician. First, you obviously read a tech article on your own, in your free time, displaying interest. Second, you formed an opinion. Third, you reformed your opinion based on a respected expert. Fourth, and most importantly, you went to a large community of experts (to varying degrees) in order to modify your opinion with the input of people with a greater professional interest in the subject than your own. In all seriousness, Mr. Beckerman, despite being a lawyer and not a professional technologist, you would make a better CTO (or politician) than the vast majority of the rest of us. I would even venture to say that technologists shouldn't be forming large policies for as diverse and large an organization as the federal government. They are more likely to have biases and pay less attention to technologies they are less familiar with through professional experience. As a side note, if you could chair the FCC or hop on in some tech position at the FTC, I would really appreciate it.

Thank you very much for your kind words. And I did indeed do the things you said I did (read a tech article, form an opinion, reform my opinion based on a respected expert, and go to a large community containing many experts to further modify my opinion). But I would not feel qualified to supervise those experts. I would like to learn from them, yes. I would like them to learn from me, yes. But I would not want to tell them how to do their jobs.

Re:I'm really curious....

[pipingguy]

After about 27 years in engineering I switched to CAD support (a form of IT work dedicated to computer-aided design, visualization software, etc.) for a year. I now appreciate what these people do even though I am by no means as knowledgeable as they are. A bit of humility and understanding goes a long way when trying to accomplish things across departmental boundaries.

Re:I'm really curious....

[RyoShin]

The problem isn't having someone in a high position who knows little about much under their control; do you honestly expect the CEO of each and every company to know how to patch cables and manage a website?

The problem is when you get someone like that and they *think* they know everything, or think they don't need to know anything. So long as someone in a high-up position recognizes the fact that s/he does not know everything, and makes sure to surround him/herself with individuals who do (or at least have contacts who can answer questions), then that won't be a problem so long as s/he has good critical thinking skills and is willing to not only listen but discuss with those advise him/her. You could argue that CTO is a bit more specialized, and thus should have leeway; my response is that even within IT there's such a vast array of knowledge and positions that someone at that level can't be expected to know half of that. Having more tech experience is better than less, but if Obama's CTO can make good decisions and listen to good people, I'm not concerned.

I certainly don't expect my Iowa senators to know about life in "the hood"; what I do expect is that they seek out and listen to those who do when votes arise that effect those kinds of areas. Same for areas of technology. I don't fret about politicians and technology votes because the politicians don't have tech experience, I fret because politicians are generally self-centered idiots.

Re:I'm really curious....

[coaxial]

Let's also keep in mind that this isn't really a CTO position. In a company a CTO makes strategic purchasing decisions. It's a day-to-day operations job. This "National CTO" is nothing like that. It's a position that makes public policy. It's a position that outlines national goals.

Keep in mind that one of the big goals that the Obama administration is pushing for is digital healthcare records. It's one of the centerpieces to their plan to cut healthcare costs nationwide, and it's one part that has broad support in the political, insurance, and medical communities. The Administration has placed a priority on getting that to work, and this guy has direct experience in that area.

Whining that the guy can't configure a network card, is just as lame as whining that the head of the NIH didn't practice medicine, but only conducted medical research and managed grants. Well, that's the job man.

Re:I'm really curious....

[poetmatt]

To your question here, the answer is: outside the US, every owner of any bsuiness, CEO or not, does know how stuff works. Not always patching a cable, but do they have a good understanding beyond a simple layman on issues? absolutely, 100%.

There's some sort of nationalized US stupidity where bad ceo's don't feel they need to understand the underpinnings of their work.

In contrast, my CEO prefers firefox over IE. He knows about all the tech issues from VPN down the line, and I have spoken with him about them (I'm not even in IT myself for the company). If you don't understand something, how can you make sure its a: used efficiently or b: used properly? We're an engineering firm that has 0 to do with that aspect of technology, but yet he is knowledgeable about tech and is a fantastic ceo. coincidence? I doubt it.

This is like saying "you know how to drive a car but you shouldn't have to know how to change the oil". Reality here: it helps to have a basis of common skills, even if you specialize in something else.

If you don't have a common skill, you're going to understand something wrong, and get politicians who think the internet is a series of tubes trying to draft laws. See my original post. How well did that work in explaining to them net neutrality or DRM or DMCA, copyright, patents? The list goes on.

as expected

[Gothmolly]

Liberal? check
Brown? check
Intelligensia? check
Farking the public again? check

Re:as expected

[barbam]

Is it 2012 yet?

Re:as expected

[PopeRatzo]

Is it 2012 yet?

Note that the Obama-hater is unable to use a calendar.

Re:as expected

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the end of the world according to the Mayan Cal. moron.

lalala

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but Obama is turning into another useless president.
Change.. riiight.

Need a serious change to the system, neither party has any concern for the people.

Hope and Change!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you know? A non-IT guy for CTO. Brilliant. Now THAT is hope and change!

Oh well, I guess we should be getting used to these shockingly bad decisions by the Obama administration. What's next? Emeril in change of the military? Norman Schwarzkopf in charge of healthcare? Ann Coulter in charge of the HUD (oh wait, she's not eligible, she paid her taxes)?

Maybe the solution to solving our government's technology problems is to just throw another trillion dollars or so at it. I mean, what's another trillion when we've already spent $12.8 Trillion? That'll only bring Obama's deficit to like 83% of our GDP instead of 80%.

Ya know what, for good measure, if $1 Trillion is good $1.5 Trillion is better -- let's do that and create and require the unionization of IT workers. That's what we'll do! It'll be patriotic!

Is it 2012 yet?

Re:Hope and Change!!!

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

What do you know? A non-IT guy for CTO. Brilliant. Now THAT is hope and change! Oh well, I guess we should be getting used to these shockingly bad decisions by the Obama administration. What's next? Emeril in change of the military? Norman Schwarzkopf in charge of healthcare? Ann Coulter in charge of the HUD (oh wait, she's not eligible, she paid her taxes)?

How about putting RIAA lawyers in charge of the Department of Justice? Would that work?

Re:Hope and Change!!!

[TheoMurpse]

Your argument doesn't make much sense unless you think that only military men can be President of the US. Recall that the President is the leader of the military.

Re:Hope and Change!!!

[ducomputergeek]

No, but I do believe that a President *should* have spent time in the military, preferably as an enlisted man not an officer. Hell, even Plato argued that leaders should have military experience a couple thousand years ago. But sadly, we don't seem to nominate philosopher kings.

His ways are of a higher purpose

[Jonas Buyl]

Let us not forget we must not question His actions for His ways are impenetrable.

Re:His ways are of a higher purpose

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama is not the Queen.

Change to the system

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to substantial change the system, check out the open source Metagovernment.
http://metagovernment.org/

non-tech Chief Technology Officer

[viralMeme]

I've seen this at a lot of organizations, the CIO is invariable a non-techie hired on for his skills at schmoozing management than any tech knowledge. Management find real techies a threat as they might get found out. They mostly spend their time quoting the tech press and spouting phrases like 'integrated innovation' and 'empowerment'. The top man specifically hires people dumber then him, else they could be as threat to his job. In turn the CTO hires someone even dumber than he is, and so on down the line. If something 'technical' comes along they hire in a 'consultant', fire him and take credit for his work. Of course any real in-house techies have to be transferred before they figure out just how stupid the CIO really is. So you end up with a business where the longest serving employee has been there less then ten months. Eventually the company goes down the tubes ...

Re:non-tech Chief Technology Officer

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

I've seen this at a lot of organizations, the CIO is invariable a non-techie hired on for his skills at schmoozing management than any tech knowledge. Management find real techies a threat as they might get found out. They mostly spend their time quoting the tech press and spouting phrases like 'integrated innovation' and 'empowerment'. The top man specifically hires people dumber then him, else they could be as threat to his job. In turn the CTO hires someone even dumber than he is, and so on down the line. If something 'technical' comes along they hire in a 'consultant', fire him and take credit for his work. Of course any real in-house techies have to be transferred before they figure out just how stupid the CIO really is. So you end up with a business where the longest serving employee has been there less then ten months. Eventually the company goes down the tubes ...

From what I know about the technology world, you have hit the nail on the head! So why is O'Reilly wrong? What is the fallacy in his thinking?

Re:non-tech Chief Technology Officer

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

I've seen this at a lot of organizations, the CIO is invariable a non-techie hired on for his skills at schmoozing management than any tech knowledge. Management find real techies a threat as they might get found out. They mostly spend their time quoting the tech press and spouting phrases like 'integrated innovation' and 'empowerment'. The top man specifically hires people dumber then him, else they could be as threat to his job. In turn the CTO hires someone even dumber than he is, and so on down the line. If something 'technical' comes along they hire in a 'consultant', fire him and take credit for his work. Of course any real in-house techies have to be transferred before they figure out just how stupid the CIO really is. So you end up with a business where the longest serving employee has been there less then ten months. Eventually the company goes down the tubes ...

I can't believe your comment got a downward moderation as "flamebait"; I think it deserves to "+5 Insightful". I've even reproduced it on my blog here.

Re:non-tech Chief Technology Officer

[pandaman9000]

Truthfully, it is insightful. It is also incorrect in one major area. The company doesn't go down the tubes, because those few brilliant people with zero aspirations or self motivation will never be fired, and will tirelessly crank out results for their management. The will be paid more than their soon to be released peers, but never anywhere near their true worth.

It is the way corporate America works. There are many subtle variations on this, but it always boils down to competent "followers" and incompetent, but politically savvy (and greedy) leadership.

Insert the usual, IMO, YMMV, FWIW, and I{don't like}ANAL.

Re:non-tech Chief Technology Officer

[viralMeme]

I can't believe your comment got a downward moderation as "flamebait"; I think it deserves to "+5 Insightful". I've even reproduced it on my blog here [blogspot.com]

Jeez, thanks, it's nice to be appreciated. As for getting modded down, that's known as mod trolling ..

Re:non-tech Chief Technology Officer

[viralMeme]

From what I know about the technology world, you have hit the nail on the head! So why is O'Reilly wrong? What is the fallacy in his thinking?

I don't know if he is wrong, but going from that article, I just get a slight wave of nausea. When ever I see market-speak in a 'technical' document it invariably means that it's aimed at the non-technical sector with just enough buzz phrases to keep them warm and fuzzy. Just check out some of the key phrases:

"The responsibilities of the CIO are to use information technology to transform the ways in which the government does business. The CTO will develop national strategies for using advanced technologies to transform our economy and our society, such as fostering private sector innovation, reducing administrative costs and medical errors using health IT, and using technology to change the way teachers teach and students learn"

[actually, that's from a White House Doc. For me that says: we don't know what we are on about :) ]

Will any of this this ' private sector innovation ' lead to computers that can store-and-retrieve records in a secure and reliable manner and I would have thought that errors in medical records would have been a high priority from the beginning. From a link to a brief bio they refer to 'business intelligence software solution'. Yet another high-level-pseudo-technical-sounding phrase. I usually see that kind of thing in 'computer' magazines that contain no actual computer information aimed at the non-technical CTO sector. I don't actually read them but I have had my own CTO quote bits out of one to me, at least until he found out I know something.

My main point was in reference to appointing a non-techie to the post of CTO. For me, as a dyed-in-the-wool techie. regardless of how many qualifications you have, if you've never (from scratch) built an electronic device or wrote some code, then you aren't a real techie.

I've seen too many cases of people talking the correct pseudo-technical sounding babel to management, and it being accepted, as neither party know what they are on about, and willfully denying what their own people tell them. As after all, the consultant comes in trailing masses of certifications and awards. Generally it's a lot easier to write about how to do something, than actually implement it.

Re:non-tech Chief Technology Officer

[snsh]

Yes, I heard once that Google Inc. is careful to only hire "A list" employees, because if they hire any "B list" employees, then those people will end up hiring "B list" employees and it's downhill from there.

Re:non-tech Chief Technology Officer

[Anonymous Coward]

C*O requirements in the Obama administration:

(1) pulse (optional).

Re:non-tech Chief Technology Officer

[HeavyDevelopment]

I was just laid off from a company just like this. The company had $400M in gross sales. I was hired as a senior web developer. My direct report had been with the company for 10 years, but had zero knowledge of web development. It was extremely frustrating to deal with someone that even after 3 years at the job still did not have rudimentary concepts of web development and architecture down. I had to lead every initiative to get anything done--like using a methodology in application development; separating the web and database servers; getting working backups of the SQL server that ran the company's intranet; version control using subversion; separating development, testing and production on to different servers; the list goes on.

She was put into this position by a CIO that was hired a year before I got there. He had been in the industry for some time, but his knowledge was a decade behind. Most of the IT department was MSCEs--actually they may not have even be certified. The company's DBA was terribly inadequate and useless. I usually tried to avoid having to contact this person. There were a couple guys that had some savvy, but for the most part they were clock punchers. The one thing that drove me crazy is that there was not one single programmer (ie someone that knew Java and C) on the IT staff. They would always hire a consultant. That person would come in and take a month to get up to speed and then spend another month undoing what the last person did and then another couple months of actual development that may or may not work right. That person would complete the contract and we would never hear from them again. So to fix or maintain the code they would have to hire someone else. Also the mantra around the IT department was to buy a piece of proprietary software, opposed to developing their own solution or looking at open source. I think that most of the people were intimidated by having to use the Linux command line. I lead another initiative to use MySQL and Subversion--the first use of open source. And when it was up and working with costing zero in budget for software, they were impressed with the bottom line but still skeptical because it didn't have a MS logo on it.

The problem lies, IMHO, in many cases the people with seniority have an education and knowledge that is decades old (LOL they know how to program in COBOL!). It's only in relatively new technology companies where they are hire because of a person's knowledge and not their seniority in the industry, do the CTOs and CIOs usually have current knowledge. As for most corporate IT departments, I do not think that the typical corporate hierarchy produces the best CTO or CIO.

Re:non-tech Chief Technology Officer

[malkavian]

From what I know about the technology world, you have hit the nail on the head!
This isn't because there's a flaw in the structure; it's a flaw in the implementation. From my experience of the world of commerce, most managers aren't really managers. They may have 'business qualifications' and a long period of rising through the ranks of a company, but it doesn't make them managers.
A true manager exists to use the available resources in the best way to tackle a problem, and to do logistics support for those below them, along with providing an accurate picture of the state of their control as far as it fits in the bigger picture to those above.
What all too commonly happens in management is that the 'manager' decides that something will be done. Gets the message from those below (who are specialists) that this isn't possible, or at least is very stupid. The 'manager' simply says "I'm the boss. Do it. Look at my 'business qualifications', they say I can do this.".
If they don't listen, then information doesn't flow, and if the information doesn't flow, the technology is likely to be incorrect (right answer, wrong question). In other words, they're not actually a 'manager', they're more a dictator.
I've worked in IT for a goodly time now (closing on for 20 years), and worked in environments where highly technical people have run the shop, ones where non techies run the show, and even run the show myself, and I personally think it all comes down to the management quality.
If someone in management listens, and is astute enough to be able to call deals, asks questions of the specialists and use that information to assemble the best resources to tackle the problem (even if it is the specialists who really dictate what the teams are), then things get done well irrespective of how well the manager understands the tech. If they can't provide the right kind of logistics, and work out the right way of putting the right people in the right place, then the tasks will fail.
It's not about how 'technical' the management chain is (I've seen some huge screwups because the management was highly technical, just didn't really understand the business well enough to co-ordinate the implementation of systems that actually did what the business needed, rather than doing what was technically a good system. Just practically wrong). It's how generally savvy the manager is. Sadly, there seem to be far fewer checks on how bright managers are than on their subordinates, which is where the true problems lie.

Re:non-tech Chief Technology Officer

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

It's not about how 'technical' the management chain is (I've seen some huge screwups because the management was highly technical, just didn't really understand the business well enough to co-ordinate the implementation of systems that actually did what the business needed, rather than doing what was technically a good system. Just practically wrong). It's how generally savvy the manager is.

I'm not saying that technical knowledge is the only component of being a good technology leader. Being a good manager consists of many qualities. But to me, one of the qualities in being a "savvy" technology leader is to have a true understanding of the technology.

Re:non-tech Chief Technology Officer

[pipingguy]

Always hire people smarter than yourself (and be loyal to them), that way you learn things. Let's face it, smart people are usually easier to get along with than dumb ones.

Re:non-tech Chief Technology Officer

[linzeal]

It is not fallacy in his thinking it is ambition. O'Reilly is putting himself out there as someone who can be trusted by this new CTO for calming down the hordes of geeks out there who have experience dealing with CTO folk who do not know an IP packet from a ZIP drive. Seriously as someone who has been in multiple startups with good and bad CTO folk the best ones imho are always those who retired from a tech job and than got an MBA later in life not the MBA who learns tech on the job.

Re:non-tech Chief Technology Officer

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

It is not fallacy in his thinking it is ambition. O'Reilly is putting himself out there as someone who can be trusted by this new CTO for calming down the hordes of geeks out there who have experience dealing with CTO folk who do not know an IP packet from a ZIP drive. Seriously as someone who has been in multiple startups with good and bad CTO folk the best ones imho are always those who retired from a tech job and than got an MBA later in life not the MBA who learns tech on the job.

Very, very interesting. So you're saying Mr. O'Reilly may not be exactly on the sidelines as a disinterested observer.

Re:non-tech Chief Technology Officer

[Anonymous Coward]

Hasn't O'Reilly seemed almost apologetic lately for the Obama administration?

Re:non-tech Chief Technology Officer

[tchalvak]

I'm a techie, and it seems to me, that this is what they call a hybridization problem. To be a people person, managing people, is a JOB, it takes alot of getting used to, and a lot of work. Same with programming, or IT in general, there's a lot of skills to keep on top of, and a continually changing marketplace. So getting a hybrid person who's great at managing people and knowing who to put in charge of what, but who's also great at knowing exactly how to harness and guide technology, you're probably going to have to sacrifice parts of one aspect or another. So better someone strong at getting the right people under him in the right positions (*coughs*) than someone who knows all their technology, but not how to delegate to get things -done-.

Bag of Air Says What

[zmnatz]

I'm gonna reform copyright. The laws are faulty.
- Let me fill the DOJ with RIAA lawyers.
The current tech laws need reform.
- Let me appoint another windbag politician to do it instead of someone who actually knows what the hell bittorrent is.

Re:Bag of Air Says What

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

I'm gonna reform copyright. The laws are faulty.

- Let me fill the DOJ with RIAA lawyers.

The current tech laws need reform.

- Let me appoint another windbag politician to do it instead of someone who actually knows what the hell bittorrent is.

That was my initial reaction. But O'Reilly makes a cogent contrary argument. What is flawed in what O'Reilly is saying?

Re:Bag of Air Says What

[Jonas Buyl]

- Let me appoint another windbag politician to do it instead of someone who actually knows what the hell bittorrent is.

People in charge aren't supposed to know everything, that's why they have advisors. A techie as CTO will get lost in details and won't be able to think outside the box or will probably be too biased (e.g. Windows vs. Linux) and won't make a fair judgement. What we need is a bright leader and I believe that's what he is.

Re:Bag of Air Says What

[zmnatz]

I'm sorry, have you ever been to Virginia. There really aren't many bright politicians there.

Re:Bag of Air Says What

[pandaman9000]

O'Reilly's discourse is generalized and vague enough to land me a job as a teacher at MIT, if I use the same level of granularity in my resume'. While the guy may have actually done something, I do not get a Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Linus Torvaldis, etc kind of feel about his accomplishments.

I'd probably fail miserably at that teaching job, and this guy seems similarly equipped for his position.

I hope I am wrong. I also hoped i'd be wrong about a dem President+Congress combo meal. That combo is going to give me a heart attack from all the pork in it, and the price is so high that the entire country can't afford it.

I voted for McCain. Not because I was stoked about 'staying the course' or experiencing little change. It was because I am deathly afraid of anyone that makes me feel genuinely uplifted and excited when I listen to them. I usually use that approach when uncapping the K-Y. So did ObangYa.

Re:Bag of Air Says What

[pandaman9000]

You want a technology-AWARE person. Someone who's been in the field, and done some hardcore programming, network design, or a combination of tech skills and project management/people management combined with a tech background. Ultimately, the CTO/CIO is a manager that comes FROM a tech background, not moves TO one.

That last part highlights my issue with this guy.

Re:Bag of Air Says What

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

You want a technology-AWARE person. Someone who's been in the field, and done some hardcore programming, network design, or a combination of tech skills and project management/people management combined with a tech background. Ultimately, the CTO/CIO is a manager that comes FROM a tech background, not moves TO one. That last part highlights my issue with this guy.

And that is my issue with this guy.

Re:Bag of Air Says What

[HeavyDevelopment]

The problem with this is non-tech savvy CTOs invariably hires the wrong advisors, consultants, employees under him/her. So then the entire IT department is staffed by incompetent people. You need someone with current tech knowledge but with the ability to manage and make decisions. The ability to manage means that the person has the insight to know when to delegate and not get wrapped up in the details. To say that a non-technical person is better at making management decisions is patently false.

Re:Bag of Air Says What

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

The problem with this is non-tech savvy CTOs invariably hires the wrong advisors, consultants, employees under him/her. So then the entire IT department is staffed by incompetent people. You need someone with current tech knowledge but with the ability to manage and make decisions. The ability to manage means that the person has the insight to know when to delegate and not get wrapped up in the details. To say that a non-technical person is better at making management decisions is patently false.

Exactly my thinking. If I may analogize, once again, to my own field, in the legal profession, one of the most important professional tasks a senior lawyer performs for his or her clients is to hire, and retain, the right kind of junior lawyers to work on their matters, and to get rid of those who can't be trusted to provide superior legal skills and judgment. Only a lawyer, and only a good lawyer, could possibly make that call. There are plenty of people walking around in the legal field, who look and talk like good lawyers, who are absolute zeroes (in fact I've met a disproportionately large number of them since I began fighting the RIAA).

In the tech world, there are plenty of people with astounding skills who would not exactly make the best impression on the average person walking by. But a real programmer, and only a real programmer, would recognize their true worth. And there are also plenty of people in the information technology field who can create the appearance of being good without being good. If it were my company, I would want someone presiding over the process who really, really knows the difference.

Re:Bag of Air Says What

[servognome]

Someone who's been in the field, and done some hardcore programming, network design, or a combination of tech skills and project management/people management combined with a tech background. Ultimately, the CTO/CIO is a manager that comes FROM a tech background, not moves TO one.

If you pigeonhole people that way, you'll never find anybody qualified for the job

"As Chief Technology Officer, Chopra will promote technological innovation to help the country meet its goals from job creation, to reducing health care costs, to protecting the homeland."
So does the person need an extensive background in business (job creation), medicine (lower health care costs), law enforcement (protecting the homeland), and a number of other specialties to meet the administration's technology goals?

The CTO is a manager that comes from a background of applying technology to address social issues. At that level it's more important to know who to hire, than how it works.

Here's the question

[bogaboga]

Here's the question:

Does Open Source Software stand a chance with this guy or do we have to educate him on what OSS is all about?

Re:Here's the question

[Carlinya]

According to the full article, it seems so. *Waits for the whooosh!*

Re:Here's the question

[lilomar]

You must be old here. The answer is in TFA and in TRTTFFP.

(The Replies To The Fine First Post)

Welcome to the Obama Regime

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does anyone expect any different? The guy is an empty suit with NO idea what he is doing, I mean, he has ZERO political experience whatsoever. But hey, everyone voted him in on "hope and change"! Well, you people are getting it, and you sure deserve it.

Horrible

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand that Obama appointed a Secretary of State that doesn't know how to take shorthand, and a Defense Secretary that's never been a general and Treasury Secretary that's never discovered any buried treasure, not even once.

Ooooh, I'm so mad!

Please note that the average UID of the people making uninformed (didn't read TFA) anti-Obama comments here is over 1200000. Coincidence or astroturf?

Re:Horrible

[Anonymous Coward]

Judging from the idiomatic language, I think there's at least one sockpuppet here. And there's an astroturfing coming from one of the right-wing forums or channels.

On the other hand, the open-source-government guy modded himself up.

Too bad the intellectually honest people are too honest to screw with slashdot, as the web brownshirts do (and no, the crypto-fascists don't get to rewrite history with this term... In this scenario, the U.S. right wing is the Nazis).

Re:Horrible

[pandaman9000]

To wit:
Our Secretary of State has no balls.

What?

Re:Horrible

[Dragonslicer]

a Defense Secretary that's never been a general

In case anyone wasn't aware, Obama didn't so much appoint the Secretary of Defense as keep the guy that was already there.

Uh, I thought..

[rorya]

Leo Laporte was the tech guy?

Re:Uh, I thought..

[prndll]

How likely would Leo Laporte be to accept such a position under Obama?

Good Choice

[waldoj]

I worked with Aneesh earlier this year on an open government project here in Virginia. He asked me to function in a very small role in developing stimulus.virginia.gov, basically to serve as a programmer/open government guy to advocate from the inside for increased openness and strong adherence to public, open data exchange standards on the website and its API. Aneesh isn't a geek, but he "gets it," if I may return to that old chestnut that we all employed round about 2000. He might not know Unicode from Latin 1, but he surrounds himself with people who do know the difference, he gets the gist of it from them, and chooses the path that provides the most accessibility for the most data to the most people.

The guy is, incidentally, utterly exhausting to try to keep up with. I'm somebody to whom people say constantly "when do you sleep?", and even I find Aneesh an absolutely whirlwind of activity.

The only downside for me here is that Aneesh had expressed interested in me joining Governor Kaine's cabinet as "Senior Advisor for Open Government" (or something like that). I'd been in talks with my employer about taking a leave of absence. Now, of course, that won't happen. But since the (apparent) tradeoff is having Aneesh as the nation's CTO, that's A-OK by me.

Re:Good Choice

[molarmass192]

Good post ... good to hear he's in it for the right reasons and not the lobbyist perks. Hope he keeps the tech innovation in this country moving forward instead of mired in IP litigation.

Re:Good Choice

[eldapo]

Really good news.

Re:Good Choice

[Anonymous Coward]

You never know you might yet be up for a junior White House position. :-)

Re:Good Choice

[waldoj]

A guy can dream. :)

Re:Good Choice

[kklein]

Thanks for the great post. It always irritates me when we forget that all these people are just... people. That means you can go find out what they're like.

I work at a university with incredibly well-connected, frighteningly smart people. But you know what? All these people are just people. You hand 'em a beer at the beginning-of-term reception and bitch about politics the same as with anyone else--except these people sometimes are the people writing the policies.

People are people. Honestly, I think the pick is a good one.

Re:Good Choice

[Anonymous Coward]

I also worked with Aneesh as a member of the Broadband Roundtable in Virginia.
He is indeed hard to keep up with, listens to all suggestions, is not afraid to go against the status quo and brought Virginia into the modern era with the internet.
If he is allowed to keep going the way he did in Virginia, then the US will see some remarkable improvements.

Re:Good Choice

[Anonymous Coward]

TBH, we don't need a geek in charge, but someone who gets it. This seems to be a good call. I agree.

Most geeks I know would rather not be processing paperwork and bureaucratic horseshit all day. My boss has recently had to become a bureaucrat and he's hating it, a lot. He'd rather be messing with new technology and discovering how things work. I'm the same way. People slam upper management a lot here, but only one facet of a poor example of upper management. They have to deal with TONS of paperwork and all the issues with the company. They might seem to have it easy, going to golf games, etc. But usually that's after many many many hours of brain dulling paperwork and dealing with everyone who is under them. The type of management slashdot hates are the type who just go play golf and have assistants do ALL their work. But I work in a company where that is far from the truth. I'm an assistant btw.

Short version: This guy would be more prepared to tackle the nightmarish bureaucracy which is the federal government than a guy who'd rather spend his days programming and messing with computers. He gets it, and if he's smart, he'll hire techies and geeks to assist him instead of some random DC whores who try to get into power by getting jobs as assistants and are basically politician larvae.

Skillful Manager Skillful Technologist

[ITFromHome]

Skillful technical people cannot be guaranteed as successful managers of other skillful people. A manager is almost always going to be managing people who are more technically skilled at their job. If that's not the case, you are confusing the word manager with supervisor.

A CIO is the highest level of manager, and therefore his technical skills hardly come into play. We shouldn't criticize him because he doesn't have the same background as some of us. Obama doesn't know the exchange rate of the dollar to the South African Rand or the unemployment rate in South Dakota off hand. He leads people whose job it is to keep up foreign relations with SA and others who create job opportunities in South Dakota.

I don't get it...

[Hurricane78]

...can someone from the USA please explain to me, what this C*Os have to do with anything in the government, and how they relate to it. Because I thought (from my noobish simplified perspective) you had a parliament that is elected by the people, and a second one, that is elected by the first parliament. And a president that is somehow directly, but yet still indirectly elected by the people.

But if you have chief anything officers of everything, who are chosen by the president saying so (after whatever happened internally), and they decide things, then this is all just a big farce, isn't it?

Either I don't get it, or this is all just a big elaborate trick to make people believe that they actually have any power in this, while in reality, they have none?

Re:I don't get it...

[Polumna]

If I could elaborate on whistlingtony's post... The CXOs can be thought of as [often unofficial] cabinet members. Much like there are different commissions like the FCC, FTC or Department of Agriculture that operate under executive power, it's really just delegation of the president's responsibilities. They have power in that they generally operate under executive authority. They have no power in that the president can pretty much hire/fire them at will and reverse their decisions and such in the instance that he disagrees after the fact. They just handle banal things for the president that he: doesn't want to, doesn't have time for, or doesn't have the necessary expertise in.

Also, if I read your post correctly, you have a slight misunderstanding of US government. Both of our parliamentary bodies are elected by the people. The US Constitution doesn't exactly dictate how states choose senators, so it is theoretically possible that the first parliamentary body could elect the second. However, to my knowledge, all states choose senators based on some variation, at least, of a popular vote.

Re:I don't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Both houses of congress are elected by the people directly. One is by district (piece of a state; all districts have approximately the same population) with two year terms and the other is by state with two senators per state with six year terms (staggered every two years).

The president appoints many advisors to the Cabinet as well as various somewhat unofficial high-level positions like "Drug Czar" and apparently now CTO. These positions are part of the executive branch, so, theoretically, they are just implementing laws passed by Congress. In reality, the executive branch has been increasing acting on its on accord across the history of the US with the recent transgressions of the Bush administration being the most visible examples.

Re:I don't get it...

[colinrichardday]

The US Constitution doesn't exactly dictate how states choose senators, so it is theoretically possible that the first parliamentary body could elect the second.

No. See the Seventeenth Amendment. Before that Article I, Section 3 stated that senators were to be chosen by their respective state legislatures.

Re:I don't get it...

[Polumna]

Right. Sorry, I was probably thinking of the various weird state legislatures. (Though, for the record, I.3 still didn't dictate *how* the state legislatures decided. In fact, I'll have to look up how that normally happened per state prior to 1913.)

They couldn't afford relocation.

[Anonymous Coward]

They couldn't afford relocation.

The real question is...

[Anonymous Coward]

can he run linux?

'leverage...promote...foster w/ a special emphasis

[smchris]

Yeah, those are the sorts performance goals I look for in a job too.

I'm sure he'll be great.

Tech guys?

[prndll]

From the way the article reads...I guess only a Silicon Valley name can be a "tech guy"???

Can someone explain to me what the "CTO" is?

[biggerboy]

What is expected of this CTO? Is he supposed to be like the Surgeon General is for healthcare, but without the nifty outfit? Will he be in commercials saying "Hey Kids, Watch Out When You Surf to Pr0n sites?"

Why a techie with leadership skills is better

[presidenteloco]

Qualifications for National CTO:

1. He/she has to know what he does and does not know.
(Debugging code teaches you this, and the appropriate level of humility, in spades.)

2. More generally, he/she has to have a rational enough mind about what is going to work and what not, based on scientific principles, including scientific sociological principles.

3. He/she has to be creative enough to understand and be appropriately excited by other most creative "next big things". i.e. he/she has to be able to imagine the next turning points in the technological future based on the possibilities and gaps in the technological present.

4. He/she has to be an excellent listener, with full comprehension, and an understanding of peoples' motivations, and thus an excellent communicator and leader.

You got modded down by mgt. idiots around here

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason you were modded down as 'flamebait', is because this place is crawling with "non-technical mgt. idiots", & you were/are COMPLETELY correct about them. They are threatened by anyone that knows more than they do and that can expose them for the MBA bearing fakes they really are, as far as the art & science of computing. I too agree, that the "company will go down the tubes" with a blind-man @ the wheel (in other words, someone running the show in a company that deals in tech, but has NO tech under his skills belt whatsoever) & the entire nation of the United States has fallen victim to these "slogan spouting rats" that have no clue/idea whatsoever in the areas they are "leading" & thus they make HUGE mistakes, because they have no inkling of what's going on. I suppose it sort of "boils down" to something like this - I personally most certainly wouldn't want to go to a surgeon that had never performed surgery for instance, and I don't think anyone sane would either.

Re:You got modded down by mgt. idiots around here

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

The reason you were modded down as 'flamebait', is because this place is crawling with "non-technical mgt. idiots", & you were/are COMPLETELY correct about them. They are threatened by anyone that knows more than they do and that can expose them for the MBA bearing fakes they really are, as far as the art & science of computing. I too agree, that the "company will go down the tubes" with a blind-man @ the wheel (in other words, someone running the show in a company that deals in tech, but has NO tech under his skills belt whatsoever) & the entire nation of the United States has fallen victim to these "slogan spouting rats" that have no clue/idea whatsoever in the areas they are "leading" & thus they make HUGE mistakes, because they have no inkling of what's going on. I suppose it sort of "boils down" to something like this - I personally most certainly wouldn't want to go to a surgeon that had never performed surgery for instance, and I don't think anyone sane would either.

I agree with you. I don't think a person not trained in technology should be supervising in the field of technology. It is a profession, and should be accorded the dignity of a profession. No lawyer can be supervised by a non-lawyer; no doctor can be supervised by a non-doctor; no technologist can be supervised by a non-technologist.

But what I'm trying to understand is this: if O'Reilly is wrong, why is he wrong?

IT is a pussy industry

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no other way to conclude. Can you imagine any other industry to be "lead" by people with no qualification in that particular industry?
Any other industry would refuse an outsider, but IT pretends it's okay to have a finance or whatever person - without any IT education, experience - to "oversee" or "run" IT.
IT is truly a pussy industry...

glorified secretaries

[whistlingtony]

all the chief whatsits and suchandsuch czars don't have any power... Think of them as glorified advisors / secretaries and you're closer to the mark.

-T

Re:Hope and Change Baby!!!

[sycodon]

The troll moderators are out in force. I guess their Sat. Morning Cartoons are over now.

Just because you don't agree doesn't mean the post is a troll. Didn't they teach you that when you watched Barney this morning?

I smell astroturf

[whistlingtony]

you know, I've been noticing a lot of similiar posts whenever Obama is mentioned... Stuff like:

"both parties suck, don't bother"
"Obama lied to us"
and lots of just little slams. Nothing concrete. Just little jabs here and there.

I look... and a lot of these are from ACs, or people who seem to have just registered and have very few comments on their record. I smell viral marketing at work....

Lets face it, Obama didn't run as a left wing ideologue. He's been in 100 days, and although many here are peeved at the appointment of RIAA folks to the DOJ, and everyone is pissed at the bailouts (although I suspect they'd be more pissed if it all tanked and they lost their jobs/houses/etc).... for the most part, Obama has been careful and pretty center of the road. He didn't yank us out of Iraq (which would have been pretty irresponsible IMO). He is yanking funding for stupid military projects that were money sinks. Good for him. He has pushed at teachers unions... Not a very socialist thing to do. He has pushed for healthcare. People get pissed at this, but I suspect they don't realize that when someone without healthcare goes to the ER, we foot the bill anyway. He has scruitinized his appointments more than anyone else.... You think tax problems for political appointees JUST NOW became a problem?

bah, this is just my opinion. Feel free to have your own....

The point is, he's been pretty calm, politically centered for a Dem, and careful in his actions. I think he's doing fairly well given the situation. If there is an attempt to influence public opinion... I Hate Viral Marketing.

Turn your internal virus detectors on folks.

-T

Re:I smell astroturf

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of them are from Free Republic and other retarded right wing sites. Slashdot, Reddit and Digg have all been targeted.

Re:I smell astroturf

[DigiShaman]

You're the one that's Astroturfing.

Did it ever occur to you that Slashdot is mainly left leaning and thus those on the right want to remain anonymous? For good reason: We are persecuted by a bunch of Stalinists. Some of us (such as myself) actually have the balls to stand up and tell it like it is... Obama is WORSE than Carter. And sure, we will be modded as a troll (or worse if given the option), but at least I understand that life is too short to care about what others think about me. I only care about the truth, and how THAT affects the world!

Re:I smell astroturf

[Anonymous Coward]

Bully on you for speaking your mind.

The fact remains, though. Slashdot is being targeted by right wing astroturfers.

And on the "left-leaning" thing... Really? What's with the martyr stuff with the Republicans? You were in control for decades. Every "news" show calls the AEI or Heritage for "balance". You can get down from your cross now.

And about Carter... He was the closest thing to your supposed ideals that you will ever get, and you guys hate him. Hilarious.

Re:Skillful Manager Skillful Technologist

[pandaman9000]

.............And the less leadership knows of the area they are leading, the less effective they are. Electing a first term senator to the highest elected office in the nation might have been folly. Oh, wait. I see it IS folly.

You have to have been a solid player in the game, in order to successfully know if you are making a wise choice, or being played.

Honestly...it could have been worse...

[thejynxed]

he could have nominated/appointed the likes of Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, or Darl McBride.

That being said, I'll hold a wait-and-see approach to this guy.

Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, technology does not matter. What matters is the knowledge about how and what technology to apply to real life problems. That's a task for non-technical person. Nearly nothing about technology is about technology.

Re:Duh

[Hucko]

Isn't the job of a 'technologist' about applying the tech products to problems in the most effective way?

Re:Hope and Change Baby!!!

[blind biker]

I'm with you on that, 100%. Partly because I've been on the receiving end of such crap (disguised as -1 Offtopic !) and mostly because I see very insightful posts that say what has to be said even if it's unpopular, modded down.

This site should encourage the spelling out of unpopular but truthful views.

You can't manage what you don't know.

[ShipIt]

It has to be said, over, and over again: you can't manage what you don't know. The worst managers I've met in this industry were non-technical, woke up one morning and decided they were engineers, then went about destroying projects and teams. An absolute disaster.

Re:You can't manage what you don't know.

[Beelzebud]

You can't criticize what you don't know either.
From everything I'm reading about the guy, he seems qualified for the job.

Re:You can't manage what you don't know.

[ShipIt]

You can't criticize what you don't know either.

You should take your own words to heart, my friend.

This gentlemen lacks the academic credentials, actual work experience in a nuts-and-bolts IT role, and the track record of success in such a role to be an effective leader in this appointment. Bachelor of Arts? Masters in Public Policy? Please.

The idea that managers in one field (ie healthcare) can be interchanged into another (ie IT) is a myth. It's a bush-league mistake and one that is very costly and damaging.

Re:You can't manage what you don't know.

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

This gentlemen lacks the academic credentials, actual work experience in a nuts-and-bolts IT role, and the track record of success in such a role to be an effective leader in this appointment. Bachelor of Arts? Masters in Public Policy? Please. The idea that managers in one field (ie healthcare) can be interchanged into another (ie IT) is a myth. It's a bush-league mistake and one that is very costly and damaging.

And one that is probably at the root of much of what is wrong in American business, today. Professional managers whose primary area of expertise is making themselves look good.

If the tech industry had an organization...

[Anonymous Coward]

If the tech industry had an organization to represent the interest of their members this could never happen. All other decent professions would refuse such decision. Only the "tech industry" is stupid enough to not get organized and let others rule them. Try this with lawyers, doctors, accountants...

hiring a non-medical Surgeon General ..

[rs232]

"What is expected of this CTO? Is he supposed to be like the Surgeon General is for healthcare, but without the nifty outfit?"

A good Surgeon General would be someone with a medical background and the ability to talk to the politicians and captains of industry. Given two equal candidates, what would be the logic in hiring the non-medical one.

Experience

[nurb432]

Well, Obama has no real leadership experience either, so why not be consistent?

I guess its better then appointing a fox to watch the henhouse like has happened in other cases recently.

From Virginia...

[ukyoCE]

I don't know how much Aneesh is responsible for, but I've been pleasantly surprised by my home state's technology initiatives. We do pretty much everything online these days - DMV, property values, utilities, car taxes.

A number of years back the virginia state government charged you an extra ~$10 to make payments online, compared to sending the same credit card number to them in the mail to be processed by hand. That nonsense is long gone, thankfully.

Is this really the worst thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

After all, Bill Gates is a tech guy.

This Won't End Well

[kilodelta]

Non techies shouldn't be appointed to positions like this. I know I'll catch flak but who else to champion things like Net Neutrality?

Re:This Won't End Well

[Dan541]

It's the same with the judges who oversee RIAA cases, some of them don't have a fucking clue either.

Re:This Won't End Well

[kilodelta]

No doubt, a judges specialty is the arcana of law. My specialty is the arcana of information science.

Re:This Won't End Well

[servognome]

Non techies shouldn't be appointed to positions like this. I know I'll catch flak but who else to champion things like Net Neutrality?

Net Neutrality doesn't need the CTO to champion it, it's already on the agenda
Protect the Openness of the Internet: Support the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet.

The administration doesn't live in a vacuum, they have experts to advise them.

Re:Non-techincal Bosses

[InsertCleverUsername]

Well... The best bosses for programmers are fellow coders, but things often don't work that way. The Catch-22 is that people who are passionate about technology rarely want to spend their time managing others. And when forced into such a position, they're often not very good at it. Somewhat opposed skill sets, I guess.

Keeping up with the rapidly changing field --and being really good at it-- requires spending most of your time actually doing it, so if you're spending the majority of your time managing people, it becomes very challenging to do much more than understand current trends. If a someone is good at management and they get the technology big picture, that's often sufficient.

Cost

[bobbuck]

wanting to get them young and convert them to your ideology, at any cost.

Well, as a taxpayer I'd like to teach them at the minimal cost. Windows and Office cost more than the hardware. Is it really such a big deal to switch word processors? Are the people that learned WordStar unemployed?

Re:Hope and Change Baby!!!

[GaratNW]

I disagree with modding down troll simply because of a policy disagreement. That said, Barbam's post is basically a troll. It's attempting to score political points with NO facts.

- "Obama's deficit" ... you mean the deficit that didn't exist 8 years ago before Bush and 12 years of a Republican congressional majority. A deficit that he inherited and is left in the unenviable position of attempting to fix. Making it sound like this is entirely Obama's fault for the situation we're in (and attempting to change the discussion to a different topic, the deficit), despite his having been in office less than four months. Troll antics.
- "Oh wait, she's not eligible, she paid her taxes".. shine a light on every politician, and you'll probably find efforts to evade or minimize taxes. Not an excuse, but also a thin slice of his appointees that of course Fox and other conservative mouth pieces have made sound like the death of the world. But, what does this add to the discussion? Trollish point scoring.
- "unionization of IT worker", magically, a brand new complaint in an article that doesn't even mention it. Changing the subject with tin foil hat conservative talking points. How is it possibly relevant to the topic at hand?
- Numerous ridiculous suggestions for other cabinet positions, instead of actually focusing on the appointee's qualifications or lack thereof.

Simply put, it was probably modded troll because it IS a troll, not because he might have an unpopular stance int he /. crowd. Not that that hasn't happened, but this is a poor example to evangelize.

Techies vs. Managers

[stewbacca]

I thought it was accepted that techies don't make good managers, and managers don't make good techies? Look at any Applied Information Management grad program in the US and they all have the same thing in common--you have to be good at management, yet you only need basic understanding of current technologies. As a CIO, it will be your job to make decisions about technology for others. There is no need to be an techie to be a good CIO.

Time has been on your side

[dereference]

The legal profession has arguably been around since the dawn of civilized society. IT simply hasn't existed as a profession for any substantive time, in the grand scheme of things. If all IT workers refused to work under somebody, who hasn't "been doing it longer" than they, there would hardly be any IT workers at all. Think way back to the first few decades of the legal profession; don't you suppose quite a few lawyers worked for non-lawyers?

Suppose suddenly every organization needed a legal department in this fledgling time. There aren't enough lawyers (let alone any with vast experience) to go around, so you find somebody basically competent and hopefully well-versed in the concepts, and ask them to build a team of legal experts. This person then leverages any success and eventually becomes highly prized as an executive who can bring the right resources to bear, despite limited (if any) actual legal expertise.

Further keep in mind that there's no equivalent to a "bar" concept in IT, and there's not even (yet, perhaps) a consensus that this is desirable. So there's not really a reliable mechanism to allow one to decide whether a person is minimally competent. You virtually have to be an expert yourself to recognize another expert in the IT field with any confidence.

Basically I think you're neglecting the fact that the IT field itself is still extremely immature; I'd guess it will take at least a few more career-generations to reach the state where IT people are supervised exclusively by IT people.

Re:Time has been on your side

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

I think you're neglecting the fact that the IT field itself is still extremely immature; I'd guess it will take at least a few more career-generations to reach the state where IT people are supervised exclusively by IT people.

Yes I suppose you're right. But the question remains -- and I don't pretend to know the answer -- whether this particular job would more properly have gone to someone who actually has a tech background.

Re:Time has been on your side

[dereference]

But the question remains -- and I don't pretend to know the answer -- whether this particular job would more properly have gone to someone who actually has a tech background.

I didn't mean to evade your original question. For what it's worth, my take is that if you can at all accept my premise above (that the field is tremendously immature) the answer to this question becomes largely insignificant. Using a somewhat holistic definition of "properly" in this context, the answer quite obviously is yes. But I see this as little more than a hypothetical answer that presumes a more mature field.

As it is, I'm not sure it makes sense to even debate this matter, until it becomes at least moderately uncommon for a non-technical person to take on such a role. Right now (and for decades to come, I might suggest) this simply doesn't qualify as an extraordinary case within this field.

Though in a way it all serves as a humbling reminder of how far the IT field has yet to evolve, from a more practical perspective I just don't find this to be an intriguing disparity; it's merely a rather banal (albeit high-profile) example of what is still a very prevalent attitude.

By the way, I don't intend any disrespect to you for posing the question, nor do I find it inappropriate to discuss in this forum. In fact, I quite appreciate that you considered my posting and replied; I'm sure you've been flooded with countless other responses.

There be both wisdom and dragons here

[jwkckid1]

As a CSO myself I see that there is both wisdom and dragons in this decision by Barack. The wisdom in a nutshell is that he is not technically bias, which says allot of innovation and capitalizing on that. The Dragons are many and varried. He could be snowed into believing in smoke and mirrors technology that is dangerous to users of government systems and new proposes systems such as EMR Electronic medical records for medicare/medicade and the Vetrans administration, that may not fully protect members of the public appropriately or fully. Another dragon is that he will be pulled in several directions by big players such a Google and Microsoft of which Google is a known favorite of Vivek Kundra, CIO for the administration. As we all know Google is not now nor has it ever been particularly interested in users privacy or data security of PII data as their TOS'es clearly indicate numorous court cases have documented, and have demonstrated, with too early releases of Chrome, ect., as a glaring examples and MS has done with Vista. Regards, Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 284k members/stakeholders strong!) "Obedience of the law is the greatest freedom" - Abraham Lincoln "Credit should go with the performance of duty and not with what is very often the accident of glory" - Theodore Roosevelt "If the probability be called P; the injury, L; and the burden, B; liability depends upon whether B is less than L multiplied by P: i.e., whether B is less than PL." United States v. Carroll Towing (159 F.2d 169 [2d Cir. 1947] Updated 1/26/04 CSO/DIR. Internet Network Eng. SR. Eng. Network data security IDNS. div. of Information Network Eng. INEG. INC. ABA member in good standing member ID 01257402 E-Mail jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com My Phone: 214-244-4827

Re:Such wierd names. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Is USA education still so bad?

Obama (pronounced Oh bama: rhymes with Yo mama)
Chopra (pronounced Sho pra: rhymes with Yo car)

Maybe the answer to the question....

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

depends on what the job duties are. And maybe that's something that remains undefined. In any event I'm glad there was at least one place on the internet where both sides of the question were aired. It seems that everywhere else Tim O'Reilly's benediction appears to have been accepted as gospel.

What I love about Slashdot is we don't need no orthodoxy here.

What Tim O'Reilly said

[rogerbly]

I think Tim O'Reilly nailed this on his blog. Chopra is an excellent choice for making real progress. We don't need much emerging technology, we need more/better use of technology to improve government process, improve regulation, build technology commons between government and business, etc. "Why Aneesh Chopra is a Great Choice for Federal CTO" http://radar.oreilly.com/