According to Aliya Sternstein, the members of the Senate Commerce, Science, & Transportation Committee failed to ask Aneesh Chopra, President Obama's nominee as Chief Technology Officer, questions about his positions regarding open government and the use of technology in advancing open government during his nomination hearing.

The office of Chief Technology Officer will oversee many open government initiatives and is charged with formulating, along with the Office of Management and Budget and General Services Administration, an Open Government Directive directing agency heads to follow the principles set forth in the President's open government memorandum.

The Open Government Directive is scheduled to be released on Thursday -- 120 days after President Obama signed a January 21 memo on ethics in government -- without Chopra's input. (Update - commenter Stanley Buckley writes that the Directive is not set to be released, rather recommendations will be released on Thursday.) "I won't be [presenting the recommendations] because I'm not confirmed," Chopra said, according to Sternstein.

Unfortunately, due to the Senate's lack of questioning, we did not get a chance to see how Chopra views his role as it relates to open government and technology during his nomination hearing.

President Obama ended the months of speculation surrounding his creation and appointment of the first federal Chief Technology Officer (CTO) by appointing Virginia Secretary of Technology Aneesh Chopra. Chopra's selection was praised across the Web. Sunlight's John Wonderlich saw Chopra speak last year and wrote up his thoughts on him here. The video of that talk is below (h/t John Wonderlich and Jon Henke):

And this is the President's announcement appointing Chopra as the first federal CTO. (The announcement comes towards the end.)

On his second day in office, President Barack Obama issued a sweeping memorandum on transparency in government, setting out an ambitious to-do list for the newly created position of Chief Technology Officer (CTO). This person was to be responsible initially -- along with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Administrator of General Services Administration -- to come up with a concrete list of recommendations to implement the principles set out in the memorandum, namely, that government should be transparent, participatory, and collaborative, and to do it within 120 days.

We're now at day 21 and counting , and the Obama Administration has yet to appoint that CTO -- a position he promised to create during his campaign.

So I'm worried: the clock is ticking to prepare that critically important memo. And besides the ticking clock there have been several examples of the White House  falling down on its promises to be transparent, particularly complying with its promise to post all legislation online for 5 days before consideration. (The history of posting bills online to allow for public comment has been either non-existent or spotty to date.) Getting that CTO "online" seems more and more important every day. To walk the walk, Obama needs the CTO.

So what's going on? Inquiring minds want to know.

Jimmy Wales ,Wikipedia founder and Sunlight advisor, and Andrea Weckerle, attorney, communications consultant and blogger, wrote an interesting column last week  at CNN.com, on how we should create a more tech friendly government.. The duo say that “technology isn't ancillary or extraneous to governance, and instead that it's an integral part of the effective running of a democratic superpower.” In anticipation of President-elect Obama's appointment of  the country’s first national chief technology officer (CTO), they provide five recommendations for core components of a structurally sound, technologically savvy federal government. Their points, in brief:

1.    Ruthlessly modernize: Conduct a survey of the technology used by the federal government, keep what works and replace what doesn’t. 2.    Create openness of information: This will allow transparency and accountability, as well as inspire innovation and collaboration. 3.    Single sign-on across all government Web sites for citizens: Make it so citizens need only to input a single username and password to access all federal Web sites and databases, creating more user-friendly interfaces for citizens that in turn encourage frequent use and participation. 4.    Commit to open-source software and open standards: Such a commitment by the feds would end the practice of adopting closed proprietary software sold by companies with political ties to government. 5.    Create a single government-wide wiki: Large private enterprises have achieved substantial efficiencies by allowing their employees to rapidly share knowledge and disseminate information. The feds should create a single, massive government-wide wiki, which would serve as a cornerstone of a modern federal knowledge management system.

Read their whole column here.