Just to give some idea of the scale of things we're talking about, there's a Federal CIO council[1], with scores of memebers. The Feds have tons of agencies spe

Just to give some idea of the scale of things we're talking about, there's a Federal CIO council[1], with scores of memebers. The Feds have tons of agencies spending hundreds of billions on IT. Most all of these agencies were created by Congress, not the president, and although they report up the executive branch, they're also accountable to various and sundry legislative committees. Many times the decisions around tech and contracting have been legislated in some fashion. They just aren't made off-the-cuff. The CTO is truly a stupendous job, even for someone working at Google scale. I would be very surprised if this turned into an operational role. I imagine it would be advisory and policy-based only. There's simply too much to get your head around and not a lot of levers to pull to make things happen like it does in the commercial world. Still, I am very optimistic that there is much goodness to be done here. It's just not a CTO job in the way most of us would understand. [1] https://cio.gov/ https://cio.gov/