I read this blog for a variety of reasons and was pleased to find an insightful post on Obama:

http://etbe.coker.com.au/2008/03/18/barak-obama-wants-a-national-cto/

I love the idea of government using open document formats - and have been pleasantly surprised at how the US government has been quite willing to consider open source software as well. Additionally, the US government has traditionally made its “creative works” part of the public domain, including photographs, and even stamp artwork from the USPS. However, the USPS started copyrighting their works a couple decades ago, but I digress. From what I’ve seen of local politics, government CTO’s are not much more than spokespersons, but who knows, maybe a national CTO would be different.