Barack Obama

President-elect Barack Obama has narrowed his choices for the country's first chief technology officer, with BusinessWeek reporting that two Indian-born technology executives are the frontrunner's. Obama, who plans to make a decision in the coming days, is considering Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior and Vivek Kundra who is the top technology officer for Washington D.C.

We were curious if Obama may look to the Seattle area for his top technologist, though it appears that's not going to happen. Still, the choices between the final two candidates represents a stark contrast, since Warrior has spent most of her career working at large technology companies (she's also the former CTO of Motrola) while Kundra has worked his way up through government positions (He ran the commerce and technology efforts for the Commonwealth of Virginia)

BusinessWeek also reports that the decision has been delayed over concerns on how the new position would interact with the country's chief information officer.

Some had thought that Obama may go for a high-profile technology executive, someone like Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos or Google's Vint Cerf.