You're right, of course. What I DO like about this is the fact that Obama (seems to) know enough to say that he needs someone to help his administration understand technology. I can't fault that at all.
Always a good laugh.
I use myself as an example of someone who should have heard of that position because I'm in the tech industry. How did you hear about that, btw?
That position needs to be much more front and center. Technology is only going to become more important. That should be recognized now.
As part of that, I try to keep part of my head in government software development, which is like a world unto itself. I have worked with a couple of agency CIOs, so I've heard of the larger CIO structure that they are part of. There is a lot of CIO-type stuff that was started, ironically, by the Bush administration when they came in. Stuff like balanced scorecards and a national Enterprise Architecture group. As you can imagine, there's a huge push for security, but there are also some really wild System-of-Systems stuff going on. Drop me an email and I can hook you up with more resources if you are interested.
Technology should be seamless and transparent.