By Arun Kumar, IANS,
Washington : US President Barack Obama’s tech guruVivek Kundra, who spearheaded his administration’s effort to streamline the federal government’s massive IT infrastructure is leaving in August for a fellowship at Harvard.
New Delhi born Kundra, 36, who has worked for two and a half years as the first federal chief information officer, oversees $80 billion in federal information technology projects and led a push for more cloud computing.
In his new endeavour, Kundra will split his time in a joint fellowship between the Shorenstein Centre on the Press, Politics and Public Policy and the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society, Center Executive Director Urs Gasser said in a news release Thursday.
“We look forward to working closely with him on cutting-edge issues where the complexities of cloud computing intersect with law, institutions and data,” Berkman said.
Kundra occupied one of three tech-focused posts that the Obama White House created to overhaul the government’s use of technology.
Another Indian-American Aneesh Chopra is the chief technology officer, while Jeffrey Zients serves as chief performance officer.
“The work that I dedicated myself to while serving as the federal CIO – in cutting waste, strengthening cybersecurity and building an open and transparent government through technology will also drive my research interests on both the national and international levels” at his new job, Kundra said in the release.
Kundra spearheaded a number of initiatives to try to make the government’s complex technology systems more efficient and less costly.
Democratic seantor. Tom Carper, who heads the subcommittee that oversees federal IT issues, credited Kundra with saving the government $3 billion in efficiencies.
One of his primary accomplishments was introducing “cloud computing” into the government IT lexicon. Kundra has also pushed consumer-focused companies such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon to get into the government game.
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at [email protected])