Obama CTO Search Gets Help
Genachowski has solid tech credentials – he was an exec at IAC (IACI), was chief counsel to former FCC. chairman Reed Hundt, is co-founder of Rock Creek Ventures, and helped found LaunchBox, a startup incubator.
So, in theory, Genachowski could even qualify to be Obama's CTO himself. (Update: Readers point out that he's a laywer, not a tech guy. So let's rule that out.) Other, higher-profile names that have been mentioned: Google’s (GOOG) Eric Schmidt and Vint Cerf, Microsoft’s (MSFT) Steve Ballmer, and Amazon’s (AMZN) Jeff Bezos.
Or Genachowski could have another gig in store: Last month, BusinessWeek suggested he could run the FCC if current chair Kevin Martin quits.
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Go GOVERNMENT 2.0!!!
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It's less about technology and more about large organizational dynamics and plenty of non-sexy back office processes and systems, coupled with the severe constraints of dealing with the civil service (again, no analogue in the start-up world). You need a successful large company CIO or a Global 2000 CEO/CFO who has technology roots. The big question here is what type of governance structure will arise -- a GAO aggregation of power type model or something akin to the OMB where they make the rules and everyone else has to follow them.
This will be a policy job. Not a tech-visionary job. And it has very little to do with the current spend of the federal government on tech infrastructure.
Julius is qualified as former counsel of the FCC. So is his former boss, Reed Hundt (whom I believe does not want the job). So is Don Gips (who probably will not want to leave Boulder).
The views that a techie is the right guy for this job is just absolutely wrong. You need someone who understands economics, policy, politics and their intersection with technology. In general, techies are really bad choices for this job.
B