Why We Need A New Cabinet Position Over Technology
I have been wanting to write this article for months so today is the day… As I follow the election campaigning and hear all the issues addressed, I am amazed that once again, we have candidates that seem to only deal with whatever the hot topic is of the day. If the economy is in the doldrums, we here about fixing that. If we are stuck in a war, we here about resolutions. We always and forever seem to hear about “change” in each election. As if this is some magic word that is going to make us all rush to vote for yet the next leader that will get to Washington and run into an impenetrable wall of inertia. I am actually sad that neither candidate really offers a deep agenda to support the concept of change. Alas, I am not a politico, but just a technology guy so I will only deal with my little corner of desired change – that being my desire to see to new and dramatic structuring of a technology oversight position on the cabinet. We added a person for national security, why not to oversee technology expansion?
A cabinet level CTO position would be perfect in order to assure that the US does not fall behind other countries in the use, and support, of the most important utility invented in the last 30 years. I will submit that running water, and electricity are probably more important, but certainly the country’s technology infrastructure is third. Depending on whose statistics you believe, we are either 12th or 21st in the world with high speed bandwidth penetration and speed. We are way behind Japan and a few other Asian nations with wireless capabilities and handheld device usage. China has just passed us with the total number of citizens using the Internet. This was bound to happen because of their scale, but should they also have faster access than us? And what will it mean that there are more Chinese able to use the Internet as a tool to succeed in the business arena? Or to have the ability to educate themselves to a higher degree than our citizens? Sure, we have the majority of the powerful software and hardware companies based in the US economy, but all that means is that we are the number one tool maker, it does not mean we are the artisans.
Over the long haul, being the provider of technology will only take us so far, eventually the users of technology will out innovate us and we we will be simply the next centuries “manufacturers”. In the US, we have taken a free market approach to providing technology infrastructure. We depend on the Telco’s and and others to supply what is needed. Many other countries do not view technology infrastructure in this way. They see it as a strategic imperative and invest government funds into assuring speed and access to citizens.
A national CTO needs to have an agenda that coordinates providing high speed access everywhere, all the time, but that is only the first step. Once access is a given (like electricity is now, except in most airports where we all huddle around a few outlets) we need to focus on training more developers, and building our massive cloud computing facilities that can provide cloud services at low prices. We need to put tax dollars to work building the technology infrastructure that will allow our economy to once again dominate – much like what we did with projects to build roads and highways decades ago. I suspect that while our next president will focus on the pain of the day, we are at risk of slipping farther behind. And at the point that we realize we have made a mistake, it will be too late – or at best, take years to get back on track.
We need a technology policy worse than a health care policy, because the truth is, technology could help solve the health care crisis, along with economic woes and the rest. As I always say, technology is just a tool. However, it can be like a magic tool in the right hands, with the right palette. By the way, we actually have an ability to impact this. Tell everyone you know that you think we need a cabinet level CTO – write it in articles and blogs. Leaders react when we raise good ideas – if we will just say them loud enough.
Scott Klososky
Scott@klososky.com