White House CIO Kundra Says Government Will Move to Cloud Computing and the Mobile Platform in FY’11

White House Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra said that for FY2011, the president will direct 79 billion dollars toward information technology, with an emphasis on more effectively managing federal IT investments, establishing a participatory, transparent democracy, increasing government IT efficiency and effectiveness, and advancing the federal government’s information security posture.

By Avery Fellow | February 3, 2010

In a conference call Tuesday, White House Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra announced that the federal government is adopting cloud computing and mobile technologies as part of its FY2011 budget.

"There’s a huge technology gap between the public sector and the private sector, and that leads to lower productivity in the public sector," Kundra said. "Even the president had to fight tooth and nail to get a Blackberry in the White House."

Kundra noted other examples of technology gaps as well.  At the U.S. Patent and Trade Office (PTO), it takes more than three years to process a patent, which involves print-out patent applications, manually keying them into another system and "passing manila envelopes from desk to desk."

Another criticism from Kundra pointed out that "You can go on open table today and make a reservation for a restaurant, yet you can’t do so with the Social Security Administration when you want to make an appointment." The White House official said these types of technology gaps lead to "performance within the federal government that doesn’t live up to the expectations of the American people."

Moving forward, Kundra cited several examples to narrow this gap, including the following:

• Kundra charged the CIOs at the Department of The Treasury and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to lead effort to consolidate the country’s more than 1,200 data centers. The DHS has already committed to condensing its 23 data centers into two within the next few years, Kundra said. 
• The government plans to encourage citizen participation in the tech improvement effort by using prizes and incentive-backed programs like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Red Balloon contest and NASA’s Mars rover imaging project.
• The government also plans to create an app store with citizen-centric services. "We’re focused on leveraging the mobile computing revolution and making sure that we can deliver citizen services on platforms that people are most comfortable with," Kundra said.
• "You are also going to see a shift in 2011 to cloud computing solutions," Kundra said, noting that the Department of Interior is looking at ways to shift its entire collaborative platform to cloud computing.
• The Department of Treasury is working to make tax information available on IRS.gov in the same way that TurboTax provides users three years of tax information.
• And the Smithsonian is working on putting its 2.3 million artifacts online, Kundra said. "Too many people don’t have access to the treasures the Smithsonian has available to enjoy."

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