America's New CIO Loves Google

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."

Comments

Win-Win? Really?

[godfra]

Kundra's enthusiastic comment about saving millions by using Google apps instead of buying enterprise software would worry me if I lived in the US.

I don't particularly care if MS loses a big sale, but the question of ownership doesn't seem to come up.

How safe is government data if it's stored on someone else's servers?

Also, why is Google being pitched as the only alternative?

Forget data...

[tsmit]

Does it bother anyone that Google (yes, google, the company whose main goal is to catalog all the world's data) will now have the US government as it's highest paying customer? What happens when the US Gov comes knocking on Google's door for some data on you, me, whoever. With money flowing in Google's direction, Google will be more likely to hand over any information that the government wants. Time for the tinfoil hats...