President-elect Barack Obama reportedly will appoint his Chief Technology Officer within the next few days. Business Week writes that the choice is down to two Indian-born technology experts: Padmasree Warrior, CTO of Cisco Systems, and Vivek Kundra, CTO of the Government of Washington, D.C.
Whoever is chosen will have the exciting and daunting challenge of overseeing our government's policies and practices regarding technology of all sorts. Imagine you've been selected to serve on the new CTO's team. What advice would you give him or her in your role as a PR specialist?
Venturebeat.com describes the different mandate for President George W. Bush's CTO -- to "defend against cyberattacks" -- versus that for Obama's CTO -- to "ensure government officials hold open meetings, broadcast live webcasts of those meetings, and use blogging software, wikis and open comments to communicate policies with Americans."
This new approach reflects the "We Are One" theme of today's inaugural concert. It reflects Obama's message that we are "not a nation of red states and blue states but of the
We saw the Obama team's reliance on new media to raise money for the campaign, to distribute its message and counteract rumors, and to rally voters on Election Day. Plans call for using new media to inform the public of the government's goals and plans and to solicit feedback. Technology can help fulfill the "boundary role" of public relations -- to convey information TO and FROM the public and the client.
Transparency, another hallmark of public relations, is at the heart of Obama's plans for government.
So the new CTO has been appointed and you've been asked for your opinion on how to use technology in the Obama administration. What would you recommend? Obama supposedly uses Twitter, but I seriously doubt "he" writes those entries. They sound more like something a PR person would write (no offense). The president would not have time to Tweet. Or if he did, I'd recommend against it. So why pretend he's really Tweeting? Doesn't that detract from the "truth" we're looking for?
