A popular Washington parlor game these days is to guess the next appointee in the Obama administration. And the guessing continues for who will become the first-ever Chief Technology Officer in the administration.

Obama is the first techie president to occupy the White House, and he's bringing with him a sophisticated knowledge of how the Internet can be used to create new jobs, develop new ways of doing business and enrich people's lives. The economic crisis has made the CTO an even more important job.

"Obama sees greater broadband penetration as an enormous economic engine, much like the railroads were a century ago," says Andrew D. Lipman, a veteran communications lawyer in Washington. "That is why the CTO will play such a critical role in any recovery plan."

Business Week came up with its own list of top candidates for the job, including:

• Vint Cerf, who is often considered the father of the Internet. (He has already said he's not interested.)
• Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.
• Amazon CEO Jeffrey Bezos.
• Ed Felten, a prominent professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs at Princeton University.

A White House CTO will have a very big portfolio. He would help create incentive programs to expand broadband's reach. The tech czar would almost certainly be deeply involved in overseeing a federally-backed $50 billion venture capital fund that Obama has proposed to develop more environmentally friendly technology.

The answer is coming soon and the job is bigger than anyone can image.

For more on the CTO:
- check out this Business Week article
- also see: Is the tech czar really a good idea? Article

The E-Government Act of 2002 is one of the few laws that brought transparency to the government and helped connect citizens to the federal government information they needed. However, the law expired last year, and there has been a battle underway in the Senate over reauthorizing the law. Reauthorization would insure more streamlined government information and improved communications between agencies and citizens.

Despite the problems around reauthorizing this piece of legislation, there are a few things to remember. The E-Gov Act enables people to file their taxes online, or find out from a website how much Social Security they are entitled to receive when they retire. It is the mechanism that allows people to apply for a myriad of benefits online, or a federal job at USAJobs.gov.

Much of the controversy over reauthorizing the law has been an amendment by Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) who wants to include new privacy protections. Federal agencies would be required to conduct privacy impact assessments before using outside contractors to manage personal information.

Republicans don't like that idea much, and several members have threatened to block the bill. The cost is also another issue. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the bill would cost about $29 billion through 2012, far higher than the original $5 million a year when the legislation became law in 2002 and when agencies were told to find the money for E-Gov projects out of their existing budgets.

For more on the status of the E-Gov Act:
- see this nextgov.com Article
- also see: Obama's vision for e-government will take some work. Article

Real ID is a controversial idea whose time has not yet come. Although President Bush set in motion a plan for states to issue IDs that have digital photos and are machine readable, states don't want to pay to implement the program or hop on board another controversy.

Another bad sign is that Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, Obama's nominee for secretary of the Department of Homeland Security--the agency responsible for implementing the Real ID rules--previously signed a bill barring her state from participating in the program.

This is just one more bureaucratic mess that needs to be ironed out if Real ID has a chance to go into effect. The law came under fire from privacy advocates and civil rights groups that argued Real ID is a national security system that would be hard to manage and that it creates privacy, security and logistical concerns. So, what's the answer? Well, it's just one more solution Obama will have to come up with when he takes office.

"I don't think anybody in the next administration, including Napolitano, wants to deal with Real ID. It's a real stinking mess," said Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute, a Washington-based public-policy research organization with libertarian leanings. "Most likely, they will find the quietest way they can to get it off their plates."

And while it's only the latest attempt at dealing with IT failures, it might, in fact, be the way to crawl out of the dismal tunnel of failure.

For more on this legislation:
- check out this CIO.com article

Is it time for the federal government to bite the bullet, and get a better system that would make millions of its web pages more accessible? It might be way overdue, actually. A wide array of public information is largely invisible to search engines, and thus to the general public. And the public cannot get to the web pages that are hidden in federal government databases.

The treasure trove of government information is so complicated to search that engines powered by Yahoo, Google and Microsoft can't find it or index it, according to a recent article in the Washington Post.

"The vast majority of information is still not searchable or findable either because it's not published or it's on websites which the government has put up, which no one can index," Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said during a recent presentation at the New American Foundation. The system is such a mess that it is sometimes impossible to find specific Environmental Protection Agency enforcement actions involving a specific company. You can't search by name for the details of a Vietnam War causality, and you can't find a picture of a specific ancient Egyptian artifact housed at the Smithsonian.

"Unfortunately, too much of the public information provided on government websites just doesn't show up when the average American does a Google search," said J.L. Needham, Google's manager of public-sector content partnerships. "As a result, information that is intended for the public's use is effectively invisible."

Plenty of government information, although it's public, can't be accessed unless the user fills out an online form. And until they do, that means the search engines' crawlers generally can't look in databases.

So just what should the government be doing? Try fixing it.

For more on building a searchable federal web:
- check out this Washington Post article

Green used to be a once-a-year phenomenon pushed by high-spirited environmentalists who sought to make people and companies aware of the importance of saving energy. Today, the idea of going green is no longer a fad. It has taken everyone, including the federal government and its IT workforce, by storm.

The Defense, Veterans Affairs and Interior departments are among the agencies adopting Electronics Stewardship Implementation Plans that identify how the agencies will meet requirements for buying products registered with the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT). Some agencies are taking this idea further by integrating these requirements into their information technology optimization plans for the Office of Management and Budget, according to Holly Elwood, headquarters lead for the Environmental Protection Agency's EPEAT program.

Chief information officers and federal IT contract managers can help feds buy EPEAT products more easily by:

• Incorporating language in federal contracts that requires vendors to use only EPEAT-registered products.
• Developing a list of available EPEAT-registered products and providing the list when individuals request non-EPEAT products.
• Adding language to contracts that requires suppliers to report quarterly the number of EPEAT products purchased under a contract, so that the EPEAT totals can be easily tracked.

For more on feds going green:
- check out this Federal Computer Week article

> OBM's tracking tool for IT projects. Article.
> State CIOs speak out on homeland security. Video (this is a video)
> FBI gets a new CIO. Article
> Obama plans aggressive approach to health IT. Article
> CSC to cut jobs on IRS modernization project. Article
> FEMA looking for an integrator. Article

And Finally... Check out this map to see where federal IT dollars are really going. Article