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Vivek Kundra

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Vivek Kundra
Vivek Kundra in 2009
1st Chief Information Officer of the United States
Incumbent
Assumed office
March 5, 2009
PresidentBarack Obama
Preceded byKaren Evans
As Administrator of the Office of Electronic Government and Information Technology
Personal details
Born (1974-10-09) October 9, 1974 (age 49)
New Delhi, India
Alma materUniversity of Maryland, College Park
University of Maryland University College

Vivek Kundra (Hindi: विवेक कुंद्रा; born October 9, 1974) is the first Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the United States of America, appointed by President Obama on March 5, 2009.[1][2] The E-Government Act of 2002 established the role of a Federal Chief Information Officer within the Office of Management and Budget.[3]

He served in Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty's cabinet as the Chief Technology Officer for the District and, before that, as Virginia's Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Technology in Governor Tim Kaine's cabinet.

Early life and education

Kundra was born in New Delhi, India on October 9, 1974. He moved to Tanzania with his family at the age of one, when his father joined a group of professors and teachers to provide education to local residents. Kundra learned Swahili as his first language, in addition to Hindi and English. His family moved to the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area when he was eleven.[4][5]

Kundra attended college at the University of Maryland College Park where he received a degree in Psychology. He earned a masters degree in Information Technology, from University of Maryland University College.[1][6] Additionally, he is a graduate of the University of Virginia's Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership.[7]

Professional recognition

Kundra was named Chief of the Year on December 21, 2009, by InformationWeek for driving unprecedented change in federal IT.[8]

Kundra was named by InfoWorld among the top 25 CTO's in the country.[9] He was also selected as a 2008 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium Award Finalist[10] on ‘Balancing Innovation and Cost Leadership’.[11] Both organizations cited the "stock market" approach to IT portfolio management that Kundra implemented for the District of Columbia. The system measured project performance and allocated IT investments similar to the way the public companies trade on the stock market.[9]

Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Ash Institute also awarded the Innovations in American Government Award (2009) to “District of Columbia’s Data Feeds: Democratization of Government Data”.[12] The project spearheaded by Kundra, Mayor Fenty, and CPO David Gragan [13] was cited for “increase in civic participation, government accountability, and transparency in D.C. government practices” through sites like the Digital Public Square[14] and the DC Data Catolog.[15]

Kundra was recognized as the 2008 Government Sector IT Executive of the Year by the Tech Council of Maryland. The organization cited Kundra's efforts to increase public access to government information and services through live data feeds and data sets.[16] Kundra was also a recipent of the Federal 100 Award[17] for significant contributions to the federal information technology community.[18]

Career

Kundra served as Director of Infrastructure Technology for Arlington County, Virginia starting September 11, 2001.[19]

Governor Tim Kaine appointed Kundra in January 2006 to the post of Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Technology for Virginia,[20] the first dual cabinet role in the state's history.[6] Kundra developed technology innovations to streamline government and enhance business opportunity.[6]

Mayor Adrian Fenty appointed him on March 27, 2007[19] to the cabinet post of Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for the District of Columbia.[1] Kundra worked on developing programs to spur open source and crowdsourced applications using publicly accessible Web services from the District of Columbia. Kundra established the D.C. Data Catalog, giving the public access to more than 300 data sets held by DC's agencies.[21] He later used that data as the source material for an initiative called Apps for Democracy. The contest yielded 47 web, iPhone and Facebook applications from residents in 30 days. Mayor Fenty stated that the program cost the District "50 thousand dollars total and we estimate that we will save the district millions of dollars in program development costs".[22] This cost-benefit was claimed by the DC government as savings in internal operational and contractual costs.[23] "Taking a page" from Kundra [24] this initiative is now being mirrored by New York City's mayor Michael Bloomberg in launching a "BigApps" contest housed at NYC BigApps as well as New York City's DataMine.[25] The city of San Francisco has also recently launched a data portal similar to that of DC.[21]

Kundra won recognition for the project management system he implemented for the District government.[9][10] The system imagined projects as publicly traded companies, project schedules as quarterly reports, and user satisfaction as stock prices. Buying or selling a stock corresponded to adding resources to a project or taking them away. The goal of management was to optimize the project portfolio for return on investment. The system effectively replaced subjective judgments about projects with objective, data driven analytics.[9]

Kundra's efforts to use cloud-based Web applications in the District government have also been considered innovative within government.[26] Following the DC example driven by Kundra, the city of Los Angeles is now taking steps to adopt the cloud computing model for its IT needs.[27] A DC spokeswoman said that the District of Columbia paid $479,560 for the Enterprise Google Apps license, which is $3.5 million less than what it had planned to spend on an alternative plan.[27] Since its deployment in July 2008 Google Apps is available to 38,000 DC city employees, 4,000 of whom are actively using it. As of August 20, 2009, DC has not yet made a decision to replace Microsoft Exchange with Gmail, having a policy "to put into Google Apps only information that could be transmitted via e-mail" and "not placing sensitive data into Google Apps."[27]

Kundra also moved the city's Geographic information systems department to a middle school.[28]

Prior to his appointment as CIO, Mr. Kundra served as technology adviser on President Barack Obama's transition team.[2]

Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO)

Kundra was officially named by President Obama on March 5, 2009 to the post of Federal CIO[2] a position that was previously filled by Karen S. Evans.[29]

The Federal Chief Information Officer is responsible for directing the policy and strategic planning of federal information technology investments as well as for oversight of federal technology spending. The Federal CIO establishes and oversees enterprise architecture to ensure system interoperability and information sharing and maintains information security and privacy across the federal government. According to President Obama, as Chief Information Officer, Kundra "will play a key role in making sure our government is running in the most secure, open, and efficient way possible."[1] In order to further President Obama's overall technology agenda, Mr. Kundra, Jeffrey Zients, the Chief Performance Officer, and Aneesh Chopra, the Chief Technology Officer, will all work closely together.[30] Both Kundra and Chopra previously worked in Governor Tim Kaine's administration.[31]

Kundra has made it a priority to focus on the following areas: (1) ensuring openness and transparency, (2) lowering the cost of government, (3) cyber-security, (4) participatory democracy, and (5) innovation.[32] One of Mr. Kundra's first projects was the launch of Data.gov, a site for providing access to raw government data.[33] Another project launched by Mr. Kundra in June 2009 was the Federal IT Dashboard, which gives an assessment (in terms of Cost, Schedule and CIO ranking) of many large government IT projects.[34]

On March 12, 2009, an official at Kundra's previous DC technology office was charged with fraud and other misconduct. While Kundra was not the subject of the investigation, he went on leave from his CIO position for a five-day period quickly returning to work after being cleared.[35]

Democratizing data

Kundra launched the Data.gov platform on May 21, 2009[36] with the goal of providing public access to raw datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government in order to enable public participation and private sector innovation.[37] Data.gov draws conceptual parallels from the DC Data Catalog launched by Kundra when he was CTO of Washington, D.C., where he published vast amounts of datasets for public use. Immediately after the Data.gov launch, the Apps for America[38] contest by the Sunlight Foundation challenged the American people to develop innovative solutions using Data.gov. San Francisco,[21] the City of New York,[25] the State of California,[39] the State of Utah,[40] the State of Michigan,[41] and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts[42] have launched public access websites modeled after Data.gov. Internationally, some cities in Canada and the UK[43] are following suit.

IT dashboard

President Barack Obama testing the IT Dashboard

On June 30, 2009 at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York,[44] Vivek Kundra, unveiled the IT Dashboard that tracks over $76 billion in federal IT spending.[45] The IT Dashboard is part of USASpending.gov to track all government spending.[46] The IT Dashboard is designed to provide CIOs of individual government agencies, the public and agency leaders unprecedented visibility into the operations and performance of Federal IT investments, and the ability to provide and receive direct feedback to those directly accountable.[47] In January 2010, Kundra followed up the work on the IT Dashboard with TechStat accountability sessions.[48] These sessions are designed to turnaround, halt or terminate at-risk and failing IT projects in the federal government. It allows agency CIOs, CFOs, and other key stakeholders to find solutions for IT projects that are over budget, behind schedule, or under-performing.

Cloud computing

Kundra launched the Federal Government strategy and the cloud computing portal Apps.gov at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., on Sept. 15, 2009.[49] Apps.gov is a new service provided by the GSA[50] where federal agencies can subscribe to IT services. Kundra saw the cloud as an alternative to hardware investments, as means to reduce IT costs, and to shift focus of federal IT from infrastructure management to strategic projects.[8] This intiative aims to use commercially derived technologies in order to promote software tools, vast data storage and data sharing, and to foster collaboration across all federal agencies.[50] Howard Schmidt, White House cybersecurity coordinator, will work closely with the Federal CIO and CTO with respect to cloud initiatives[51] and has the responsibility of orchestrating all cybersecurity activities across the government.[52]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d Office of the Press Secretary, The White House (2008-03-05) "President Obama Names Vivek Kundra Chief Information Officer"
  2. ^ a b c Hart, Kim (2009-03-05). "D.C. Tech Chief Tapped for White House Slot". Washington Post. Retrieved 2009-03-05. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  3. ^ "E-Government Act 2002"
  4. ^ Hart, Kim (2009-01-04). "D.C.'s Kinetic Tech Czar". Washington Post. Retrieved 2009-03-05. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  5. ^ Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership"Political Leaders 2007 Profile: Vivek Kundra", University of Virginia
  6. ^ a b c District of Columbia, OCTO"Vivek Kundra, Chief Technology Officer, District of Columbia Government"
  7. ^ Gourley, Bob (2009-02-03). "Vivek Kundra: The Alpha CTO". CTOVision.com. Retrieved 2009-11-09. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  8. ^ a b "Chief Of The Year: Vivek Kundra". Information Week. December 21, 2009. Retrieved 2010-01-02.
  9. ^ a b c d Gruman, Galen (2008-06-02). "The best CTOs of 2008". InfoWorld. Retrieved 2009-03-05. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help) Cite error: The named reference "infoworld-cto-25" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  10. ^ a b MIT, Sloan School of Management "Vivek Kundra(Federal CIO)2008 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium Finalist" Cite error: The named reference "mitcio" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  11. ^ MIT, Sloan School of Management "The 2008 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium
  12. ^ The Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation (2009-09-15) “District of Columbia's Data Feeds Wins Innovations in American Government Award” John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.
  13. ^ Van der Veen, Chad (2009-09-14). "D.C.'s Data Feeds Wins Kennedy School's Innovations in American Government Award". Government Technology. Retrieved 2009-11-08. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  14. ^ District of Columbia “DC Digital Public Square”
  15. ^ District of Columbia “DC Data Catalog”
  16. ^ Michelle Ferrone (2008-11-07). "The Tech Council of Maryland Announces Award Winners of 2008 CIO&CTO LIVE! Awards". Tech Council MD. Retrieved 2009-03-05. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  17. ^ Monroe, John S. (2009-02-13). "2009 Federal 100 Winners" (PDF). Federal Computer Week. Retrieved 2009-11-09. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  18. ^ Monroe, John S. (2009-02-13). "FCW announces the 2009 Federal 100 award winners". Federal Computer Week. Retrieved 2009-11-09. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  19. ^ a b Biography Vivek Kundra Chief Technology Officer, District of Columbia Government
  20. ^ [1]
  21. ^ a b c San Francisco's DataSF.org Won't be a D.C. Copycat, CIO Says
  22. ^ "Fenty on Apps for Democracy"
  23. ^ "Apps for Democracy"
  24. ^ National Journal (06-29-2009)"Bloomberg Unveils Gov't Apps Contest"
  25. ^ a b New York Future Initiative (06-29-2009)"Bloomberg Announces 'Big Apps' Contest"
  26. ^ http://www.gcn.com/print/27_28/47565-1.html
  27. ^ a b c news.cnet.com (08-20-2009)"Los Angeles gets its Google Apps groove"
  28. ^ http://vivekkundra.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html
  29. ^ Kash, Wyatt (January 19, 2009). "The Karen Evans era". Government Computer News. 1105 Media. Retrieved 2009-04-20.
  30. ^ http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Weekly-Address-President-Obama-Discusses-Efforts-to-Reform-Spending/
  31. ^ Virginia.gov Press Release (2009-07-28)[2] Retrieved (2010-02-07)
  32. ^ http://www.govtech.com/gt/653151
  33. ^ http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/03/vivek-kundra-federal-cio-in-hi.html
  34. ^ http://www.govtech.com/gt/698705?topic=290182
  35. ^ "Kundra Reinstated as Federal CIO". Washington Technology. March 18, 2009. Retrieved 2009-10-29.
  36. ^ Hamm, Steve (2009-12-01). "The Power of Government-as-Platform". Business Week. Retrieved (2010-02-13). {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  37. ^ "Data.gov". Retrieved 2010-02-13.
  38. ^ Jackson, Joab (2009-04-24). "Sunlight Foundation reveals winners in its Apps for America contest". Government Computer News. Retrieved (2010-02-13). {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  39. ^ "CA.Gov". State Of California. Retrieved (2010-02-14). {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  40. ^ "Data-Utah.Gov". State Of Utah. Retrieved (2010-02-14). {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  41. ^ "State of Michigan-Data". State Of Michigan. Retrieved (2010-02-14). {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  42. ^ "Data-Mass.Gov". Commonwealth of Massauchussets. Retrieved (2010-02-14). {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  43. ^ "data.gov.uk". HM Government, United Kingdom. Retrieved (2010-02-14). {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  44. ^ Scola, Nancy (2009-06-30). "PdF '09: Kundra Unveils IT Spending Dashboard". techPresident, Personal Democracy Forum. Retrieved (2010-02-14). {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  45. ^ Federal IT Dashboard
  46. ^ USASpending.gov
  47. ^ Lohr, Steve (2009-06-30). "Online Tool Will Track U.S. Tech Spending". New York Times. Retrieved (2010-02-14). {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  48. ^ Weigelt, Matthew (2010-02-09). "Federal CIO pursues relentless efficiency via TechStat meetings". Washington Technology. Retrieved (2010-02-14). {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  49. ^ NASA Ames Research Center, (2009-09-15)"NASA Ames Hosts White House CIO", Retrieved (2010-01-17)
  50. ^ a b GSA"Apps.Gov", Retrieved (2010-01-17)
  51. ^ Federal News Radio (2010-02-11) "Cybersecurity coordinator Howard Schmidt discusses cloud", Retrieved (2010-02-15)
  52. ^ Phillips, Macon (2009-12-22) "Introducing the New Cybersecurity Coordinator", The White House, Retrieved (2010-02-15)
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