The second-most-popular idea, with 6,200 votes, is to repeal the Patriot Act in an effort to restore greater privacy rights for people. Other ideas include requiring government agencies to use open software, migrating to the metric measurement system, and restoring the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) "to its former glory and autonomy."

The relatively heavy early use of the site indicates the interest people have in participating in government, Mathieu said. "Based on the response, it's clearly a pent-up demand. People are craving that kind of participation. The idea that there will be a CTO, the nation's first, is a promising idea, and I think it's serving to get more of the tech community thinking about, 'Hey, we have a role to play in the way our country goes,'" he said.

The CTO site fits with Front Seat's mission of building Web sites and software for public service. The idea for the site came up after Mathieu attended the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco and started thinking about how to build Web sites very cheaply, an issue important for his company, which often doesn't earn any revenue from its sites. Front Seat is primarily interested in making a social impact and eschews revenue-earning mechanisms if they run counter to the Web site's mission, he said.

Including labor, Mathieu figures that building the Obama CTO site cost US$75. The site relies on free technology from UserVoice that lets anyone build a Web site where people can suggest ideas and vote on them. Front Seat also bears the back-end costs of supporting its Web sites.

"What we want to do is ultimately figure out how to build $0.50 sites that have civic value to them," he said.