The year 2009 is marked as the year of elections for us Indonesians. In the early April, we voted for our legislative members, and shortly afterwards the big presidential election will follow closely. This blog is of course not about politics, and will never talk about it, I presume. That’s why I’m not going to contribute to the wildly-crowded, but lively, discussions about Indonesian politics.

What is indeed interesting to be slightly touched is the role of CTO ( Chief of Technology Officer ) in any government’s administration. This issue was brought to the surface by Barack Obama when he announced that he will appoint USA’s first CTO with the following purpose in mind :

“to ensure that our government and all its agencies have the right infrastructure, policies and services for the 21st century. The CTO will ensure the safety of our networks and will lead an interagency effort, working with chief technology and chief information officers of each of the federal agencies, to ensure that they use best-in-class technologies and share best practices.”

As we speak, we know that he is still yet to make good of that promise. America is still waiting to see who’s going to have the first seat as her CTO. Political issues aside, I think that’s one good strategy to adopt for whoever going to run as presidential candidates here in Indonesia. Of course, speaking locally, he / she then will be called a Minister of Technology or something similar.

The job of being a CTO is surely not an easy one, let alone being a CTO for a whole nation. In the corporate world of business, a CTO job will closely reflect or overlap with the more familiar job of CIO ( Chief Information Officer ). An excellent article I read discussed about this and mentioned that :

“the CIO is responsible for ensuring that the company’s information technology investments are aligned with its strategic business objectives. To this end, the CIO has emerged as the key executive for information assets, operations, and policy…… In addition, most CIO responsibilities have expanded beyond the traditional role to include both strategic and tactical duties, as well as corporate policy direction.”

Now take that definition and apply it into a nation, – in this case Indonesia. Cross out the words “company” and “corporate”, and change it with “country” or “national”. You will then get an accurate picture of a very complicated, but challenging, job a CTO would have in our country. This position would demand an individual with a very specific set of skills and educated and experienced in such fields as information technology, electrical engineering, or computer science. He or she must also be a positive leader, an effective communicator (skilled in both listening and speaking), a persuasive negotiator, and a customer-orientated individual.

Again, I am not going to argue about whether such a capable individual exists in our country or not. Instead, I’m going to propose that every presidential candidate of Indonesia will do well to include the role of CTO in his / her planned platform. It is an undeniable truth that nobody’s perfect. So why not incorporate it into your program ? At best, – that is if you’re elected, it would help to work at technology-related issues in Indonesia. There is simply a yearning need for that cannot be ignored. At worst, – if you lose the vote; well, at least it would make your campaign sexy. Think about it.