Hopefully no one is holding their breathe for an announcement on President Obama's chief technology officer. The appointment was supposed to happen this week, but also was rumored to be happening last week and the week before.

"Where in the world is America's CTO?" blogged the Wall Street Journal's Kara Swisher. "What's going on? Inquiring minds want to know," blogged Ellen Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation.

With the White House tech system is out of date, and Obama aides struggling to get it up to speed, an announcement is becoming more vital by the day. So who is at the head of the line to fix it?

So far, still, no names have been announced, but one thing is for sure; whoever takes over has their work cut out for them. Obama's economic recovery legislation includes billions on technology initiatives such as broadband development to medical records management. And someone is needed to mind the store.

Obama already served notice on Wednesday that his administration plans to loosen the grasp of federal contractors who have been making billions providing services, including IT, to the government.

There are plenty of problems on low-hanging vines. Here are just a few: it's about time to eliminate the silos that plague most federal agencies and integrate technology across a system rather than down. It's imperative to find a new way to budget for IT instead of just giving pots of money, agency-by-agency. And it may finally be time to go to open source software, a way to save money and end many complexities in the federal systems.

For more on the long wait for a CTO:
- check out this Politico article