The Obama Administration is planning to announce today that Vivek Kundra, currently the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of the District of Columbia, will be named Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the federal government, working out of the White House.
I have posted before about this, excited that IT will finally be represented at the Cabinet level of the new administration. Overall, I still feel this is a very smart move. President Obama's campaign leveraged technology very effectively and one of his campaign promises, was to bring a cabinet level IT position into existence, which he appears ready to make good on.
While I am enthused about this in an overall sense, I'm a little concerned by the content of this Washington Post article that also says a CTO position will also be created, meaning the White House will have both a CIO and CTO. The responsibilities are described as being unique, but what concerns me is that there could also be redundancy in these positions and therefore potential inefficiency.
One of the stated goals for these positions is to reduce the overall IT cost in the federal government, while increasing the governments ability to operate efficiently. Great goals. Disparate government IT infrastructures will finally have centralized management, which should insure interoperability while also guaranteeing appropriate security, which is obviously critical. I just hope that the Administration is not layering this top level with built in overhead or inefficiency as I would hope that the job of CIO and CTO could be fulfilled by one fully qualified individual. Time will tell and I do still feel strongly that this is a smart move that will yield desired results. I'll be watching these developments with interest.
