Washington - Speculation has heated up within the local tech community about who President-elect Barack Obama will appoint as his new chief technology officer (CTO) and just what that person's role might be, The Washington Post reported. Those talked about for the position on numerous sites like ObamaCTO.org include Julius Genachowski, a member of Obama's transition team and a former advisor to the Federal Communication Commission, Microsoft (NASD: MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer, Amazon (NASD: AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos and Vint Cerf, who currently holds the title of chief Internet evangelist at Google (NASD: GOOG).

Once considered a frontrunner for the job, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told CNBC earlier this week that he would not be interested in the post.

Less clear, however, is whether the CTO would focus more on policy issues, such as net neutrality, or updating the federal government's IT systems.

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http://snipurl.com/5hlsj (Washington Post)