Adviser leaving e-gov up to CIOs

PCAST

President Bush's choice as a co-chairman of a private-sector advisory committee on science and technology matters said he will focus mainly on how the federal government can prioritize its research dollars, leaving the improvement of agency e-government practices to a federal chief information officer.

Floyd Kvamme, chosen as the industry co-chairman of the President's Committee of Advisers on Science and Technology, is a partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers and advised Bush on Silicon Valley matters during the presidential campaign.

Kvamme (pronounced Quam-may) said he expects that setting priorities for the federal research and development budget — slated to hit an all-time high of $95 billion under the fiscal 2002 budget blueprint Bush released last month — will be a large part of the committee's agenda.

Although Kvamme and the PCAST will serve as liaison between the administration and the high-tech community, they will not advise agencies on how to improve their own technology-related practices, Kvamme said Wednesday.

Instead, that role should be filled by the agencies' CIOs and the Office of Management and Budget, Kvamme said. According to Tucker Eskew, White House director of media affairs, Bush still plans to name a federal CIO at OMB to lead e-government efforts.

"Nothing that has happened today has altered that position in the least," he said. OMB director Mitchell Daniels Jr. is "hard at work talking to candidates for that position," he said.

Former President Bush created the PCAST in 1990 by executive order, and then-President Clinton renewed the panel in 1993. During Clinton's administration, John Young, former president and chief executive officer at Hewlett-Packard Co., was the industry co-chairman.

President Bush will soon issue a new executive order to continue the committee, and still plans to name the other PCAST co-chairman, the assistant to the president for science and technology and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, Eskew said.