Thursday, March 5, 2009

Federal CIO Lays Out Ambitious Agenda

President Barack Obama's new administrator for e-government and information technology at OMB told reporters Thursday he will launch data.gov, a Web site intended to "democratize data" by giving the public raw feeds of information from a range of agencies. Vivek Kundra, who previously served as the District of Columbia's chief technology officer, said the site would build on successes like the National Institutes of Health's publication of Human Genome Project data that he said "revolutionized personalized medicine" and the Defense Department's release of satellite data, which led to the mass commercialization of GPS devices.

"We need to make sure that all that data that's not private, that's not restricted for national security can be made public," said Kundra, who will also have the title of federal CIO and will work with the yet-to-be-named federal CTO. That official will be "named in due time," he said on a conference call. When Kundra worked for the city, he won widespread praise for embracing consumer technologies. "That lowered our operating costs... and the velocity at which we were deploying technology multiplied," he said, noting that he would like to bring that thinking to the federal sector. As more government information makes its way into cyberspace and the focus on civic participation increases, back-end IT systems must brace for the change, he said.

One of the administration's first attempts at making government more accountable online is Recovery.gov, Kundra said. Once the $787 billion economic stimulus funding makes its way to the state and local level, citizens will be able to track who receives contracts, when and for how much. The guidance recently set forth by OMB "is the floor, not the ceiling" for what can be done on the site, he said. Additionally, Kundra said his team is working with OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Policy and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to retool regulations.gov, the government's e-rulemaking hub, after a high-level American Bar Association task force slammed the site.