When we talk our hopes for the Obama Administration's technology agenda, we tend to focus on a few things: Internet access, broadband, Net neutrality, increased government transparency via the Web, and improved government operations through better tech. We talk about the benefits of technology, and how it can help us.

We don't often talk about how it can hurt us, though. Perhaps we should, because cyber security is not just a sub-sector of military and economic security. Threats to national Internet infrastructure endanger all of its civic beneficiaries as well.

I bring this up because it's been a hot topic among the security industry for the past few months, and because this threat is so urgent, it may factor into Obama's choice for CTO.

Ayesha and Parag Khanna have some useful and original thoughts on the CTO position. Forget about who it will be: what form should the position take? As the Khannas point out, "So-called 'czars' have been appointed for drugs, the war in Iraq, the financial industry, and the auto sector—none of them have worked very well." Instead, the CTO should focus "on technology lessons from the countries that have overtaken the U.S. already, the practices of companies that have top CTOs, and a flexible strategy for implementing policy across the sprawling federal government."

I agree: the CTO should not be in charge of yet another piece of government, akin to a "Secretary of Technology," but a coordinator. What I hear them saying is: When it comes to government operations, don't take on individual projects like revamping health care IT or improving the homeland security watchlist. Instead, just help the agencies responsible for those missions do a better job at managing their information. Enforce government-wide standards for data structure and availability. Of course, the end goal of this coordination is to have better health care and security IT, but the means of achieving those goals should be different from how we've done things in the past.

PDF Founder Andrew Rasiej has hit on this point before: "Technology is not a slice of the pie. It's the pan."

The folks who gave us ObamaCTO.org, which has attracted thousands of participants in a conversation about the priorities for Obama's Chief Technology Officer, have branched out and added a new forum for debating options for the future of Obama's movement. It's early in the process, and as I reported yesterday, organizers are meeting in Chicago now to try to hammer out the answer to this question. On http://ideas.obamacto.org/pages/obama_movement you can add your own suggestions and vote on the ones already there. This could get interesting...