GigaOM » Vivek Kundra

Obama CIO: Location, location, location (and personalization) will be key to next campaign

Barb Darrow — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 21:29:43 +0000

President Obama was inaugurated a scant few weeks ago but it’s never too early to think about the next election cycle. Tech teams for the 2016 campaign will need to hone in on location-based applications and finely tuned personalization, said Michael Slaby, former CIO for Obama for America.

Michael Slaby, former CIO of Obama for America.

According to Slaby, the team’s initial 2008 effort was all about putting social networking on par with other messaging and communication. “We didn’t just stick it in the corner with a blog, it was a meaningful way to think about solving organizational problems,” Slaby told attendees of a Salesforce.com event in New York City Tuesday.

“In 2008 we were just trying to stay alive – [there was] an election every two weeks for months and months” he said. That didn’t leave a ton of time for strategizing or even staffing up. “We didn’t really hire engineers,” Slaby said during a panel discussion led by former U.S. CIO Vivek Kundra, who is now Salesforce.com’s executive vice president for emerging markets.

The next time out, in 2012, OFA had the luxury of an incumbent candidate — meaning no primaries – so it was able to focus more on building infrastructure to provide “a unified experience for our supporters.”

In the future, teams like this will need to consider more big data and analytics advances. “There’s an old adage that all politics is local — I would add that all politics is personal … We need to use big data advances and technology that makes us capable of listening to more people at the same time and to provide a more personal experience for everyone,” he said.

“No one has figured out how to use location-based technology really well … We need to figure that out so in the future we can look at location metrics — where you vote, who you vote with, how you vote. Increasing personalization and awareness of location are part of what we need.”

Asked by Kundra what lessons he had for business IT pros, Slaby warned against getting obsessed with technology for technology’s sake. ”People have to focus on making your business more effective rather than focusing on this new thing. That’s the best defense against the new shiny object syndrome.”

And, there has to be a reset on thinking as well. “We see inbound cases not as a bucket of things to process but of opportunities for voter-initiated contact,” he said. “We had 6 million people coming to us — it’s an opportunity, not something we have to weather.

After the election, OFA team members have turned up at a number of tech events including Amazon’s AWS: Reinvent conference in November and OFA CTO Harper Reed talked to GigaOM’s Derrick Harris last year about his work on the effort.

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Kundra: Democratizing data means a fundamental shift in power

Mathew Ingram — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 18:12:55 +0000

Vivek Kunda, EVP, Emerging Markets, Salesforce.com
(c)2012 Pinar Ozger pinar@pinarozger.com

When Vivek Kundra walked into the White House as the first Chief Information Officer for the federal government, his new staff handed him a stack of PDF documents representing more than $27 billion in IT spending projects that were over budget. Kundra, who recently joined Salesforce.com as vice president of emerging markets, told GigaOM’s Structure conference in San Francisco that one of the ways he dealt with that problem — apart from massive rounds of cost-cutting — was to move as much as possible to the cloud, and also to open up as much of the government’s data as possible to the private sector, as a way of spurring innovation. That last step, he said, represents a fundamental and much-needed shift in power away from government to the country’s citizens.

Kundra said one of the biggest challenges when he assumed the CIO position was the entrenched cultural resistance to change within the federal government, which he compared to the way the human body’s defenses attack a virus: “Most federal employees are like white blood cells,” he said. “When there’s a foreign agent in terms of change, the white blood cells attack — there’s a lot of resistance to change. It’s part of a culture of faceless accountability.” Kundra added that there were a lot of “Doctor No CIOs” within various government departments who preferred to hire consultants rather than pursuing innovation.

Although there was a lot of skepticism within the government about the shift to the cloud for hosting data and services, Kundra said that this resistance was similar to the reaction that companies and governments had to earlier innovations like email, the web and customer self-service via the internet. But all of those developments eventually became routine over time and governments and companies adapted, he said — and the same thing is happening with the cloud and cloud-based services.

Kundra said one of the things he was most proud of during his time with the federal government was the amount of data the Obama administration opened up not just for citizens but for the private sector to make use of:

If you think about what happened when the Department of Defence started to release satellite data, it gave birth to this entire new GPS industry, and soon people were navigating cities using that data… or when the national ministries of health released human genome data, that drove a huge explosion in advances in personalized medicine.

The government has released over 400,000 different data sets of information, Kundra said, and a number of small businesses and startups have been created around that data — including one app that lets users see what the mortality rate of a specific hospital is, what the usual outcome is of the surgical procedure they are about to undergo, and how people have rated that doctor or hospital. Another service lets users scan the bar code on a crib to see whether there has been a federal safety recall or not.

This kind of opening up of data “represents a fundamental shift in power,” Kundra said. “The fundamental principle around democratizing data is the shift in power away from this large institution to individuals,” and thereby to entrepreneurs who can innovate in ways the government never could.

Check out the rest of our Structure 2012 coverage, as well as the live stream, here.

Watch live streaming video from gigaomstructure at livestream.com

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Beyond the data center: transitioning government to the cloud

Paul Miller — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 20:00:26 +0000

This week UK Ministry of Justice official Martin Bellamy addressed concerns that the UK government has become less enthusiastic about a government cloud, saying, ”We are expecting to be able to demonstrate that moving to a cloud model is going to allow us to save substantial amounts [...]

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U.S. CIO Kundra leaving for Harvard post

Ryan Kim — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 14:40:52 +0000

Vivek Kundra, the U.S.’ first Chief Information Officer, is stepping down to take a fellowship at Harvard University. Jack Lew, the director of the United States Office of Management and Budget confirmed the news, saying Kundra will leave in August for a joint fellowship position between the Kennedy School and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Kundra, who was previously the CTO for the district of Washington, D.C., joined the Obama administration in March 2009 with a charge of leveraging technology to improve the performance and efficiency of government operations. Lew said Kundra’s efforts saved $3 billion in taxpayer dollars, transitioned the federal government to the cloud and strengthened cybersecurity while promoting more transparency and openness.

Om had a good interview with Kundra after he joined and discussed how Kundra planned to help the government tap cloud computing. Kundra announced last month that government agencies will move 78 computer systems to cloud resources over the next year, part of a larger effort to shift $20 billion worth of e-mail, website management and claims processing to the cloud. With much of the work still to be done, it will fall to Kundra’s successor to see that the proposed efficiency gains are realized and the shift to the cloud goes through as planned.

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Obama Budget Spells Benefits for the Cloud

Stacey Higginbotham — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:53:49 +0000

Quick, what spends almost $80 billion on information technology, likes the cloud, and is red white and blue all over? Yup, it’s the federal government, and in President Obama’s budget announced yesterday, the feds may have opened a window of opportunity for cloud computing companies both large and small hoping for some government largess.

The feds want to increase spending on IT in 2011 by 1.2 percent, to $79.4 billion, and to use the dollars to transform the way the government’s IT runs. Considering that about 70 percent of the current budget goes to keeping the existing gear running, that’s not a lot of overhead for innovation. The government fiscal year ends at the end of September so the money would start to trickle out after Oct. 1, 2010, for projects including cloud computing, cyber security, procurement and performance management.

Cloud computing is the most exciting as it could make government IT more efficient, something our readers have called on the feds to do. There are opportunities that could benefit Salesforce.com, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and others. Back in September 2009, federal CIO Vivek Kundra announced a trial program that will be expanded across the government in 2011. The program allows federal agencies to buy IT services through a government portal from companies such as Google, Salesforce.com, Scribd, SlideShare and others. It’s possible that smaller companies could benefit as much as larger ones through such a system. Plus the government can legitimize the cloud and provides a large buyer that should force vendors to implement interoperability and openness standards that the cloud so desperately needs.

There are also plans for data center consolidation, which will benefit server makers such as Dell, HP, IBM and perhaps even SGI, as well as providers that deploy software and services to help manage hypervisors. The government had more than 1,100 data centers in 2009, up from a still huge 432 data centers back in 1998. Despite the sprawl, things are not getting more efficient. Look at the issues federal officials have sharing data across different agencies and databases.

There’s also $364 million for the operations of the Department of Homeland Security’s National Cyber Security Division, which may become more politically important as tales of Chinese hacking continue to percolate, as well as from placing more critical information and infrastructure online.

Other than these data center and cloud-focused priorities there is plenty of room for technology in the budget, as Larry Dignan points out over at ZDNet. And for those of us looking at the government’s role in telecommunications, the Federal Communications Commission got a slight boost with a proposed annual budget of $352.5 million. I wonder if that means Chairman Julius Genachowski can afford gadgets for the hoped-for new technology lending library he talked about during his visit to our offices last month?

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Dvorak Raises Doubts About U.S. CIO Kundra. White House Calls the Report "Highly Inaccurate" & "a Lie." Kundra Speaks up

Om Malik — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 17:11:12 +0000

Updated: Earlier this morning, veteran technology journalist John Dvorak posted an article on his blog with the headline: Is U.S. Chief Information Officer (CIO) Vivek Kundra a Phony? The report investigates Kundra’s background — both educational and professional — and finds some gaps. For instance, Dvorak couldn’t find any records of Kundra’s Masters degree in information technology. Update: Chip Cassano, a University of Maryland University College spokesman, confirmed that Kundra graduated from the school with a Masters of Science in Information Systems Management. There are several other issues — you are better off reading the entire article.

It is quite a shocker: I recently chatted with Kundra about cloud computing. I reached out to the White House and a spokesperson dismissed the article as “a gross smear” on Kundra and called it “highly inaccurate.” The spokesperson said that Kundra has excelled at his job as the U.S. CIO.

According to the spokesperson, the doubts might have arisen from the fact that Kundra went to University of Maryland’s University College instead of College Park. Those are two different colleges within the University of Maryland system. “If you are going to make such charges, make sure you call us and take the time to educate yourself,” said the spokesperson. “It is a lie.”

Dvorak is just flat-out wrong — or at least that was the gist of the conversation I just had with Kundra. He called back and said that it was clear that “someone was spinning partial truths.” He welcomed anyone to check with University of Maryland’s University College and said they will find that not only did he graduate from the University College, but also that he was adjunct faculty member. He was an undergraduate at the University of Maryland’s College Park location. That confusion is reflected on Kundra’s Wikipedia bio. As noted above, we checked with the UMUC and they told us that Kundra did indeed graduate in 2001 with an MS in information Systems Management. When I asked Kundra about his startup, Creostar, he said he never claimed it to be a billion-dollar company. He started it before getting a gig with the Commonwealth of Virginia.

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Cloud Computing: Washington vs. Washington

Om Malik — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 13:49:39 +0000

[qi:gigaom_icon_cloud-computing] When I spoke with U.S. CIO Vivek Kundra last month, he outlined a pragmatic approach to the federal technology infrastructure that involved wanting to adopt a hybrid model of data centers and cloud computing solutions. Buying infrastructure as a service instead of banking solely on energy-guzzling data centers is a good way to stretch tax dollars, he argued. Kundra’s colleague, Aneesh Chopra, Chief Technology Officer of the United States, shares his approach.

And while cloud computing is all the rage in Washington D.C., it seems the state of Washington doesn’t much care for cloud computing. Instead of buying cloud computing services from home-grown cloud computing giant Amazon, (or newly emergent cloud player, Microsoft), the state has opted to build a brand-new, $180 million data center, despite reservations from some state representatives. Microsoft is moving the data center that houses its Azure cloud services to San Antonio, Texas, from Quincy, Wash. — mostly because of unfavorable tax policies. Apparently, the data centers are no longer covered by sales tax rebates — a costly proposition for Microsoft, which plans to spend many millions on new hardware for the Azure-focused data center.

By the way, Washington is the second state that has decided to build its own data center. In June, Massachusetts decided that it was going to build a $100 million data center. The Sox Nation is home to Nick Carr, author of “The Big Switch,” arguably the most influential book on cloud computing and its revolutionary capabilities.

These aforementioned states are examples of a bigger trend: Most large organizations are still hesitant to go all in when it comes to cloud computing. That’s partly because the cloud revolution still has a long way to go. But much of it is fear of the unknown. In a blog post on the web site of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, a group representing LA police officers, its members raise doubts about the city’s decision to use Google’s cloud-based services.

The League is very concerned about records being housed on computer networks outside of the city. Our concerns are well-founded and understandable, given that government and corporate computer network breaches have become more prevalent over the past several years. This is a complex technological issue that demands careful study and planning by the city. Before the city introduces an outside entity into the chain of custody, sufficient safeguards need to be in place to secure confidential information.

They are being reasonable in their protest, especially when it comes to sensitive information. Like many technologies before it, cloud computing will have to overcome doubts and challenges before becoming business-as-usual.

(Related from GigaOM Pro, subscription required: If We Compute in the Cloud, We Need a Network Fabric.)

This article also appeared on BusinessWeek.com.

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Can the U.S. Government Help Cloud Computing Reach a Tipping Point?

Om Malik — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 04:00:41 +0000

It used to be that large corporations were the biggest boosters of new and cool technologies; more recently the consumer has been driving technology trends. But with the timing of an economic recovery still uncertain and VC dollars hard to come by, it may be the Feds’ turn to set the stage — and technologies that fall under the “cloud computing” moniker are likely to benefit. The federal government is open to the idea of using commercial cloud computing solutions, according to Vivek Kundra, the country’s chief information officer.

In an interview earlier this month, Kundra told me that one of his initiatives has involved pushing for “the adoption of cloud computing and consumer technologies within the public sector.” While our conversation was wide-ranging, in the end we ended up focusing primarily on his belief that cloud computing can help the government be smarter and more efficient. For example, when I asked him what he planned to do about tgovernment-owned, energy-guzzling data centers, Kundra said, “What we have to ask is even a deeper question, which is does the U.S. government need to own all these data centers or is there a new computing model that we could leverage?” By way of context, as of January 2008, the U.S. government was using 1.2 billion kilowatts a year to run 600,000 servers.

Kundra thinks there are lot of technologies available in the consumer marketplace that it can leverage. “As I’ve looked at the processes and investments that we’re making across the government, a lot of the investments that we’re making make no sense,” he said. To illustrate his point, he shared an anecdote about the TSA wanting to set up a blog and how its approach would have cost the agency (and the taxpayers) about $600,000. Thankfully wiser minds prevailed. Saving tax dollars underpins his approach to all IT. When I asked him whether the Feds would opt for commercial services such as the ones offered by Amazon and soon Microsoft, or if they would they build their own clouds, he said, “It’s going to be both because on the one hand we can leverage platforms that are available right now in the market for information that’s not classified or sensitive in nature.”

The government has already laid out its plans for some of its pilot projects and from my conversation with Kundra, it was clear that he’s not averse to working with commercial cloud service providers. The General Services Administration also recently released a Request for Information (RFI) for Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offerings.

Kundra and his team are working on launching a “digital storefront for cloud computing solutions” that would offer for federal and other government buyers an experience that “is the same or similar to the experience that you and I have in our personal lives when we go to online stores like amazon or eBay or any of the other online vendors.”

This move to the cloud is going to be good news for Amazon, RackSpace and Microsoft, all of which I think are going to be competing with with traditional suppliers of information technology to the government. Others say that Terremark, HP, Google, Cisco and various systems integrators could be among the big winners. (GigaOM Pro, our $79-a-year subscription-only research service, has started following these developments closely.) For the U.S. government, cloud computing could be an easy way to deal with urgent and important issues, such as upgrading the federal and state technology infrastructure without costly upgrades.

If Kundra is successful in his efforts, then the sheer buying power of the government is going help cloud computing reach a tipping point.

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What Should The New U.S. CTO Do?

Om Malik — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 20:36:30 +0000

President Obama last week appointed Aneesh Chopra, until recently Virginia’s Secretary of Technology, as the CTO of the United States. Unlike Vivek Kundra (now the U.S. CIO) and Cisco Systems CTO Padmasree Warrior, Chopra has a lower profile. Tech-industry insiders, such as inventor Mitch Kapor, venture capitalist John Doerr and Google CEO Eric Schmidt, have hailed his appointment. I’m sure Chopra would make a good CTO, but I don’t envy his job. Given that there are so many chiefs in the Obama administration — science, information, health care, social innovation — I wonder what his real job description will be. I’m looking forward to talking to him soon and finding out more about his agenda. What do you guys think should be at the top of Chopra’s to-do list?

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Cisco CTO Being Considered for U.S. CTO Gig

Om Malik — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 07:06:18 +0000

Cisco Systems chief technology officer, Padmasree Warrior, is on a very short list of candidates being considered for the job of U.S. CTO. She is on a short list that also includes Vivek Kundra, CTO of the government in Washington, D.C., according to BusinessWeek. Warrior, who was CTO of Motorola before switching to Cisco, was a keynote speaker at our Mobilize 08 Conference. Of the two, if I had to guess, she is likely to be President-elect Obama’s pick. She lived in Chicago during her tenure at Motorola; a graduate of Indian Institute of Technology and Cornell University, she has spent her entire working life in technology. Kundra is also a well regarded, but has spent considerable time in the government.

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