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.)

As we wait for Obama to name his new CTO, some encouraging news on the federal IT front is breaking. Candi Harrison, writes at her blog that Bev Godwin, director of USA.gov, will be joining the White House as director of online resources and interagency development on the New Media Team.  Candi writes that Bev knows the Web manager community, and she will bring that knowledge to the table when decisions are being made. “You couldn’t have a better, more savvy and more capable advocate,” she writes. “This is great news.’

Nancy Scola at Tech President concurs. “With this and other appointments, team Obama is turning the White House into social media's center of gravity in Washington, which is a distinct change from the past.” And Craig Newmark is also excited. “I, for one, welcome our new (Web content) nerd overlords.”

Let us second (third? fourth?) these acclamations for this appointment. We've worked with Bev a little and she and her GSA team have been focused, savvy, and smart about the institutional barriers they will confront as they try to fulfill the President's promises on transparency, open government and collaboration.

Following up on Ellen's post about the federal CTO, here's what President Obama has said or written during his campaign about the CTO.

From the excellent CRS report on the CTO position, we can see then-candidate Obama's description of the position from his technology position paper:

Bring Government into the 21st Century: Barack Obama will use technology to reform government and improve the exchange of information between the federal government and citizens while ensuring the security of our networks. Obama believes in the American people and in their intelligence, expertise, and ability and willingness to give and to give back to make government work better. Obama will appoint the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to ensure that our government and all its agencies have the right infrastructure, policies and services for the 21st century. The CTO will ensure the safety of our networks and will lead an interagency effort, working with chief technology and chief information officers of each of the federal agencies, to ensure that they use best-in-class technologies and share best practices. The CTO will have a specific focus on transparency, by ensuring that each arm of the federal government makes its records open and accessible as the E-Government Act requires. The CTO will also focus on using new technologies to solicit and receive information back from citizens to improve the functioning of democratic government. The CTO will also ensure technological interoperability of key government functions. For example, the Chief Technology Officer will oversee the development of a national, interoperable wireless network for local, state and federal first responders as the 9/11 commission recommended. This will ensure that fire officials, police officers and [emergency medical technicians] from different jurisdictions have the ability to communicate with each other during a crisis and we do not have a repeat of the failure to deliver critical public services that occurred in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The same paper also cites Change.gov:

Bring Government into the 21st Century: Use technology to reform government and improve the exchange of information between the federal government and citizens while ensuring the security of our networks. Appoint the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to ensure the safety of our networks and lead an interagency effort, working with chief technology and chief information officers of each of the federal agencies, to ensure that they use best-in-class technologies and share best practices.

Looking through Change We Can Believe In, (subtitled Barack Obama's Plan to Renew America's Promise), we can see the following similar passage, on page 88:

Barack Obama will use technology to reform government and improve the exchange of information between the federal government and citizens while ensuring the security of our networks.  To that end, he will appoint the nation's first Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to ensure that our government and all its agencies have the right infrastructure, policies, and services for the twenty-first century.  The CTO will ensure the safety of our networks and will lead an interagency effort, working with chief technology and chief information officers of each of the federal agencies to ensure that they use best-in-class technologies and share best practices.

If you know of other official mentions of the CTO position from the campaign, the transition, or from the White House, we'd love to hear them in the comments.

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.

Christopher Dorobek, managing editor of Federal News Radio and author of DorobekInsider.com, is reporting that they’ve confirmed that President Obama is set to name the immensely talented Vivek Kundra, Washington, D.C., government’s CTO, as the next administrator of e-government and information technology within the Office of Management and Budget. Good news indeed.

But a whole lot of questions remain as to how the whole picture will be painted.

For instance, there are currently three White House IT-related positions, with a fourth being the proposed CTO. The administration has done little to explain what the various IT offices have responsibility over. Dorobek writes that he sees four pockets of government IT expertise: A Congressional Research Service report, published last month,  illustrates  how “murky” things remain and how the four key positions on this arena -- the e-government administrator at OMB; OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs; the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; and the proposed Obama CTO will divide up responsibilities and work together.

Dorobek says: “Frankly, one of the problems has been that there hasn’t been enough of a coordinated, strategic approach to technology, information technology and data, and this seems like an opportune time to make all those lines clear.”

Dorobek points to NextGov’s Jill Atoro as suggesting that Virginia’s secretary of technology, Aneesh Chopra , might be Obama’s CTO pick.

Staying tuned here.

A quick note on two newly available documents. The Senate Finance Committee just released their version of the stimulus bill. At a whopping 786 pages it will take a while to read.

Also, a CRS report on the proposed Chief Technology Officer (CTO) made its way onto the web. Read it here.

Yesterday, I participated in my first skype conversation, a podcast interview hosted by Berin Szoka, of the Tech Liberation Front.

I'm joined in the interview with Jerry Brito, of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and Jim Harper, of the Cato Institute and WashingtonWatch.com.

Our wide-ranging discussion touches on the concept of transparency, data policy, President Obama's new policies, and the potential for a federal CTO.

To listen, check out TLF's blog post, or see below.

Tech Liberation Front Podcast

Ali Felski of Sunlight Labs has created a truly amazing reimagining and redesigning of USA.gov, the chief portal to the federal government for the American public. Check it out now.

As Ali notes in her post, this type of reimaging would require a change in government policy regarding persistent cookies.

The Federal Web Managers Council recently called for a change in policy on the use of persistent cookies (for the use of social media and elsewhere):

The National CTO or OMB should immediately rescind the previous guidance prohibiting persistent cookies to better serve customers' needs. The new guidance should state that it's acceptable for agencies to use social media sites that rely on persistent cookies. However, the government should retain the ban on tracking cookies, since they specifically track where visitors go between sites.

Also noted is this letter from Eric T. Peterson of Web Analytics Demystified, which contains a good history of persistent cookies policy, calling for a reversal this ban.

President Obama's Memorandum on Transparency (still not published at WhiteHouse.gov) is just too important not to post in its entirety.  So here it is:

MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES

SUBJECT: Transparency and Open Government

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use. Executive departments and agencies should harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public feedback to identify information of greatest use to the public.

Government should be participatory. Public engagement enhances the Government's effectiveness and improves the quality of its decisions. Knowledge is widely dispersed in society, and public officials benefit from having access to that dispersed knowledge. Executive departments and agencies should offer Americans increased opportunities to participate in policymaking and to provide their Government with the benefits of their collective expertise and information. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public input on how we can increase and improve opportunities for public participation in Government.

Government should be collaborative. Collaboration actively engages Americans in the work of their Government. Executive departments and agencies should use innovative tools, methods, and systems to cooperate among themselves, across all levels of Government, and with nonprofit organizations, businesses, and individuals in the private sector. Executive departments and agencies should solicit public feedback to assess and improve their level of collaboration and to identify new opportunities for cooperation.

I direct the Chief Technology Officer, in coordination with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Administrator of General Services, to coordinate the development by appropriate executive departments and agencies, within 120 days, of recommendations for an Open Government Directive, to be issued by the Director of OMB, that instructs executive departments and agencies to take specific actions implementing the principles set forth in this memorandum. The independent agencies should comply with the Open Government Directive.

This memorandum is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by a party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

This memorandum shall be published in the Federal Register.

BARACK OBAMA

(adapted from an Open House Project Google Group message)

President Obama has stepped to the plate today, and addressed many of the Open Government community's primary concerns, in issuing several Executive Orders on ethics and transparency.

They're extremely heartening; the memos (via National Journal) are full of great passages, for example:

A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency.  As Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, "sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants."  In our democracy, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which encourages accountability through transparency, is the most prominent expression of a profound national commitment to ensuring an open Government.  At the heart of that commitment is the idea that accountability is in the interest of the Government and the citizenry alike. ... My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government.  We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration.  Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government. ... The presumption of disclosure also means that agencies should take affirmative steps to make information public.  They should not wait for specific requests from the public.  All agencies should use modern technology to inform citizens about what is known and done by their Government.  Disclosure should be timely.

Some of this isn't going to be easy, especially the idea of affirmative disclosure outlined above, which is likely only possible through affirmative designations applied across government records sets, with a careful eye to concerns of privacy, security, and the prerogatives of closed deliberation.  The CTO, OMB Director, AG, and GSA Administrator have quite an assignment for the next 120 days!

Another reason we should follow implementation of these memos closely: it's only too easy to rely on traditional procedures and distinctions for dissemination.  These memos, as far as I can tell, were circulated through a traditional and closed process, and there's still no access to primary sources online, from the White House Press secretary, the EO or Proclamation pages, or the blog of WhiteHouse.gov.  This is emblematic of the challenges that are going to face President Obama and his administration as they strive to live up to the promise of a truly transparent, participatory, and collaborative government, as these memos describe.

To be clear, I'd rather have such fundamental changes announced exclusively on the inside of specially marked boxes of cigars than not at all.  These are sweeping pronouncements, and show enormous promise and the realization of campaign and transition promises.  For the open government announcements to come so quickly further cements trust and accountability as what we hope will be central themes of any governmental operations.

It's the Obama administration's first full day, and they deserve praise for taking a bold stand on open government issues.  Hopefully their Office of Public Liaison (which is now accepting comments) and new media operations will take center stage as they ramp up operations, empowering the public in the same manner as these memos prescribe for the rest of government.