Vivek Kundra

During his weekly address this morning, President Obama named Aneesh Chopra as the nation's first Chief Technology Officer. Chopra, who has effectively been doing much the same job at a state level in his role as Secretary of Technology for Governor Kaine of Virginia , will work closely with Vivek Kundra , the recently named Federal CIO, and Jeffrey Zients , the man Obama today named the first ever Chief Performance Officer. Last month, two Virginia congressmen recommended Chopra for the job, saying "Chopra's public and private experience in the technology field made him the right candidate," and pointed out his focus on healthcare ... Read Full Story

From the White House Press Release: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 5, 2009 President Obama Names Vivek Kundra Chief Information Officer WASHINGTON, DC – Today, President Barack Obama named Vivek Kundra the Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO) at the White House. The Federal Chief Information Officer directs the policy and strategic planning of federal information technology investments and is responsible for oversight of federal technology spending. The Federal CIO establishes and oversees enterprise architecture to ensure system interoperability and information sharing and ensure information security and privacy across the federal government. The CIO will also work closely with the Chief Technology Officer to advance the ... Read Full Story

President Obama has appointed the first-ever federal chief information officer (CIO). Vivek Kundra, 34, who formerly served in District of Columbia Mayor Adrian Fenty's cabinet as the chief technology officer (CTO) was appointed to the position, the White House announced Thursday. "Vivek Kundra's technology leadership has greatly contributed to the administration's essential priority of building transparency, accountability and efficiency in government," Mayor Fenty told SCMagazineUS.com Thursday in an email. "I'm confident he'll be an equally great asset to the Obama Administration." One of Kundra's responsibilities will be to ensure information security and privacy across the federal government. He will also be responsible for overseeing ... Read Full Story

With strict budgets and wiser use of taxpayers dollars the order of the day for the Federal government, the time is now for a cost-effective Information Technology (IT) strategy. Vivek Kundra and other members of President Obama's administration see this as a time of opportunity. The opportunity is the embracing of off-the-shelf applications, cloud computing, open-source technology, and social media platforms to help the government distribute information to, and dialog more effectively with citizens. Streamlined IT is the goal of these new initiatives. One example developed this year is the "Data.gov project." Data.gov is a collection of federal data housed on the www.data.gov Web ... Read Full Story

The country has a new head geek, and his name is Vivek Kundra . Before this, the Dehli-born technocrat was serving as Chief Technology Officer for D.C.'s city government, and by most acounts, doing a bang up job of it. From a story in Network World : Kundra, who previously served as the CTO for D.C.'s city government, has received a good deal of acclaim for his work in making that government act more transparently and economically. Among other things, Kundra has slashed the city's IT costs by shifting government e-mail and work applications over to Google Apps and has pushed for more transparency ... Read Full Story