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America's New CIO Loves Google

Posted by kdawson on from the government-in-the-clouds dept.

theodp writes "On Thursday, Barack Obama tapped Vivek Kundra for the post of Federal CIO, giving him responsibility for establishing and overseeing enterprise architecture across the federal government. So what might that look like? Well, little more than a month ago Kundra was slated to sing the praises of Google Apps to government officials in a webcast. A Kundra quote from the presentation slides: 'Why should I spend millions on enterprise apps when I can do it [with Google] at one-tenth cost and ten times the speed? It's a win-win for me.' You can follow Kundra's love affair with Google on YouTube, from his announcement of the Google-Washington DC partnership he brokered through a co-starring role with a Google attorney on a video pitching Google-enabled technology for the Obama Administration. Not surprisingly, some say Obama's choice of a Google-party-goer who worships Google could cause big headaches for Microsoft."

2 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. Finally someone who gets it by oodaloop · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I work in the intelligence community, and I have to say we are way behind the commercial side in application development and other IT areas. We spend millions in development of programs that can't begin to match free programs available on the internet like Google Earth. Open Source to us means unclassified information; hardly anyone is aware of Linux, Open Office, or other open source solutions. Having someone who is not beholden to government contractors can only be a good thing. And I say that as a government contractor.

    --
    Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
  2. Re:google running our government IT? by digitalgiblet · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What makes you think it will be out in the open just because it is hosted by Google?

    Just because it is POSSIBLE to be out in the open, doesn't mean that it will.

    I agree with your sentiment that we need a more transparent government, but I disagree that using Google will necessarily achieve that.

    I use Google every day and have seen no reason to suspect they are up to no good, but it makes me a bit nervous when I see that people seem to trust them completely.

    They are a large, powerful corporation. Even if the current management proves to be saintly, a corporation can change its management. Sometimes against the will of the current management (I'm looking at YOU Yahoo).

    Having the government's information held by a private corporation seems a bit dangerous.

    Cheaper, definitely. More transparent, maybe. Good idea, remains to be seen...

    I certainly hope that if the govt. really goes down that road, that the process by which they do so is absolutely transparent.

    Really well written contracts (and possibly legislative actions) need to spell out EXACTLY what Google can and can't do. It could be implemented very well or very badly. AND there needs to be a fall back. It may be unthinkable for Google to fail, but not that long ago people thought the same of GM, AIG, Citigroup, etc, etc...