These traits are usually fairly common amongst CIO and CTO level consortiums, especially those with real hands on backgrounds.

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The hybrid cloud is ready to take on these challenges, and so too should be the enterprise CIO and CTO, Ziegler says.

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Now, this is why I appointed the very first ever federal government CIO and CTO -- and Vivek Kundra and Aneesh Chopra are both coordinating our efforts and ensuring that we're embracing the best, most effective technologies possible.

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To that end, the president appointed the first ever federal CIO and federal CTO to lead and coordinate our technology investments across agencies.

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Many CTO and CIO are going the route of providing a technology allowance to employees.

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The Open Government Directive calls for the creation of an Open Government Dashboard under the leadership of the CTO and CIO.

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Other executive roles include senior vice president and CTO of Novell, executive vice president, CTO, and CIO of Vectant, Inc.

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Until relatively recently, Arrington says, the CIO was on the same corporate level as the chief technology officer (CTO), and both positions clearly ranked below the chief financial officer, to whom the CIO often reported.

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"What has happened is that the CTO has generally moved underneath the CIO, " she says--and the CIO now reports directly to the chief operating officer, or even to the CEO.

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