South Africa Connect

This post is courtesy of our guest blogger, Alex Rosen, Alex works at the Enterprise Division of Google but writes in his personal capacity. Alex also posts on his own blog, www.alexrosen.com.

While the meaning of that title no doubt extends beyond technology, it would be a mistake to not recognize the place that social technology and the Internet played in this man’s campaign. It would be more of a mistake to not look forward to the future and take a look at how Obama is planning to use his new post to transform how American (and the rest of the world) approaches technology policy.

First, a look back. Arianna Huffington, of popular news blog The Huffington Post, perhaps summed it up best at the recent Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, where she commented, “Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not be president. Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not have been the nominee.” By building a netroots movement, with an epicenter at my.barackobama.com, Obama’s campaign leveraged a generation of voters who spend more time tapping away at their keyboards and keypads than they do watching CNN checking their “real” mail.

Obama defined himself as a tech-savvy candidate. Photos of him tapping away at his Blackberry, 28,000 followers on popular micro-blogging platform Twitter, and a brilliant iPhone app to rally users to make swing-state calls highlight the savviness that this candidate brought to the first truly Internet run campaign. This was in direct opposition to the older Senator McCain, who just started using email and never seemed to get the power of the web to rally supporters.

Obama’s savviness does not stop here. He’s already put together a tech transition team that reads like a who’s who of Silicon Valley. The team is headed up by Julius Genachowski, formerly of IAC and founder of the startup incubator LunchBox Digital. Genachowski also led the group that advised Obama’s Tech and Innovation plan and included technology experts such as Stanford Law professor Lawrence Lessig and Craigslist founder Craig Newmark. It was this document that originally trumpeted the call for a new cabinet position: Chief Technology Officer. Who will fill this role is now the subject of widespread speculation.

Genachowski is one name. As an early supporter and advisor to Obama, he’d be an obvious choice. But so would others. Perhaps the most high profile is Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, seen standing with Obama as a member of his economic transition team. Schmidt and others, however, have denied the rumor that he’s interested. The usual list of high tech names are also rumored to be up for consideration: Jeffrey Bezos of Amazon, Steve Ballmer Microsoft, and Bill Joy of venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins would bring a deep knowledge of the Internet industry to Washington.

But would we really want a Washington outsider in the role? In a post on CNET.com, James Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is quoted as saying, “”We’ve seen lots of times where people have brought in gurus from the high-tech community, and they give up after a year because they’re frustrated. Knowing how the government works is important.” The CTO will need to bring a strong understanding technology to help bring Washignton’s systems up to date with the 21st century, but they’ll also inherit a long list of difficult policy questions, including the net neutrality debate, the agenda for the recently opened white space spectrum, and how to increase access to broadband. These are questions that require close collaboration with offices such as the Federal Trade and Communications divisions and therefore a fairly deep knowledge of how things get done in Washington, which can often be different from agile West Coast companies.

No matter who eventually gets slated for the role, it’s clear that they will help define this new role for the United States and possible the rest of the world. Other countries have a laundry list of technology policy issues that need immediate attention, not the least of which is South Africa. I’ll leave the speculation of who could staff this role in South Africa to my local colleagues, but suffice it to say the country would benefit from this role as it figures out how to get Internet into the hands of its citizens and effectively leverage technology to help solve difficult education and health problems.

Naming a CTO, of course, does not guarantee anything will get done. I, for one, hope that Obama will carry and continue the lessons he’s learned from the campaign into a presidency that uses social technology to keep citizens informed of happenings in politics and make their voices heard. Obama and his team still have that list of the millions who signed up at my.barackobama.com. His emails, however, has been noticeably absent since his victory. Sure, it’s only been a week, but who says just because you’re President-Elect, you can’t continue to post updates to Twitter and lead a netroots movement? As we look forward, it will be up to him, as well as the new CTO, to define the appropriate ways to use these technologies from the oval office rather than the campaign trail. I sure hope that Obama’s November 5th tweet won’t be his last.