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Vivek Kundra

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Vivek Kundra
Vivek Kundra in 2009
United States Chief Information Officer
Incumbent
Assumed office
March 5, 2009
PresidentBarack Obama
Preceded byKaren Evans
Personal details
Born (1974-10-09) October 9, 1974 (age 50)
New Delhi, India
Alma materUniversity of Maryland, College Park
University of Maryland University College

Vivek Kundra (Punjabi: ਵਿਵੇਕ ਕੁੰਦਰਾ, Hindi: विवेक कुंद्रा; born October 9, 1974) is the Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the United States of America.[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 from all over the world to provide education to local residents. Kundra spent his early childhood in a diverse, multicultural environment and 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 by InfoWorld among the top 25 CTO's in the country.[8] He was also selected as a 2008 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium Award Finalist[9] on ‘Balancing Innovation and Cost Leadership’.[10] 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.[8]

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”.[11] The project spearheaded by Kundra, Mayor Fenty, and CPO David Gragan [12] was cited for “increase in civic participation, government accountability, and transparency in D.C. government practices” through sites like the Digital Public Square[13] and the DC Data Catolog.[14]

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.[15] Kundra was also a recipent of the Federal 100 Award[16] for significant contributions to the federal information technology community.[17].

Career

Kundra served as Director of Infrastructure Technology for Arlington County, Virginia starting September 11, 2001.[18]

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

Mayor Adrian Fenty's appointed him on March 27, 2007[18] 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.[19] 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".[20] This cost-benefit was claimed by the DC government as savings in internal operational and contractual costs.[21] "Taking a page" from Kundra [22] this initiative is now being mirrored by New York City's mayor Michael Bloomberg in launching a "BigApps" contest housed at http://www.nycbigapps.com/.[23] The city of San Francisco has also recently launched a data portal similar to that of DC.[19]

Kundra won recognition for the project management system he implemented for the District government.[9][8] 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.[8]

Kundra's efforts to use cloud-based Web applications in the District government have also been considered innovative within government.[24] 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.[25] A DC spokeswoman said that the District of Columbia paid $479,560 for the Enterprise Google Apps license and saved $3.5 million compared to an earlier plan.[25] 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."[25]

Kundra also moved the city's Geographic information systems department to a middle school.[26]

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.[27]

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.[28]

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.[29] One of Mr. Kundra's first projects was the launch of Data.gov, a site for providing access to raw government data.[30] 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.[31]

On March 12, 2009, an official at Kundra's previous DC technology office was arrested on charges of fraud and other misconduct. While Kundra was not the subject or target of the investigation, he went on leave from his CIO position for a five-day period.[32]

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. ^ http://www.sorenseninstitute.org/newsroom/entry/political-leaders-2007-profile-vivek-kundra
  6. ^ a b District of Columbia, OCTO"Vivek Kundra, Chief Technology Officer, District of Columbia Government"
  7. ^ http://ctovision.com/2009/02/vivek-kundra-the-alpha-cto/
  8. ^ 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).
  9. ^ 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).
  10. ^ MIT, Sloan School of Management "The 2008 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium
  11. ^ 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.
  12. ^ 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)
  13. ^ “DC Digital Public Square”
  14. ^ “DC Data Catalog”
  15. ^ 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)
  16. ^ Monroe, John S. (2009-02-13). "FCW announces the 2009 Federal 100 award winners" (PDF). Federal Computer Week. Retrieved 2009-11-08. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  17. ^ “2009 Federal 100 Winners”
  18. ^ a b Biography Vivek Kundra Chief Technology Officer, District of Columbia Government
  19. ^ a b San Francisco's DataSF.org Won't be a D.C. Copycat, CIO Says
  20. ^ "Fenty on Apps for Democracy"
  21. ^ "Apps for Democracy"
  22. ^ National Journal (06-29-2009)"Bloomberg Unveils Gov't Apps Contest"
  23. ^ New York Future Initiative (06-29-2009)"Bloomberg Announces 'Big Apps' Contest"
  24. ^ http://www.gcn.com/print/27_28/47565-1.html
  25. ^ a b c news.cnet.com (08-20-2009)"Los Angeles gets its Google Apps groove"
  26. ^ http://vivekkundra.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html
  27. ^ Kash, Wyatt (January 19, 2009). "The Karen Evans era". Government Computer News. 1105 Media. Retrieved 2009-04-20.
  28. ^ http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Weekly-Address-President-Obama-Discusses-Efforts-to-Reform-Spending/
  29. ^ http://www.govtech.com/gt/653151
  30. ^ http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/03/vivek-kundra-federal-cio-in-hi.html
  31. ^ http://www.govtech.com/gt/698705?topic=290182
  32. ^ "Kundra Reinstated as Federal CIO". Washington Technology. March 18, 2009. Retrieved 2009-10-29.
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