With Barack Obama now the President Elect of the United States, the tech world has one of its two major questions answered. However, many are still wondering if, and more importantly who, Obama will appoint as his Chief Technology Officer (CTO).

While there is no guarantee that Obama will even appoint a CTO, his "vision for the future" and the inclusion of several prominent tech executives on his transition team leads us to believe that he will. "I will set big goals for this country as president - some so large that the technology to reach them does not yet exist," said the President Elect. With that in mind, the job of CTO will not be an easy one. With former Gore policy adviser Donald Gips, Google exec Sonal Shah and former InterActiveCorp exec Julius Genachowski on the transition team, Obama has surrounded himself with people who have stressed the importance of technology during this 2008 campaign.

Genachowski, who previously served as chief counsel for former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt and went to Harvard Law with Obama, is emerging as a front runner for the position. Other names in the rumor mill include Amazon CEO Jeffrey Bezos and Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Alan Davidson, head of Google’s Washington office, said that Schmidt would likely turn down an offer for the job. Davidson did offer some insight into the position, however. "There’s a balance that will need to be struck in looking for people who have real world technology experience and can be effective in Washington," he said. "There are people in Washington who fit that role and people outside of Washington who fit that role."

While this may be the same cat and mouse game we see whenever anyone is appointed to a political position from the private sector, it may come down to simply not wanting to shift from a executive position to a permanent advisory position. "We’ve seen lots of times where people have brought in gurus from the high-tech community, and they give up after a year because they’re frustrated," said James Lewis, director of the technology and public policy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Knowing how the government works is important."

While the CTO will be the President’s primary adviser when it comes to technology, it seems as though there will be a completely separate position for cybersecurity. The potential for a "cybersecurity chief" position will be pushed by the CSIS Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency. "The commission said (cybersecurity) was a national security issue, and that’s kind of out of the orbit of the CTO," said Lewis, who chairs the commission. "There’s some overlap, but I think the CTO’s role is kind of orthogonal to the cyber mission."

Another aspect to consider is the looming battle that will take place between Hollywood and the tech industry. With P2P, file sharing, and Digital Rights Management on the minds of many in both fields, whoever becomes CTO will need an intimate understanding of both worlds, with a keen eye and cool head when it comes to Intellectual Property laws. Ed Black, president and CEO of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, stresses that whoever fills the position should keep an open mind when it comes to the conflict. "They don’t have to be anti-Hollywood, they just have to be not blinded by an extreme position," he said. "I’d actually be very happy if we just had somebody who was very balanced and open."

With the Motion Picture Association of America already throwing its support behind Obama, saying that it "stands ready to work constructively with the Obama administration and the new Congress to revitalize our economy and American’s place in the world," the lobbying will be rampant and unrelenting, that is a certainty.

Along with running the rest of the country for the next four years, President Elect Obama must worry about a national broadband strategy, the potential for a central office for technology R&D funding, the looming battle between the tech industry and Hollywood. While the next four years are cloudy, one thing is a certainty: whoever accepts the CTO position will have their work cut our for them.