Web site collects ideas for Obama's CTO
Barack Obama hasn't even appointed a chief technology officer yet, but thousands of people are using a new Web site to suggest and vote on ideas they think his CTO should work on.
Obama said last year that he'd be the first president to appoint a CTO. Speculation has such high-profile leaders as Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in the running, but the Obama team hasn't offered any hints about the candidate they are considering.
Whoever ends up with the job can look at the new Obama CTO Web site to see what issues the general public thinks should be made priorities. The site, created by Seattle's Front Seat, went live Wednesday and already has hundreds of ideas posted. The top idea, "ensure the Internet is widely accessible and network neutral," had more than 8,300 votes by Thursday afternoon.
Front Seat founder and chairman Mike Mathieu has no idea if anyone working for Obama knows the site exists. But perhaps reflecting the true bottom-up approach that his new Web site promotes, he said that someone who supposedly knows the person doing the CTO search for Obama told Mathieu he would send a link to the site to that person, but Mathieu has no idea if that actually happened.
Front Seat did very minimal promotion of the new site, amounting to several hundred e-mails sent to friends of Mathieu and his two colleagues. By Wednesday night the site was receiving a thousand or more votes per hour, he said.
The voting system isn't precise, but it's close enough to give an idea what people favor. Each visitor, based on their IP address, gets 10 votes on the site and is limited to three votes for any one item.
The second-most-popular idea, with 6,200 votes, is to repeal the Patriot Act in an effort to restore greater privacy rights for people. Other ideas include requiring government agencies to use open software, migrating to the metric measurement system, and restoring the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) "to its former glory and autonomy."
The relatively heavy early use of the site indicates the interest people have in participating in government, Mathieu said. "Based on the response, it's clearly a pent-up demand. People are craving that kind of participation. The idea that there will be a CTO, the nation's first, is a promising idea, and I think it's serving to get more of the tech community thinking about, 'Hey, we have a role to play in the way our country goes,'" he said.
Sign up for ITworld's Daily newsletter
Follow ITworld on Twitter @IT_world
On Twitter now
obama
Powered by Twitter
Esther Schindler
If the comments are ugly, the code is ugly
claird
SVG a graphics format for 21st century
pasmith
Take Chrome OS for a test spin
Sandra Henry-Stocker
Solaris Tip: Have Your Files Changed Since Installation?
jfruh
Android fragments vs. the iPhone monolith
mikelgan
What Gizmodo missed about the Pro WX Wireless USB disk drive
Sidekick: The Good News & the Bad News
Either way you look at it Microsoft Data Center management did not follow standards or best practices in this failure. In which case it makes me wonder more about the outsourcing of corporate data much less personal data.
- mburton325
Join the conversation here
Quick, practical advice for IT pros. Made fresh daily.
Want to cash in on your IT savvy? Send your tip to tips@itworld.com. If we post it, we'll send you a $25 Amazon e-gift card.
public aid restruction from ground zero in a small town
People have abused a good program, because we enabled it to happen. The program was set up to help people get back to work when hard times hit them. It has become a way of life in this town and others. posible solutions, that will save the government money, build some self worth into people, have healther people, take care of out kids better, and keep our state parks open.Groceries stores for public aid use only. This keeps them from selling their cards to support bad habits and allowes them only to buy good food for their families.
A medical clinic for public aid participates only. This way they get treatment, instead of being turned away from doctors offices and then going the the hospital er to be treated. This would be a government clinic and you can keep track of how long someones faimlies stay on the system.
Highrise acomadations for public aid housing. Which include, daycare, 2 meals a day for kids in daycare or school. In turn, the parents work for their public aid checks and benifits. Builds carector and self werth, gets them off the couch, gives them modivation to get a real job that pays better and they can live in a house. They need insentive programs to give them their pride back.
Parents can keep our parks clean and grass cut. Highrise would need maintence people, cafeteria works, daycare people, supervisors, nursing homes need help, vets nursing homes need help, animal shelters need help, elderly and disabled people need help with cutting grass and removing snow,ect.
Public aid participants would get excersie/ would be in better health/ less medical bills. Good food would be provide all of the time for kids and adults. Kids would have more strucher in daycare. People would be more motivated to get a good job or go to school to be able to move out on their own.
School programs at our college have their problems. A person who didn't graduation high school or barely did is not capable to pass a one year college program in 6 months time. Plus the teachers have access to their files and treat them badly instead of helping them.
Our substadized housing projects have a lot of brand new vehicles and we are paying for some of their housing and food. Does not seem right. Priorities are in the wrong place to me.