Obama: we need a CIO before a CTO

In Friday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches a surprise Obama appointment: a CIO (confounding commentators' CTO conjectures). Not to mention MeggySeq...

Patrick Thibodeau reports:

Barack Obama today appointed the District of Columbia's chief technology officer, Vivek Kundra, as the federal government's first CIO. The decision to appoint a CIO is an apparent move by the White House to give it more control over the $80 billion that federal agencies spend annually on technology.

Obama still plans to name a chief technology officer, an appointment he announced early in his campaign for office, but the selection of a CIO was something of surprise and possibly a recognition by the new administration that the CTO won't have enough authority alone to shape federal technology spending ... Behind the scenes, the White House was being urged to appoint a CIO by some tech industry leaders. Among them was Scott McNealy.

John Paczkowski adds:

Vivek Kundra, chief technology officer for the District of Columbia, made headlines last year when he switched the District’s 38,000 employees from Microsoft Office to Google’s Web-based office suite.
...
Kundra, who has served as a technology policy adviser for President Obama, will oversee federal technology spending, among other things ... If stories about Kundra’s enthusiasm for Google and Apple products are any indication, we can expect to see some big changes in the way federal technology spending is handled.

Mark Everett Hall sells SaaS sanity:

Who knows what changes in IT operations Vivek Kundra is planning for President Obama's White House? ... as citizens we all have high hopes he'll be an improvement in, if nothing else, e-mail management over his immediate predecessors.
...
Still, whatever else Kundra does, we can be pretty certain he'll give a fair hearing to those who want to expand government use of software as a service. We can be sure of this because as the chief technology officer at the District of Columbia he led an effort to do just that.

David Worthington is wowed:

Government agencies have enjoyed incredible autonomy; getting CIOs to fall in line is an immense task and will require skillful political maneuvering. But it is an undertaking that may be long overdue ... The notion that someone could pull the plug on such bloated efforts ... [as] the Internal Revenue Service’s tax system modernization ... offers taxpayers a measure of accountability, and in my opinion, that’s a very positive happening.
...
Kundra’s job will be a great experiment in streamlining bureaucracy, and is perhaps the most difficult a CIO has ever taken.

Joe McKendrick has poked you:

Kundra is also a big fan of social networking communities such as Facebook, which he sees as a potential model by which citizen-based communities can help drive policy ... [He] promises to move the government to adopt more consumer technology, as well as cloud computing. He sees cloud computing as an alternative to the “big IT” culture of federal agencies.

Brian Knowlton knows:

In just 19 months with [DC], Mr. Kundra has moved to post city contracts on YouTube and to make Twitter use common in his office and others. He hopes to allow drivers to pay parking tickets or renew their driver’s licenses on Facebook.

His office’s Web site offers a “Digital Public Square” with links to information on everything from crime to parking to tourism. It provides a map of free wi-fi hot spots, a public library finder, leaf-collection schedules; even a widget to view live snow-plow progress. A contest he launched in October – “Apps for Democracy” – brought 47 entries from residents offering applications to give District residents Web and cellphone access to crime reports, pothole-repair schedules and other city data.

Nancy Scola follows tweeple:

Tim O'Reilly tweeted the news: "Vivek is a rock star!" And now, it seems, he's a rock star with budgetary authority! ... Kundra had been rumored to fill Karen Evans' old e-government administrator slot at the Office of Management and Budget, a job that has been around for decades ... [The CIO] job seems to be a significant increase in the scope of his portfolio and a meaningful boost in institutional authority.

That's a tall order. To slay rogue defense contractors and tame intra-agency IT projects run amok, a CIO would need a strong ally in the White House. Obama, of course, has framed the smart use of connective technologies as not only integral to his style of campaigning campaign style, but a thread running throughout his post-millennium governing ideology.

And finally...

• MeggySeq

Previously in IT Blogwatch:

• Windows 7 allows IE uninstall
• Skype SILK codec set free-as-in-beer
• New Apple desktops: fanbois drool
• ...more

Buffer overflow:

• Mike Masnick: Those Who Don't Understand The Value Of Free Information Are Doomed To Fail
• Deal architect : What Wall Street is missing about SaaS
• Katie Fehrenbacher: 7 Ways to Cut Fuel Consumption With IT
• Creative Chaos: Nifty Triangle Test Example
• StorageMojo: Belts, suspenders and scale
• Ashby Jones: After Five Years, Phish is Swimming Again And Suing Bootleggers
• Alan Shimel: Whats so funny about working in the channel?

Other Computerworld bloggers:

• Mike Elgan: New satellite phone to cost same as smartphone
• Don Tennant: A reader chimes in on why diversity in the workplace is essential
• SJVN: Linux companies sign Microsoft patent protection pacts
• Preston Gralla: New Mac lineup: Expensive, "underwhelming"
• Seth Weintraub: 'Turbo Boost' graces new Nahalem-based Mac Pros
• Mark Everett Hall: Clueless cloud developers
• Shark Tank: And a very good example it is
• Shark Bait: Floundering Technician
• ...more

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Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/adviser/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and spam. A 23 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. You can follow him on Twitter, pretend to be Richi's friend on Facebook, or just use boring old email: blogwatch@richi.co.uk.