According to unnamed sources, the newspaper says Obama's choice is Howard A. Schmidt, a former cyber-security adviser to the Bush White House.

The Obama administration has made cyber-security and its coordination across government agencies a top priority. But over the past year the White House saw an exodus of top cyber-security officials, including presidential adviser Melissa Hathaway.

In Virginia, Chopra championed projects such as the Physics Flexbook, a Web-based open source textbook that supplements existing materials. He backed a social network built on Ning to connect health-care clinicians in small towns. He also initiated a scorecard system to rate the performance of Virginia's state agencies, and launched a one-stop Web site for business-to-government transactions and services. Last year the National Association of State Chief Information Officers awarded Virginia first-place honors for technology management.

"We worked to build a culture of innovation in the public sector that saw state employees translate simple ideas into funded prototypes expected to 4 to 1 return on taxpayer investment and aligned directly with legislative and executive priorities," Chopra told the committee.

Federal News Radio reported Monday that U.S. Rep. Gerry Connelly, D-Va., introduced a bill to "codify" the job roles of the CTO and CIO that President Barack Obama created by executive order. Vivek Kundra is currently the federal CIO.

Noveck is the deputy director for Open Government within the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House. Her efforts stem from President Barack Obama's memo issued on the first day of his administration calling for more transparency in government. But promoting transparency is proving harder than it seems.

Noveck got right to one of the points that has troubled me a lot about social networks as tools for civic engagement: they create a lot of "noise" but don't necessarily lead to collaborative ways to solve government's myriad problems.

"We see examples of civic participation, but it's divorced from government itself," she said. "We see example of how government responds to complaints...but they don't engage people in the process, nor do they track progress."

In other words, the marriage of social networks and government has been pretty much a one-way street so far. Lots of "noise" coming in, but very little in the way of collaborative solutions, based on citizen participation, coming out.

Noveck mentioned several efforts underway to resolve this new conundrum, including Harvard University Group Brain Project and the U.S. Patent Office's Peer-to-Patent Project, which is designed to reduce the enormous backlog of patent reviews that is costing the government huge sums in litigation costs. The Peer-to Patent project is attempting to link volunteer scientists, using social networking tools, with patents under review to speed up the application process.

Noveck has a sterling resume for leading the the trasparency program at the White House. She is the director of the Institute for Information Law and Policy at New York Law School and a recognized expert on the impact of information on public institutions; she has taught courses on e-government and has just authored a forthcoming book, called "Wiki Government".

She spoke forcefully about how collaborative efforts have the benefit of generating new solutions and ideas that would never be found by a single person, and that networks of problem solvers can mobilize action. Most importantly, she said "collaborative innovations drive performance."

But she recognizes that government's current approach to developing feedback mechanisms via social networks aren't well managed in terms of converting citizen input into outcomes.

Meanwhile, as government ramps up its use of social networks sites, privacy groups are speaking out with growing concern about government and social networking, especially in regards to the personal information it will get access to as it tries to create greater transparency. The charge towards Gov 2.0 is in danger of falling off the tracks if done incorrectly.

Noveck believes it can be done correctly and that CIOs must play a major role in helping their government embrace social networks for outcomes. Here are my (somewhat raw) notes from her multi-point principles on creating greater transparency without all the noise:

• Ask the right questions.
• Ask the right people: make sure to create opp for the right people to participate. (examples: CityScan, Peer to Patent)
• Design process for desired end: Do you want a Wiki style or a Digg-style design for collaboration?
• Design for groups. When you engage people as individuals you get individual responses. Instead create processes that use the wisdom of the crowd. Use the community to moderate, thereby increases efficacy of democracy.
• Use the screen: Mashups that create meaningful and powerful. Make data real and show people they are part of the process.
• Roles and tasks.  If we show people what the job is we want them to do, you can get people to self select (rather than toss up any idea for consideration).
• Reputation: there are tools for ranking ideas up and down. They help manage large scale influxes of information. These tools can turn feedback into something manageable.
• Make policies rather than websites. Example: Getting feedback from employees.  TSA has one. State Dept has one. Have to create some kind of feedback loop, otherwise it goes to waste. Need a process to manage feedback. Obama campaign had policy networks in moderated listservs. You need to channel expertise so it can be used and useful.
• Pilot new ideas. NASA's XPRIZE program; Get people to submit innovation that exceeds the cost for the prize. Another example is Kundra's "Apps for democracy" project.
• Focus on Outcomes: don't spend too much time measuring the inputs. Need to focus on what to achieve.  You have to rethink transparency and collaboration to what end. What does better performance actually mean?

In closing Noveck said that it's up to public CIOs to bring their perspective to this unfolding process. "We need common platforms," she said. "We need CIOs to use their bully pulpit to push innovation to overcome resistance to experimentation while keeping in mind [public sector] obligations. We need to...champion the people are successful and innovative in engaging citizens."

Ok public CIOs. Your job continues to grow in importance as government transforms itself.

In recent months a number of companies -- some rather large in size, including News Corp, ConocoPhillips, Harrah's  -- are dropping the CIO title for positions that involve a corporation's IT operations. Instead, as these and other firms restructure, they are parceling out CIO duties to VPs and deputy CIOs.

Art Langer, a Columbia University professor, told Watson that "the CIO role has less legitmacy than other C-level positions, making it easier to discard in tough economic times." Unlike CEOs and CFOs who have been around for a while in organizations, CIOs "are relatively new to the C-suite and they lack a defined career/educational track -- and a professional organization to bolster their credibility."

Watson is writing about the private sector but there are parallels to the public sector. Most signfiicantly, public CIOs are relatively new to the c-level in government. It's only been in the past few years that we've seen a rise in the number of CIOs who report to the highest elected official in government. And while the position of the federal CIO is mandated by Congress and state CIOs have a strong professional organization (NASCIO), the role of the local government CIO is much more ambiguous.

I have yet to hear of any county or municipal governments dropping the CIO title, but they are under the most pressure to cut costs in the economic downturn and would be the most likely to jettison the position and restructure it into something that isn't called a CIO.

Because there's clear evidence of the problem in the private sector, Watson believes the CIO role is in a crisis. I don't think that's the case in the public sector, but his advice is something any CIO, public or private, should consider in these turbulent times. CIOs need to make sure they are "true" partners with their leaders, thinking strategically, collaborating closely with their executives and business units and "canning the tech-speak."

If that wasn't bad enough, the state found itself facing a $1 billion deficit in the middle of the fiscal year, forcing the governor and state legislature to scramble and find ways to patch the gaping budget hole. So far, the suggestions on how to fix the problem haven't been pretty.

After years of just watching revenue grow, even as new more expensive programs were added to the budget, policymakers find themselves facing three stark choices:

• Raise taxes
• Cut services
• Reduce expenses.

Not wanting to raise taxes and damage their chances for reelection, politicians in Massachusetts have opted for cutting services and reducing expenses. The final item on the list means trying to tackle that runaway train known as benefits, a sacred cow to the powerful government unions here.

Despite howls of protest, the unions and their legislative supportors have seen their arguments against change undercut by a series of articles in the (financially vulnerable) Boston Globe that have exposed just how costly and unsustainable some of the agreements have become between the state and its workers.

But that's not the only problem with government in Massachusetts and elsewhere. There's just too much of it. Too many agencies doing the same job (for example, Massachusetts has three large transportation departments).

The problem extends beyond the Boston bureaucracy. Massachusetts has 351 cities and towns, with way too many trying to maintain their own services when, in fact, they should be sharing.

Tom Brokaw, the former NBC news announcer, recently wrote an op-ed article in the New York Times pointing out how costly it has become to maintain government at the state, county and munipal level, especially in rural areas. As an example he cites the 99 counties that exist in Iowa, each with its own set of courts that continue to operate, whether they are truly needed or not.

But it's not all bad news. The city of Springfield, Mass., went bankrupt several years ago after local officials couldn't make the tough choices to raise taxes, cut services and reduce expenses. So the state appointed an independent financial board to take over and run the city 

Today, one of the poorest cities in the Commonwealth (based on per capita income) has a $10 million surplus, despite the worst economy in over 60 years. The board imposed on the city its version of CompStat and put each department under intense performance scrutiny. As a result, the city has slashed a raft of wasteful and unncessary expenses and is saving another $1.7 million annually.

While cuts in staffing have been made, investments in technology are up. Way up. Springfield has implemented an ERP system to streamline financials and HR. And the city is about embark on 311, which will reduce the number of non-emergency calls made to the city's 911 system while improving service response.

Ripples of reform are appearing elsewhere around the country. Will they go far enough? In some regions of the country where the problems are deep, the answer is probably yes. We have the tools, thanks to technology, to share services in a way that wasn't possible 10 years ago. Now it will just take political willpower to make it happen.

For purposes of business, riding a train is great. I don't have to take off my shoes and have my bags inspected prior to boarding. Once in my seat, I can plug in my laptop computer, turn on my wireless broadband card, take calls on my cell phone and do just about everything I do back in my office. If I'm hungry, I can stroll down to the cafe car and get something to eat and drink. By the time I reach my destination, I'm far more relaxed and have accomplished much more than when I fly.

I also know I can only do this in the Northeast Corridor, where frequent and relatively fast rail service makes traveling by train both reliable and convenient. You can't do the same between, say Chicago and St. Louis, or Atlanta and Nashville or Los Angeles and San Francisco. There's nothing speedy, convenient or reliable when it comes to rail service in these and about a dozen other high capacity corridors of travel.

Fortunately, the situation is about to change. Today, President Obama announced plans to develop high speed rail in the United States. In February, Congress approved spending $8 billion to jump start the kind of intercity rail service that can be found throughout much of Europe, Japan and, eventually, China. Obama has included another $5 billion for high speed rail in the White House budget.

In his remarks, Obama spoke about the nearly $80 billion in lost productivity that happens annually in the U.S., thanks to congestion on the roads and at airports. High speed rail won't eliminate all the congestion; the country is too big and would require a train network too large to reach every corner and provide everyone service that's convenient, fast and reliable. 

But by focusing on a dozen or so potential corridors between 100 and 500 miles in length, high speed rail can make a difference by becoming an option in terms of travel. We have the proof from highly successful rail systems built in the same manner overseas and within the northeast corridor, between Boston and Washington, D.C.

So what's this have to do with technology? Plenty. High speed rail is one component of smart transit, America's new infrastructure. Just as we're learning that IT can help create smart grids that make our use of energy more efficient, so too can IT help make surface transport more efficient, reliable and convenient.

Bits and pieces of smart transit have been popping up in recent years. Mapping tools help car drivers find their destination more easily; they help fleets of trucks and buses move more efficiently and, with the development of a high speed rail system, IT will aid in speeding up the movement of trains and give passengers up to the minute information for making connections between the trains and airports, buses and subways.

It's all about new, smart infrastructure that allows people to have more options for traveling easily without paying the high cost of lost productivity and environmental damage.

All aboad!