Vivek Kundra Sustaining New Era of Experimentation to Boost Tech Initiatives
Nominated by President Obama himself as the first Federal CIO in the country, Vivek Kundra is striving to inspire IT in the public sector. His other efforts in Information Technology gained him credit from InfoWorld as the 2008 IT Executive of the Year and he was recently named Chief of the Year by Information Week. With previous know how as CTO for the District of Columbia, Vivek Kundra has the experience to conform to the Information Technology challenges that are put before him.
Vivek Kundra is responsible for coordinating Information Technology operations across government authorities. In executing his duties, he sees value in the Federal government embracing cloud computing. Cloud computing involves the use of hundreds of thousands of computers to store information online. This means not using devoted and expensive physical servers. As an example of his efforts in this area, he transformed an entire office to Google documents for spreadsheets, word processing and email while working for Washington, D.C..
This was a significant move because instead of spending millions of taxpayer dollars for file servers and monthly fees for document software, cloud computing gave the District of Columbia the ability to create documents free by utilizing Google. In addition, he acquired extra security and new labels on the program. This only cost the District of Columbia $50-an-employee per year, a superior cost-benefit and efficient use of taxpayers’ dollars. Vivek Kundra said Federal agencies should adopt off-the-shelf technologies and formats that are average in the private sector. While the Chief Technology Officer for D.C., his office launched the D.C. Digital Public Square. This site is a center for government information. It also provides applications for users so they can merge that information on maps, timelines, and in other ways.
Vivek Kundra is now applying his expertise to the important tasks at hand as Federal CIO. The know how earned during his time as Chief Technology Officer for the District of Columbia is contributing to the initiatives he is implementing as part of President Obama’s administration. He wants the government’s IT efforts applying private sector platforms that are conducive to economic sharing of information.