Vivek Kundra is the U.S. CIO, appointed by President Obama. CIO = Chief Information Officer. At the Personal Democracy Forum, that I attended this week, CIO Kundra “pulled back the curtain,” as the PdF writes, on the new federal IT spending dashboard. Kundra talked about the IT Dashboard in terms of changing “government culture.” On the dashboard homepage dated July 02 is this Agency Update:
“Monday June 29, 2009
Almost 400 Federal employees help test the IT Dashboard. From June 11 through June 29, OMB hosted daily Open House sessions, with tremendous attendance from over 30 Federal agencies.”
The IT Dashboard has cool and edgy tools for going “deep,” as the USCIO put it, into our country’s “investments.” What kept going through my mind was that the dashboard would be an excellent tool for Congress to look at how the Administration is spending money. Someone in the audience asked if the dashboard looks at how stimulus and healthcare funds are invested. The USCIO explained that only what is spent for information technology by government departments is thus far covered, but there are considerations for extending the process.
In another talk at the conference, Jeff Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do?, predicted that government is going to change [because of network effects] as the newspapers are now and as other sectors [have been shaken to the core]. [Brackets my words] So, the interesting thing to watch with the Obama administration’s networking initiatives is which way will change flow. I disagree with the apparent White House assumption that ideas from the Administration will permeate the nets. I think they will experience emergence rather than control the flow.
