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Senate Sources Say CTO Confirmation a Done Deal
theodp writes "On Tuesday, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation will examine the nomination of Aneesh Chopra as the first-ever federal Chief Technology Officer. Senate sources said they were not aware of any debate surrounding his nomination. You'd think the hack-for-$10-million-ransom of Virginia's Prescription Monitoring Program might be good for a question or two. Or the wisdom of appointing a CTO who's no technologist. It might also be worth bringing up Chopra's membership in TiE-DC, a group which promises 'exclusive peer networking events' with government officials and Federal contractors, including TiE-DC sponsor Microsoft. Are there any other issues that might make the Confirmation Hearing more than a rubber-stamping?"
As a Brit, this appointment won't affect me directly. But indirectly US Government policy has an important global effect. I'll be watching closely to see whether ODF becomes widely used as a document format by the US Federal Government.
The ODF Alliance have welcomed the appointment, as have Tim O'Reilly and a host of other people so I'm hopeful that it will turn out to be a good thing
Struggling to find a day everyone can make? WhenShallWe.com
Is there no way you could have written a more biased, uninformed summary? Geesh...
It's submissions like this that bring down the quality of slashdot.
I think the question is not are there issues that prevent a rubber stamp, but are there issues that SHOULD prevent a rubber stamp. What happens in Congress and what Congress is supposed to do are 2 different things. Politically, I think this is viewed as a fringe issue few will care about, so no ones wants to rock the popular Obama boat challenging it.
Why does your post above sound like diatribes I've heard about Jews and banking?
There are a lot of Indian IT workers. There are also a lot of American IT workers, too. So what?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
By all means, centralize all IT policy for the federal government into some agency that knows basically squat about what each department does. These days, inefficiency in government is about all the chance we get for freedom.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Dude, Congress ignored illegal wiretaps, Bush signing statements, being lied to about Iraq, and torture. But they did find time to have hearings on the Bowl Championship Series playoff system.
Do you think they really give a f*ck about something substantial?
Perhaps as a Canadian I don't appreciate the finer points of the American political process, but I'm having trouble finding a meaningful relationship in this sequence of events:
1. Senate Hearing is scheduled.
2. Random Blog quotes unnamed "[s]enate sources" as saying "they were not aware of any debate surrounding his nomination."
3. Slashdot editors release a news story with a headline of "Senate Sources Say CTO Confirmation a Done Deal"
4. Thinly disguised editorial consisting mostly of anti-Microsoft remarks and an assertion that confirmation hearings are a sham process is submitted as a news story to Slashdot.
Sigh. I guess I'll have to reconsider Slashdot as primary source of news and go back to reading newspapers and watching C-SPAN.
I think "knowing anything at all about what you're doing" stopped being a requirement for executive positions around the time of Worldcom's collapse... at least if you go by public statements by major corporate executives since then.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Why does your post above sound like diatribes I've heard about Jews and banking?
There are a lot of Indian IT workers. There are also a lot of American IT workers, too. So what?
-jcr
No need to yank out the race card, every time legitimate concerns are raised.
I read something negative about Microsoft in the summary and decided to jump in with an uninformed jibe of my own.
M$ is Teh Suxorz!
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
We have the best politicians money can buy.
Ramen
Need not be overly technically savvy, just be able to understand
the basic ideas and make a fair choice. Sadly. politics WILL rear
it's ugly head and compromise things. So sad.
God forbid someone in the VA-MD-DC area belongs to a group used for professional networking! As we all know, most non-profit professional groups have no sponsors whatsoever.
Also, who's to say he's not qualified to do the job just because of being labeled not a technologist back in 2005? Maybe what is needed for a CTO position is someone who understands how government and policy is applied (see MPP degree reference) to solve problems, and how the application of technology is a key factor?
I do agree, though, some questions about the Prescription Monitoring Program would be warranted.
But really, with the tax problems of other appointees, maybe most of this stuff is seen as small potatoes. If you don't agree, though, feel free to contact someone on the committee. The hearing starts on Tuesday.
Yes, we are supposed to be pissed at Microsoft for being connected to some group or another. I also gather that I'm supposed to be in a blind rage over the CTO nominee, who has shown very few divine powers and who may not in fact be a direct descendant of Jesus Christ.
If only Microsoft and the CTO nominee guy would leave us alone there would surely be paradise on Earth.
Interesting. Why do you believe that?
Because the truth of the matter is twofold:
a) First Democrats were terrified of losing everything in the wake of 9/11. Up until the invasion of Iraq, their strategy was to try and out Republican the Republicans on national security. And, the American people were -super- pissed off. There was a poll that came out just after 9/11 that showed that 90% of all Americans favored the use of nuclear weapons in Afghanistan. Despite the whole classroom incident, Bush on the rubble at the WTC with the megaphone was one of the greatest moments of any President in our lifetime, so great, frankly, that he milked that one moment for the rest of his term without ever really living up to it again.
You have to remember that if Democrats go lefty after 9/11, they might lose the Senate worse than they did. In those days, a Republican veto proof majority meant that Social Security becomes privatized. With the stakes that high, there's really no limit to what the Democrats would do to save their baby.
b) Democrats are actually patriots too, and they might have actually felt betrayed. Let's remember that in the 1990s American policy towards Islam was continually conciliatory in hopes of reaching out. We swept a bunch of terrorist attacks under the rug, pushed for a Palestinian state, looked the other way when Saddam cheated the sanctions, let Pakistan become completely islamified and ignored crackdowns in Saudi Arabia and Iran, and finally we bombed the wrong side in the balkans war, to do a favor to the muslims.
All of this brought us nothing, but 9/11. So yeah, they were in a political climate where they felt they had to be ruthless, or lose everything.
This is my sig.
The democrats have a filibuster proof majority in the Senate and solid control of the House. They aren't going to make their own party look bad and don't have to give the Republicans a chance to do it. This is the problem with putting a single party in almost total power. We will see more of this until some sort of balance is restored.
If you thought the Republicans did a lot of damage controlling the Executive and Legislative, just wait. The Democrats have an opportunity here with the overwhelming majority to do far more. For all of you scientists out there you are going to get a crash course in faith because that is about the only thing we can have that bad does not become worse over the next two or more years. We certainly don't have any control or checks or balances.
Understand that this is not a Republican vs Democrat rant. I don't trust any of them to look out for the good of the nation. That's why I am deeply concerned about any one party dominating government.
It seems our government is adopting the same policy as business when it comes to hiring CTOs - hire someone who does the best job of schmoozing and regurgitating what vendors tell them, and who has a really nice shiny degree. Seriously, anyone who has ever dealt with one knows what I'm talking about. A CTO who has a REAL grasp on tech anymore is very, very, very rare. The CTO of our state recently spent a ton of money moving our state from Notes to Exchange because "it is going to save a ton of money!" Three years later, lots of money spent, and the state's biggest agency got the legislature to pass an injunction to prevent them from having to migrate to the horribly botched Exchange installation. Not kidding. I work for a large company that's part of one of the biggest and most stable in the country - and our CTO/VP IT is just plain clueless. The person is great at regurgitating anything MS or HP tells them, but really doesn't know anything about IT or even the business we're in. It's to the point where some of us seriously wonder if that person has blackmail on upper management as every project they've spearheaded has been an utter disaster. Think Dunder Mifflin Infinity. Seriously. It all boils down to the fact that most technical smart folks will do everything in the world to avoid being at the top, and the BS that goes along with it. So we get morons with fancy degrees who do a good job of schmoozing, but utterly fail at their jobs. Awesome.
Any time you have a group, and more so if its religious fanatics, that controls a certain market you should worry about whether there is some backdoor stuff going on.
As a son of immigrants I know very well how its preferable to work with 'one's own kind' as some people refer it. As someone who has worked in the jewelry and fur business, I know very well how this works.
I also know that jews are exclusionary and racists so that makes me think that their minority is no different than others unlike other who think they are blessed with some super powers.
Of course, the heavy brainwashing received through the press and pop culture treats israelis as a protected species that can do no wrong.
Blaming all the ills on one group is wrong but giving carte blanche to religious freaks and be deathly afraid to criticize them is no better.
Is DC israeli occupied territory like Pat Buchanan claims? Try to find me any one groups/person in DC that ever criticized the chosen people. You wont. It is the great american taboo.
PS: When I say religious fanatics, Im referring to all brain dead morons who believe in the tooth fairy and the bogeyman and other fairy tales. Its easy to make fun of the ones we have in this country but there is no reason we should leave out the ones who would kill you for insulting their make believe world and the ones who would sue your ass.
We all discussed Aneesh Chopra on /. a month ago, folks. No less than Tim O'Reilly has vouched for him as a technological bad-ass. Read that. Read the comments. Then return here and carry on. There's no need for us to have to re-learn who this guy is every time he's written about here.
I don't get the anti-TiE comment either. We have a newsletter writer/blogger in Chicago (Ron May-The Ron May Report) who reports every networking connection someone has as a 'scandal', yet he shows up at every networking group event, eating all the food and taking full advantage of 'connections'.
I'm presuming theodp had no memberships in any technical networking groups, especially any that would have any ties to Microsoft, Google or any other technology company.
I'll be watching closely to see whether ODF becomes widely used as a document format by the US Federal Government.
I am less interested in how a file is saved than how in it is used.
The reasons for its creation.
It has been stated that maybe what is needed for a CTO position is someone who understands how government and policy is applied. If you watch this video where Paul Chopra in his capacity as Secretary of Technology for the Commonwealth of Virginia keynoted the 5th Annual State of the Net Conference 2009, you may come to the conclusion as I did that he is a very capable man, with the requisite political savvy to get things done. Political skills may turn out to be more important than geek level technical knowledge in the end. In this entire 51 minute video, it is hard to find fault with Mr. Chopra as he discusses such things as Virginia's open text book initiative. However it isn't until near the very end that some serious concerns are triggered for me. At 38:13 he speaks of a new initiative called "Plugged In" that rests on a very basic hypothesis that "In 6 months we can take a high school drop out and prepare them for a technology job." It is a GED program that reconstitutes the curriculum for adults adding in certificates "with the help of partners like Microsoft". A state government promoting a private company is worrisome to me.
The second concern I had was at 48:30 where he is responding to a question about how to best stimulate innovative start-ups and entrepreneurship. To this he replies by talking about his "GAP Fund" that supplies $100 K investments to new start-ups "Restricted only to innovative technology companies that are grounded in intellectual property." "We have a billion service companies, but it's the grounding in intellectual property that to us is the secret, so it's targeting limited resources to intellectual property". He does not explain why "a billion service companies" are not important to him.
Now when I played the question from the audience that provoked this response over a couple of times, it struck me as very strange. The question was: "There are tens of thousands of small startups that are really producing innovative products based on intellectual property. What is the best way that a state can promote small startups, and making sure of course that they collaborate with their IP, but it's protected and monetized in a way that they can sell it out to other places?" It leads one to ponder - why does the speaker consider intellectual property so important? Why does he emphasise it in just that way, rather than speak about hi tech startups in general? Could he have been a Microsoft plant? Suddenly as I listened to this, I got a vision of Microsoft lobbyists and sales people crawling all over government initiatives everywhere, making little deals here and there to ensure the open source is blocked at every turn.
Since the White House said Chopra will be creating jobs and reducing health care costs, it seems a question or two about his involvement with Healthaxis should be asked. In 2005, Chopra took a seat on the Board of Healthaxis, which was brokered as part of an offshoring deal that required Healthaxis to throw offshoring work to an investor's BPO company in an effort to reduce the costs of its Utah and Jamaica resources. At the time of his 2006 resignation, Healthaxis reported to the SEC that Chopra, who also sat on the firm's Compensation Committee, had 'no disagreement with the Company on any matter'.
Should we contact Committee member Mark Warner, whose Friends of Mark Warner PAC receives contributions from Mr. Chopra? :-)
By all means, distribute all IT policy for the federal government into thousands of agencies that all do the same thing over and over again. These days, inefficiency in government is about all the chance we get for freedom.
-rcj /IOW: morons will criticize the government no matter what it does are a dime a dozen on slashdot
When it comes to selecting individuals for political appointments, quite often they are done for... well... political reasons. Sometimes it's because of bipartisanship, coalition building, or because someone is really well qualified. Other times it is because they are well networked or engaged in a little quid pro quo. Sure, if it is to the level of Blagojevich they may get caught, and we should discourage the outright sale of governmental positions. On the other hand, I still think as long as he was working within the rules, a total of $2450 in donations to Mark Warner isn't quite to the level where I'd be calling the ethics committee.
It certainly didn't hurt his chances to make $2750 in donations to various Obama supporting groups either, but do I think it was a primary reason he was selected? Not really. I think he got selected because he's well connected and has prior experience in healthcare. With Obama's big push for electronic healthcare records and other cost savings measures, I do agree all the more with wanting some questions to be raised concerning the theft of pharmaceutical records in VA, but depending how the investigation goes, I believe the highest uphill it will get in the org chain is to this guy. More likely though, it'll stay a problem of the agency that oversaw the day to day operations.
Generally the answer is; the people doing the hiring, being time-serving lackies, don't want anyone working for them that is smarter then them. And being non-techies themselves, risk losing control or looking stupid, as in a new techie-CTO would wonder why they got their job. The best way of getting found out is to hire a non-techie CTO and keep recycling the real IT staff .:)
.. Chopra has demonstrated that he has these skills .. Try a few of these Virginia technology initiatives on for size:'
'Industry experience does little to prepare you for the additional complexities of working within the bounds of government
* the first officially-approved open source textbook in the country, the Physics Flexbook.
* integrating iTunes U with Virginia's state education assessment framework;
* the Learning Apps Development Challenge, a competition for the best iPhone and iPod Touch applications for middle-school math teaching;
* a Ning-based social network to connect clinicians working in small health care offices in remote locations;
* a state-funded "venture capital fund" to allow government agencies to try out risky but promising new approaches to delivering their services or improving their productivity;
* a lightweight approval and testing process that allows the government to try out new technologies before making a full, expensive commitment.
- unquote -
If he's not a techie, then who actually created these ?
davecb5620@gmail.com
From 2003 through 2006 the Republicans had complete control over all three branches of the government. The result can be described as nothing other than the ideal Republican state. What happened? We got involved in a disastrous war. The federal budget exploded. The economy tanked. Government became more secretive. The Republican paradise quickly turned into the Republican hell.
If you don't agree with how the Republicans behaved during their heyday then you don't agree with the Republican philosophy.
One of Chopra's biggest challenges will be to oversee the implementation of a $2 billion contract that will outsource the state's technology infrastructure and calls for hundreds of government workers to join the private sector.
Donald W. Upson , the technology secretary under Gov. James S. Gilmore III, said Chopra will have a steep learning curve. "He's got a lack of experience, that's against him, but if he recognizes that and uses that office to bring people together, he can make a difference -- I hope he does," Upson said.
Chopra concedes that he's not an expert on the inner workings of technical systems. "What I brought to the table was an understanding of the capabilities of new technologies and how they might advance a particular agenda," he said.
Well said. I met with Chopra after he was nominated for this job, and my perception is that he's very in-tune with how government policy is impacted by technology, and how technology creates jobs in the private sector.
He's not an open source advocate per se, but he definitely understands the principles of openness which can change the game in terms of how markets operate. So, I think we can rely on him to make honest assessments of where open source makes sense and deploying it (or advocating that others do so).
My impression is that he's not a blind supporter of anything technological, but has a reasonable understanding of the relationships between policy and technology.
And don't forget the All Important use of our tax dollars in the Congressional Investigations into Steroid/HGH use by Baseball Players!!