In 2007, Adrian Fenty, the mayor of the District of Columbia, went on a mission to invest in making his municipal administration more responsive to constituents' needs. He appointed Vivek Kundra to serve as chief technology officer for the District of Columbia. Working with Mayor Fenty, Kundra successfully leveraged sizable technology investments to make government smaller, more open, and more accountable to the city, its employees, and its citizens. For example, Kundra eliminated unnecessary costs by the use of commercial software, and increased efficiency by streaming processes, such as the movement of paper.
During his campaign, Barack Obama said he would appoint a chief information officer to oversee the U.S. Federal Government's $71 billion annual IT budget. A month after taking office, President Obama appointed Vivek Kundra to oversee the world's largest IT budget. Kundra plans to focus on getting the entire federal government to make the appropriate investments and to have good oversight for the annual IT budget. Kundra's proposed agenda also resembles what he did as CTO for the District of Columbia -- lowering of the cost of government operations, driving innovation, driving transparency and accountability, and at the same time, ensuring a secure computing environment.
Enterpriseleadership.org recently sat down with Kundra to discuss how he plans to carry out his agenda while improving the way federal agencies use technology.
EL. What challenges have federal CIOs faced trying to be good oversight stewards for their department's technology budget?
VK. To begin with, technology has some macro challenges. Look at the scientific evidence around Moore's Law for how technology evolves and how you get new systems in place. You need creativity, and new approaches to solve the problems the federal government faces. Now put that against the backdrop of the institutions in the federal government. They have specific processes for how you evaluate most of the systems across the government. These processes are not very agile. For example, it can take anywhere from 12 months to 18 months for a procurement to go through. During this time, the requirements might have changed, the business case might have morphed, and the technology itself might have changed. Many federal CIOs have to look at things in this context as they run their agencies.
The federal government has 100s of bureaus and agencies, more than 10,000 IT systems, and 24,000 Web sites. When people hear the number of Web sites, they immediately say, 'Why so many?' It is because of the way the government has organized itself. Moreover, the federal CIOs have focused primarily on enforcing policies rather than rolling out solutions. The federal government has no central IT organization. Each agency does its own thing. It becomes difficult to have oversight based on business requirements. For example, the Federal Aviation Administration differs significantly from the National Institute of Health, which differs from the Dept of Labor. CIOs in each of these agencies approach problems in a different way. They need to look at areas where technology is a commodity.
EL. The Clinger-Cohen Act is supposed to provide some discipline and a set of controls for how departments manage technology across the federal government, but some CIOs say there are many inconsistencies across federal departments. Given that, what types of controls are you going to put in place to correct these problems so there is consistency and the rules are enforced?
VK. We need to rationalize how CIOs report information. The government is evolving in terms of technology. The Clinger-Cohen Act created the CIO role across the federal government, and put in an oversight process in place around the technology spend, especially for the annual government budget. As a function of the rigorous oversight reporting, I want to make sure that CIOs rationalize these reports, that we leverage IT to collect the data we need. We do not need any more actors in between when it comes to creating reports, scrubbing the data, and trying to glean insight from that data. An entire cottage industry has grown up around reporting and submitting reports.
After we have rationalized many of these reports, we want to make sure we are extremely transparent. We can do this in parallel when it comes to how we procure technology, what we procure it for, and where we stand with vendor performance. By being transparent, we can divest ourselves of projects or initiatives that have not performed well or that have outlived their usefulness. In turn, we can invest in projects and initiatives that add the most value.
EL. Federal CIOs include a mix of political appointments and career CIOs? Do you intend to change that?
VK. I am not concerned how the CIO got his or her job. The important issue is to make sure we have the right person onboard. CIOs must know how to focus on business transformation so they understand how to leverage the power of technology. It is not about technology for technology's sake.
EL. What are you doing to eliminate redundant investments such as multiple networks or data centers? Do you have plans to aggregate some of these networks and data centers?
VK. Much of that work has begun to happen with our Smart Buy initiative. I am working on initiatives that are central to this administration. I have begun to push forward how we can create cloud computing within the federal government and how we can leverage the consumer cloud. These things will enable us to move toward more secure computing, and lower operational costs. We do not want to build 24,000 Web sites.
EL. Do you plan to use social media to share resources across the federal government?
VK. We need to do more of that. To date, it has been happening in a fragmented way. Let me give you a simple example about the public interaction with the federal government. Each federal agency has its own identity management system. If you wanted to participate in social media with the EPA versus the White House, you would have to log on to all of these multiple systems. When you look at social media, citizens want to be able to interact with one government, not with the multiple agencies. That is part of what we want to do. We want to create platforms that agencies can leverage through the cloud infrastructure, rather than rolling out independent solutions. We need to have an open ID platform across the entire federal government -- one that has to leverage the toolset instead of rolling out multiple ID systems.
EL. Every federal agency has a technology investment board and a capital planning board. Do you plan to put some of their information on data.gov?
VK. We are also looking to put more information on the projects themselves and the health of those projects. We need to evaluate which projects are sensitive or classified versus which ones we can put in the public domain. As with any information we share, we need to make sure that Web sites are easy to use, and do not use federal jargon. We want to expend much energy around that to make sure that information is readily available.
EL. How do you plan to leverage technology innovations either in the government or in the private sector when they may be buried deep in these organizations?
VK. I believe in the need to tap into the ingenuity not only of the American people but the federal workforce. I plan to spend much time with those people who are on the front lines because they are the closest source to the pulse of the customers. For example, I have been spending much time with the intelligence community and its Intellipedia collaboration project. I want to learn how we can scale some of these initiatives. We do not want to reinvent initiatives that are successful, but we want to scale those.
We need to look at what innovative solutions each agency has brought to bear, and how we can scale it cross the federal government. Many of these well-tested initiatives have started at the grassroots level by passionate people. We need to deal with the scaling problem, which is a problem I love to solve. I intend to spend much time with both folks who focus on policy, and those front-line people who implement these solutions. I have already started my technology tour across the federal government to visit every single CIO and his or her staff. I want to understand all of the issues and to meet with some of the key employees who are driving change within those agencies.
EL. Will creating more transparency affect the way CIOs do their job?
VK. It will also not only affect the federal CIOs but everyone in the technology community. We are advancing a mission. It could be discovering biomedical knowledge at the National Institute of Health or the looking at how the Federal Drug Administration can protect consumers from bad drugs. Using technology to advance the core mission of government will force federal CIOs to become change agents. We know that change is a good disinfectant. Even better, it will fundamentally transform the way the federal government works. It will not happen overnight and it will not be easy. You can see that we are moving in a direction with recovery.gov. The president is committed to making this process transparent the same way he did during the administration transition. He posted documents online and collaborated with voters about what he did each day. He took questions online. These structural changes in the government's mission will make government more visible and accountable in citizens' eyes.
EL. What are you going to be doing to help the United States Postal Service keep from loosing money?
VK. The USPS's business has gone through massive transformation. Some of it has been successful, and some not so successful. Transparency and open government alone will not solve the USPS's business problems per se. We do not want to look at how transparency can ensure faster delivery of mail. Instead, we need to focus on how can we leverage technology to rethink what the 21st century post office should look like.
EL. Are you going to eliminate the practice where CIOs have to budget two years in advance?
VK. That issue is part of a larger federal budgeting policy. The issue is not limited to technology. It is much broader across the entire federal government. Whether it is procurement or the budget and the way the institutions were created, technology changes so fast and evolves so quickly that we need to relook at many of those policies. I am open to doing that.
EL. What valuable lessons have you learned from your experience working as the CTO for the District of Columbia?
VK. Having transparency and actually delivering on the promise of it can fundamentally change and transform the government. The power of innovation and a participatory democracy can really help us rethink how we look at the public, and how we treat the public and the role of government. The government does not need to look at citizens as subjects, but we can look at citizens as a public of co-creators of democracy and engage citizens to come in and help solve some of the toughest problems government faces. We do not have to do it alone and we do not have a monopoly on ideas. That was one of the most powerful lessons I learned as I engaged people in different areas. I advanced this entire notion of a digital public square where people can have access to government data, where they can see how their government is performing, where they can hold us accountable, and where they can help co-create solutions to solve big problems.
EL. Have you seen John Kao's book Innovation Nation which talks about carrying out a nationwide innovation program?
VK. I know about the book, but I have not read it. The function of some of our transformation includes channeling much of this energy around technology, engaging the public, and throwing ideas against the wall. We want to put the right resources behind solid, scalable, innovation ideas. Of course, we will use the scientific method to test many of these ideas. You will see innovation across the board, not just in one vertical whether that has to do with healthcare, energy, defense, or security. You are going to see innovation baked into the culture.
Elizabeth M. Ferrarini - She is a free-lance writer and IT consultant from Boston, Massachusetts. Reach her at elizabethferrarini@yahoo.com.
