Vivek Kundra has only been the country's first Chief Information Officer for a few months, but if you were judging based on the standing ovation he received at this year's Personal Democracy Forum Conference, you might think he was somebody really important. In fact, to this group of techies and politicos he is. They believe his very presence in Obama’s administration allows them to gain entry into our government, or at least an opportunity to participate.
Kundra was at the conference to introduce the innovative federal ITdashboard on USAspending.gov. The dashboard allows people to follow federal spending on information technology as it happens. It also shows project descriptions, reports evaluating progress, time status reports, contact information, and contractor data.
Kundra’s reasons for speaking at the conference were two-fold. He not only wanted to introduce the participants to his new dashboard “baby,” but more importantly he wanted to enlist their help in making the program even more successful. The media director for the White House, Macon Phillips, told the conference attendees, “we are looking to this community, and one of the reasons we launched it here is that you are the important early adopters of this to really push us to develop this platform.”
The attendees of the conference were treated to a full demonstration of the new technology and why it is so necessary. Kundra related a recent IT failure by the Census Bureau to underscore his argument. The Census Bureau wanted to provide their workers with handheld computers (similar to the ones Fed Ex drivers care to capture delivery data) and received the funding to proceed.
However, the Census handheld project was abandoned due to implementation challenges after $600 million had already been spent. A sound idea that failed because, as Kundra said, “they didn’t have their requirements figured out very well upfront.” He contends that the dashboard would have allowed the problems to be quickly spotted and users could have sent the agency potential solutions before it was too late.
Our nation's CIO has also sought other sources of feedback for his dashboard technology. According to the dashboard site, the Office of Management and Budget hosted an Open House between June 11 and June 29th. Federal employees were invited to test the new IT site and the Open House had “tremendous attendance from over 30 federal agencies.”
Kundra and his staff believe that they are only at the beginning of where they can go with this new technology. “We’re exploring beyond where we are right now,” he said. Soon he plans on creating a blog on the site so that getting productive feedback is fast and direct.
Conference attendees know that the federal government is the largest single buyer of technology in the world, according to Kundra, and spends more than $70 billion annually. That is a lot of moolah to spread around and why the conference goers were so attentive to the possibilities. As Andrew Rasiej, New York entrepreneur and one of the founding fathers of PDF, said, “we know that something is happening, something new is being born, and this is the place to figure it out.”
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