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DC CTO Vivek Kundra Named To Top Federal IT Job
DCTechCzar writes "The Obama administration plans to announce it has appointed Vivek Kundra, the District of Columbia's chief technology officer, to take the top information technology post in the federal government, according to a source. Kundra, who has deployed advanced applications to improve the performance of public services during his nearly two years as CTO for the District, will replace Karen Evans as administrator for e-government and information technology in the Office of Management and Budget. The position effectively serves as the federal government's chief information officer. The administration could announce Kundra's appointment as soon as Thursday."
Yup, he's like all CTO's...
Takes credit for what his people did.
"He deployed" my ass he deployed. He did not do shit other than approve the research and work his people did.
He sat on his ass and took the credit, I did not see him pulling any cable, setting up the servers and working on the application deployment.
Posting Anon to keep from getting fired. A DC IT worker.
I happen to live in DC and have done consulting with Mr. Kundra. While you are correct that we have no real rights, DC has one of the highest standards of living. The city is divided into 4 quadrants and 2 of them are incredibly rich, one is lower and middle class, and yes, one is ghetto.
You are also incorrect that DC is made of several states. Originally, Maryland and Virginia gave land, but the current city is entirely from Maryland land. As such, becoming part of Maryland or at least being attached somehow to Maryland and its laws has been proposed before as alternatives to statehood.
Instead of slamming a city you know nothing about, you should criticize the man himself. Having worked with him, I can tell you he creates a culture of fear in his office. None of his clients or employees I have met seem to enjoy him. He also is quite ignorant of IT and DC IT for important services is next to useless. The whole google apps thing is more or less a joke here and not useful in any meaningful way. Instead of focusing on critical services, this man has forced the adoption of gimmicks for the sake of things that "look cool."
As for people who think this man supports open source, I am sure he does, but know that he also supports Microsoft as well. I happen to be involved with several Microsoft projects with DC and I know a great deal of their systems are MS, so the whole open source thing is just fluff PR.
Our government here is run so poorly and Vivek is just another part of the problem. He should be working as a junior programmer or help desk at best and not as a CIO/CTO. The man has no charisma whatsoever and is no way qualified to the country. Certainly the scope of DC government far dwarfs many major cities as well and does not translate on the national level. Shame on Obama for such an ill advised appointment. I suppose I should take solace in the fact that like all Vivek's positions and experience, it is meaningless cruft and he can't do any real damage because no one likes him.
In a previous Slashdot posting, some DC residents commented that he was the real deal. He knows his stuff, and gets things done.
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1097003&cid=26519833
There's also a Washington Post article about Kundra linked to in the comments:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/04/AR2009010401235.html