Upon reading a lengthy profile of the Obama appointed CIO, Vivek Kundra (http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/President-Obama-Names-Vivek-Kundra-Chief-Information-Officer/), in Information Week, I was both impressed and left wondering. Impressed with his credentials and business-like approach to the overbearing task of coordinating the Federal Government's IT operations. However wondering if perhaps some major issues are being overlooked or left out of his public strategy communications.
The article lists more CIO's in Federal Government than we have corn fields in Iowa. There are turf battles for funding, for prioritizing, and for control of overlapped services. At a time when the economy, environment, and global terror are the main stage, there are more challenges than manpower to tackle. He's lead the charge for a new dashboard that high-level Info Tech executives of the government can view and obtain data to help them run their business like a business.
But in all due appreciation of the magnitude of his job, I felt as if there were many unanswered questions about how IT could impact the nation and globe positively. Albeit politics seems to find a way to hinder progress, I see three main issues that IT might pursue:
- Air traffic security - put in a system that screens everyone thoroughly and denies anyone tied to terrorism or their peers. People - you might need to get over your bashfulness. Once you're blown up mid-air no one will remember what your butt looks like.
- Environment - Put some scientists on the job that are looking for real data versus parallel results that match their funding source. When well read people with actual brains can't make sense of which side is right about what is causing global warming, let alone what is global warming, how do we know that the money we're spending on programs is effective? Why is legislation being put into place that can adversely affect our economy at a critical time of recovery when the savings and environmental benefit appear fleeting.
- Economy - It seems we're so busy trying to use IT to track what we're doing now that we might try to focus more on tomorrow's vision of IT and the world first. With national unemployment at 10% it seems there ought to be focus on lowering that number to 5% or 6%. And government jobs is not the best way to sustain a workable employment factor.
I hope everyone is thinking about these issues. I'm sure we all won't agree with how, what, and why but if our focus is common we'll do some good.
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