At a time when Obama’s healthcare reform plan is the topic of conversation across the country, Aneesh Chopra, Federal Chief Technology Officer of the United States, spoke about technology’s critical role in helping our nation best address this and various other issues our country currently faces.

Tasked with the responsibility of setting the technology agenda for the United States, Mr. Chopra challenged “the academics, the private sector and government agencies to come back to me with game-changing ideas we can initiate now, in the next 90 days” during his speech at an exclusive TiE event earlier this week.

We all have some opinion of how we would like to utilize technology for the betterment of society…so we posed the question to several of the tech sector’s brightest and most progressive companies.  We asked them to think about what they would tell Mr. Chopra if they had 5 minutes to spend with him. Follow the jump to read what they had to say:

Kelly Herrell, CEO of Vyatta:

“The U.S. IT goals need frictionless networking costs.  Objectives:  Increased access to data and a more secure Internet.  Yet the enemy on this issue isn’t even getting frisked:  Government networks move traffic at a price previously reserved for Federal toilet seats, because they’re based on yesteryear’s devices sold by some of the country’s most egregiously profitable companies.  Over the past 3 years, smart organizations have cut 75% of this pork - while increasing network security - by sidestepping price locks and instead embracing OPEN NETWORKING. The State of New Mexico did this for a fraction of their previous cost, as have major universities and local school districts… along with the Department of Homeland Security, MITRE, General Dynamics, and others. The U.S. Government is spending BILLIONS on something that actually costs MILLIONS.  The solutions began shipping two years ago, and have gone viral.  The vendors are U.S.-based, as are the jobs. Historic price locks are courtesy of monopolists and stock prices  But it’s unpatriotic not to pursue the most cost-efficient networking solutions.  Unless you step in, the Federal Government will (traditionally) be among the last to convert.”

John W. Combs, CEO of ShoreTel:

“I have met with many heads of government agencies, cities, housing authorities, counties and federal groups.  Most feel that maintaining their outdated communications systems is saving the taxpayers money.  Fact is, in most cases, the cost to the taxpayers would be dramatically reduced if they were to update their communications to a current VoIP system.  When they do the analysis and agree, they are faced with a cumbersome and complex process to upgrade their systems.  My specific suggestion would be to have Mr. Chopra’s team conduct technical and financial evaluations of alternative products and fast-track the purchasing process in situations where meaningful taxpayer savings could be generated.”

Richard Daley, CEO of Pentaho:

“Governments - new administrations in particular - often talk about increasing transparency and accountability, but the real challenge comes in turning words into action. It’s no different in the private sector, where companies are investing in record numbers in business intelligence software to track progress against specific financial and operational metrics. If the government really wants to promote transparency and accountability, they need to expose their metrics for education, healthcare, poverty and more and use business intelligence to give citizens more visibility into how it’s measuring up against its goals.”

Alexei Agratchev, CEO of BVI Networks:

“Any game changing technology strategies for US government should be three-tiered. The first level is better use of data to make critical decisions, taking the guesswork out and creating an unemotional, indisputable platform from which to debate issues. The second tier is the sharing of that data. Isolated use of data by any one entity, especially one which has a vested interest, can still result in unvetted decisions. The new paradigm in today’s tech-enabled world has its brilliance in the aspect of sharing between key parties to produce a better set of decisions and fuel new collaborations with inherent buy-in and adoption. But there should be a third layer to our strategies. The key will be to continue to build collaborative partnerships with best practices geared toward the industries that each of our respective companies knows best.  Specialization will be the catalyst. In our case, BVI knows how to bring value to retail and CPG manufacturing. If we can each do our part to provide targeted expertise to some of the country’s largest industries and improve their businesses, the trickle down will be improvements in individual businesses one business at a time, resulting in generalized economic stimulus.”

What would you say?