What impact will Vivek Kundra have?

Obama's new Indian-born CIO may have a tough time cutting costs as the economy faces more difficulties in the days to come

Last week, US President Barack Obama named Vivek Kundra Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO) at the White House. Some may want to look at this as a victory for an Indian, though one doesn't know how Indian he is though he was born in New Delhi, his parents soon moved to Tanzania, and from there to the US when he was 11.

But Indian or not, he has been given a lot of recognition. He seems to have the ability to manage people and mobilise funds, which are crucial for any CIO. He did this quite well in 2007 when he assembled the largest US trade delegation ever to visit India. This team had over a hundred business leaders and thanks to Kundra's efforts, the state of Virginia saw a $99 million investment.

Job role

Of course, something like this is not possible today, but Kundra may not be called upon to do something like this in any case. The White House press release that announced Kundra's appointment also spells out what one can take to be his official key result areas '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.'

President Barack Obama says, "As Chief Information Officer, he will play a key role in making sure our government is running in the most secure, open, and efficient way possible" and this seems to be a very broad mandate indeed. So, what do you think he will do?

One for the cloud?

There are two things that Kundra might do as CIO take an approach based on his old successes or do something entirely new. If he adopts the latter angle, there is no way we can predict what he will do. But if he decides to build on his current expertise let's face it, one of the reasons why he might have been hired would have been because of his current successes then he may give cloud computing as well as open source a boost.

But more importantly, let us hope that he gives the post of CIO a shot in the arm. Many CIOs complain and say that theirs is a tough almost-dead end job in fact, some pun and say that CIO stands for 'Career Is Over' but if Kundra does a good job, then he can give CIOs in India and abroad pointers about how to get a job done and maybe, CEOs of companies will probably start including more CIOs in their management teams.

Some details
Vivek Kundra formerly served in Mayor Fenty's cabinet as the Chief Technology Officer for the District of Columbia and was responsible for technology operations and strategy for 86 agencies.u00a0 He has been recognised among the top 25 CTO's in the country and as the 2008 IT Executive of the Year for his pioneering work to drive transparency, engage citizens and lower the cost of government operations.u00a0 Kundra is also recognised for his leadership in public safety communications, cyber security and IT portfolio management.
Source: www.whitehouse.gov

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