Transition Watch: Ranking the federal CTO candidates

The competition for the job as the government’s chief technology officer in the Obama administration is heating up, with several potential candidates’ chances outlined in a Wall Street Journal article.

Vinton Cerf, chief Internet evangelist at Google and who is widely known as the “father” of the Internet, is one person named. Another is Reed Hundt, former chair of the Federal Communications Commission. Others mentioned include Ed Felten, a Princeton professor of computer science, former Xerox chief scientist John Seely Brown, and Hewlett Packard’s chief technology officer Shane Robison.

One name in longer on the list is Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive. He’s taken himself out of the running, the article said.