VivekKundra

Vivek Kundra, President Obama’s newly appointed CIO, sees an opportunity to elevate the role of CIOs overall especially in the public sector. The public sector is falling behind on having CIOs at the table where innovation and planning occur at the top levels of an organization. Tactically, he plans to focus IT efforts on transparency, security, data portability, agility and innovation. Transparency is key from the administration’s perspective because the U.S. Government spends $76 billion annually on IT.

One of the most visible outcomes to Kundra’s leadership thus far is the Federal IT Dashboard offering visibility and transparency into the projects and investments in IT by the government. Representatives, senators, cabinet secretaries, watchdog  groups, and citizens alike can all keep an eye on government IT projects.

Another of Kundra’s initial efforts, Data.gov offers access to government datasets that previously weren’t available. The availability of this data is driving massive innovation efforts never before seen. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) released data from their research on the human genome and innovation on research in personal medicine has skyrocketed.  Similarly, when the Dept. of Defense released data on their latest satellite research, it also resulted in massive amounts of innovtion. The idea is to have many eyes on the problems of the world – share data and reap the benefits of the innovation that follows. Kundra states that New York City and San Francisco are in process of following suit with similar efforts in their respecitive cities.

TAGS: , Federal Government, IT, Technology, Innovation,  Research, CIOs