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Technology: Kundra Resignation Blow to Government
One bright spot in the Obama administration has been the handling of IT in the Federal Government. Federal IT is in the midst of a turnaround, and much of the success has been due to Obama’s creation the new role of federal chief information officer and the appointment of Vivek Kundra to that position. Indian-born Kundra held the position of Federal CIO for two and one-half years. Kundra is leaving in August to become a joint fellow at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
While all is not rosy with the current state of IT in the Federal government, Kundra was a strong an influential leader, and set a new direction. As somewhat of an anomaly to how government typically works, the changes Kundra made within federal IT seemed to be smart and well thought.
Kundra took the Federal CIO job at a time when operational costs of the aging government IT infrastructure were increasing rapidly, and failed projects were common. He attempted to streamline IT infrastructure and identified areas for cost savings. He initiated a strategy to consolidate government IT data centers and developed a strategy for moving forward with the idea of cloud-based computing. And while many of those problems still exist, Kundra has steered the efforts in a good direction.
Kundra acknowledged as recently as April of this year that federal IT had many problems still to overcome. “The president is absolutely right. When we came into office, federal IT was undeniably broken. These problems weren’t created overnight, and they won’t be solved overnight.”
John Wonderlich of the Sunlight Foundation commented that “Vivek built the Data.gov and the IT Dashboard as tools to aggressively pursue transparency that affects how the government works.”
Kundra commented on his resignation by saying “The work that I dedicated myself to while serving as the federal CIO – in cutting waste, strengthening cybersecurity and building an open and transparent government through technology will also drive my research interests on both the national and international levels.”
One of the reasons for Kundra’s exit may be the environment of budget cutting. Congress has reduced the funding for the e-government initiative from $38 million to just $8 million. Those dollars exist to fund projects like USASpending.gov, Data.gov and Performance.gov. Budget cuts caused Kundra to have to eliminate the Fedspace social network program and severely cut back on other project funding.
What’s next? We’ll have to wait and see.
