Who will be Obama's tech czar?

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