Vivek Kundra: Federal CIO in His Own Words

The following article contains several audio excerpts and transcripts from Vivek Kundra's first conference call as the newly appointed Federal CIO. After weeks of speculation it was formally announced today that President Obama has appointed Kundra, who had previously been serving as the CTO for Washington D.C.. In his previous position, Kundra pushed the boundaries of Information Technology and set the standard for transparency and accountability adopting Google Apps as a collaboration platform, video taping vendor interactions, and instituting a rigorous regime of metrics and accountability for government contracts.

In the following audio excerpts you'll hear about Kundra's plans to help push Federal IT towards more transparency and accountability. You'll also get a sense that Kundra, through his interaction with the CIO council is going to start unifying the federal government's approach to procurement and planning. In one of Kundra's answers, he suggests that President Obama will be announcing another appointment for a CTO position. This conference call was recorded on Thursday morning, shortly after the Whitehouse published a press release naming Kundra as the newly appointed Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO).

Kundra's Introductory Remarks

VK: Good morning, I want to first say how humbled and honored I am to serve under the Obama administration and for the President in terms of appointing me as the Federal CIO. I'm really excited about the opportunity to fundamentally look at how we're deploying technology in the federal government and rethinking what we could do in terms of finding the innnovative path to lower the cost of government operations [while] at the same time looking at how can we fundamentally change the way the public sector interacts with the public.

VK: How do we make sure that the government is about "We the People" and that we engage citizens in terms of how their government functions - holding government officials accountable in terms of making sure they know where money is going throughout the public sector, ensuring that we have the ability to run an open, transparent, participatory, and collaborative government. At the same time be mindful that in these tough economic times when we're facing two wars, we're looking at an economic crisis and the energy and healthcare issues that this country faces. How can we leverage the power of technology to make sure that the country is moving in the right direction. We look at federal IT spending, the federal government is the largest single buyer of technology in the world at $71 billions dollars annually.

VK: Going through, as the president and director Orszag promised, going through line item by line item looking at the budget and ensuring that those resources are spent effectively and that we hold agencies accountable for how that money is spent is going to be a big part of my role here, and secondly, I'm going to be working very closely with all federal CIOs in terms of the agency level to ensure that they are advancing an agenda that embraces open government, an agenda that looks at how we can fundamentally revolutionize technology in the public sector and reject the view that the public sector has to lag behind the private sector. That we need to embrace new technologies that are going to change the way we serve our constituents and at the same time ensure that the federal government operates in an efficient way.

Kundra's Role as Federal CIO

VK: So I'll be serving in both capacities: both as the Federal CIO and as the e-gov and IT administration, but in terms of the portfolio... if you look at some of the innovations that have happened since 2002, it is not just e-government, we also want to focus on how do we look at the backend system, whether that is in the Department of Defense or Health and Human Services, and ensure that we're having a wholistic view of [information technology] and not just focusing on e-government.

VK: So, the CTO will be named in due time by the President, but what I can talk about is my role in terms of the Federal CIO role. The Federal CIO role is going to be largely focused on 1. the operations of the federal government, looking at the $71 billion and ensure that we're spending that money effectively, 2. on driving a transparency and open government agenda to ensure that the public has access to information, the public has access to government and we rethink how the federal government interacts with the public in an information economy and 3. we want to look at the innovative path in terms of leveraging innovations that are happening whether is it in the private sector or in the NGO community and applying them to the federal government and changing the velocity with which we adopt new technologies.

VK: Vivek Kundra on data.gov and the Imperative to Distribute Data

VK: One of the things we want to do is embark on launching data.gov which would democratize data and give data access to the public and based on that challenge whether it is citizens, NGOs the private sector to help us think through how we address some of the toughest problems in the public sector.

VK: Data.gov will publish data feeds, so we'll have a vast array of data, and the way I like to think about this is that if you think of two forms of data that have been published in the federal government that have fundamentally transformed the economy. One example is the National Institute of Health working with other world bodies when they published the Human Genome Project data online. What that did is it created an entire revolution in personalized medicine where you ended up having over 500 drugs that were created and that are in the pipeline coming into the FDA.

VK: Second, is what happened in the geospatial community when the defense department decided to release data around satellites you created this GPS revolution where now you could go to your local car rental company and get a GPS device or your iPhone and get directions.

VK: In the same way, in the same spirit, there is a lot of data that the federal government has and what we need to do is, we need to make sure that all that data that is not private that is not restricted for national security reasons can be made public. And the question we should be thinking about even when it comes to FOIA is how do we begin with the default assumption that we put information out in the public domain then the second question is what needs to be private rather than the other way around.

Vivek Kundra on the Need to Transform the Government: The Digital Economy

VK: One of the challenges that the government faces is, as we move more and more information, in terms of published information or whether it is [online] content, out in cyberspace. What's really important is that, on the back-end, the government is going to need to go through a transformation to ensure that we have the right resources to be able to respond to a new economy - to the digital economy.

VK: An example is what Facebook has been able to do in terms of self-organizing and civic participation. What they've been able to do is that they have over 140 million or so users and they've been able to self-organize on issues, on policy, on problems and create a movement so that people can be heard. That's one model. The second model is the two-way interaction between the federal government and citizens. And you are absolutely right on that end, it is going to require massive transformation on the back-end to ensure that the government is able to deal with this new reality. And, frankly, those investments haven't been historically made and that's one of the things we are going to do - is ensure that we look at and rethink the workforce for the 21st century.

VK: Third is making information available such as data feeds so applications can be created in a context rich model. If you look at government what they've done historically is they've just put up a website and they'll say this is Agency X. Unfortunately, if you look at the traffic on those websites and you compare that traffic to a facebook or a craigslist, it just pales in comparison and one of the things we need to start thinking about is how do we put information in the right context.

VK: And what I mean by that is, for example, if you look at April 15 or if you look at certain days that matter where the federal government will "fire" certain actions, we need to make sure that the federal government is putting that information in the right context. Because, I may care about taxes around April 15th, or I may care about another issue depending on what time of the day it is. Government needs to move towards context rich information flows and engagement.

Kundra on Open Source

VK: I think you look at open source, as a technology, whether it's mediawiki, for example... with Wikipedia what we did in the District of Columbia was that we had a wikipedia solution that allowed every single employee to collaborate and have access to information. I think there is also a place for specialized software, you look at the FAA or if you are looking at DHS, there are some mission critical systems that you can't apply an open source solution to. We need to have a very pragmatic, balanced approach in terms of software. I would argue that, whether it is open source or proprietary software one of the biggest ticket items when it comes to information technology on that $71 billion dollars is the money the federal government spends on contracts and contracts that, frankly, some of them haven't performed very well and there have not been consequences. And, we need to become serious and tough on those contractors that are not going to deliver. Eliminating those contracts and making sure that we have consultants and contractors that are adding value to the federal government.

Kundra's Example: Social Security Data Center

VK: A simple example would be the Social Security Administration that's getting funding to build out a brand new data center and what we want to make sure is, as the Social Security administration makes that investment, that it is looked at in a much broader context than [it has traditionally received] which has been in specific silos. What that has led to is massive proliferation of infrastructure that is segmented and not interoperable. What we want to do is look at the entire portfolio to ensure that as we make this investment we're looking at them across the federal government and saying, you know what, if we're investing right now to build a whole new data center how does that play into the larger vision of federal IT and how does that play into leveraging that investment for other functions beyond the Social Security Administration.