Vivek Kundra: Applying Information Technology to Government

Vivek Kundra became the Chief Information Officer for Washington, DC earlier this year. He replaced the city's antiquated tech system with a new one that provides information for the city's mayor in real time. This will allow those who run the US capital to more efficiently track how money is spent.

Vivek Kundra was an instrumental member and leader of Obama administration's tech team that set up recovery.com, which provides information on how stimulus money is being and has been spent. He has also been tasked with numerous information technology projects in the District of Columbia, from middle schools to ensuring that the District of Columbia's various agencies provide information on police response times, crime rates, health care, and other data.

His unique upbringing has made Vivek Kundra very aware of the value of money. Born in India and growing up in Tanzania, he saw the poverty endemic in Third World countries, and perhaps because of this he is more able to find solutions that are economical. He has urged the US federal government to move away from costly solutions that include heavy investment in infrastructure and instead look to less costly ways in which to store data, including outsourcing to private IT providers, consolidating servers, virtualization, cloud computing, and shared services. In any case, it is good to know that there are some government employees like Vivek Kundra that are working hard to save American taxpayers money.