Do We Need a National CTO?

TechDirt starts us off with:

The 463 blog points us to an interview with Mitch Kapor of Lotus and EFF fame, in which he makes the case for a national Chief Technology Officer. The idea seems to be that technology policy in the United States is currently fragmented among a bunch of different positions, and having a designated top technologist in the government would help to bring coherence to the nation's technology policy. It sounds like a reasonable idea at first blush, but on closer examination it might create more problems than it solves.

While the TechDirt author seems to think this is not a good idea, I am going to have to respectfully disagree. I think this is exactly what we need. A National CTO would not give guidance and counsel on technology, but could accelerate our technology usage. Some good reasons for having a National CTO include: 1) Standardize technology in schools 2) Standardize technology in government agencies 3) Create policies that require Police/Fire/Paramedics to have the same radio euipment and use the same frequencies (something the DHS is still failing to do) 4) Upgrade out of date systems in the FBI, CIA, DHS etc 5) Eliminate proprietary, in-house software/hardware systems Can you tell I like standards?