Thoughts For A National CTO

By Jered Floyd, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder, Permabit

First and foremost, I think it's absolutely necessary that the National CTO candidate have a strong technology background. This sounds like an obvious standard but, as you and I both know, the role of a CTO frequently trends more towards marketing than technology.

While in business this is important, for the federal government the CTO must be much more than a persuasive technology evangelist; he or she must have a deep understanding of the technologies being considered and be willing to recommend tools that are best for the problem to be solved, not just the ones that sound the best.