Subject: Fwd: new thoughts on qualities of a CTO
From: "Christopher Edley" <[email-masked]>
To: "John Podesta" <[email-masked]>, "Julius Genachowski" <[email-masked]>, [email-masked], [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2008 09:08:03 -0800

This seems to me quite thoughtful.  Cheers.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mitch Kapor <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 8:50 PM
Subject: new thoughts on qualities of a CTO
To: "Christopher Edley Jr." <[email-masked]>

Chris,

I'd like Julius and Podesta to see this (or someone else in Personnel?).
 It's my best thinking on what qualities to look for in a CTO.  I have not
seen any discussion of this type anywhere.  At this point, I'm just trying
to do what I can to make sure whoever winds up in the role has a good chance
to succeed.

Would you please take a look at this and let me know what you think of it
and whether it would be a good idea to send on.  Thanks.

Mitch

I have been thinking about the plan to create a CTO and  about the
qualifications needed for a CTO to be successful.  I pass this on in the
hope you find it useful. Nobody asked me to do this.  If it is not helpful,
please just set it aside.

[restate mission of CTO as leading efforts to make federal IT effective and
efficient, provide leadership in making government open and transparent, and
advise on use of IT to drive innovation, economic growth and achieve other
policy objectives]

On reflection, it strikes me that a CTO needs several distinct competencies
unlikely to be found in a single individual.

Ideally a CTO would:

(1) be a master of the unique intricacies of getting things done at multiple
levels of the Executive branch of government.

(2) have the technical prowess to be respected by agency and department
Chief Information Officers, senior software architects, and project managers
s/he would be interacting with.

(3) bring a creative, entrepreneurial vision and problem solving skills
needed to develop innovative approaches to fulfilling the mission.  The CTO
is a new role and successfully launching the function is, in its own way,
like creating a startup.

(4) possess the kind of executive management experience typically gained by
leading a large organization through an extensive change management process
which implements a new vision and strategy

What this daunting list suggests is that whatever structure is chosen for
the CTO, it involve more than one senior person such that all of the
capabilities are represented somewhere.  For instance, an Assistant to the
President for Innovation (per the pre-election memorandum) would logically
handle #1 at the White House level.  A CTO who is senior technologist from
industry with either entrepreneurial or large-scale executive management
experience would cover #2 and either #3 or #4, with the balance of
responsibilities still to be filled in.

Contrariwise, an individual chosen for the CTO role who is a successful CTO
from industry will presumably have #2, but may not have either startup
experience or the general management experience, leaving functions #3 and #4
needing to be vested elsewhere.

The bottom line is that in addition to getting the structure right (which
was the subject of the pre-election transition memo) and selecting a CTO,
making sure there is a complete solution in terms of bringing together all
of the critical skills into a single structure is also important.

If this is obvious and I am late to the party, please forgive me, but I
thought this was worth sharing.

-- 
(personal email)
Christopher Edley, Jr.
Professor and Dean
UC Berkeley Law School