Cisco CTO Said To Be Among Obama Tech Chief Finalists

[Fleshdancer]

http://www.crn.com/government/212902304

Since the announcement during his campaign that President Barack Obama would appoint the first-ever national chief technology officer, the rumor mill hasn't spared anyone in IT, including big names like Microsoft's Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Google's Eric Schmidt and Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos.

Now that Obama has been sworn in, the appointee for the chief tech position in government is said to be down to two finalists, with a news report from BusinessWeek suggesting they are Padrasmee Warrior, current CTO of Cisco Systems, and Vivek Kundra, CTO of Washington D.C. Various news outlets suggested that the official word could come as early as next week.

Warrior, a former CTO at Motorola, joined Cisco in 2007 and once served on the mayor's technology council in Chicago. Kundra became the District of Columbia's CTO in March 2007. Before that, he was assistant secretary of commerce and technology for the state of Virginia and vice president of marketing for Evincible Software.

Another top prospect, Obama campaign and transition team tech chairman Julius Genachowski, reportedly turned down the CTO job and is rumored to be Obama's choice to chair the Federal Communications Commission. Former FCC Chairman Kevin Martin resigned last week and Obama Thursday appointed FCC Commissioner Michael Copps to be acting FCC chair, according to Reuters.