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Kundra also developed the Cloud First policy as a way to start moving government IT operations to increase efficiency.
For instance, by moving the Government Services Administration and Department of Agriculture e-mail systems to the cloud, the government saved $45 million, he said. "We managed to get away from managing IT on a day-to-day basis," he said.
Security, the third priority, was also enhanced by the government's Cloud First policy with its ability to better protect government data in the cloud, Kundra said.
Security is not worrying about hacking from teenagers looking for fun, but worrying about nation states attacking the very infrastructure of the U.S., Kundra said.
The government has moved in several directions to increase security. A four-star general is now in charge of cyber warfare to protect against threats from nation states, Kundra said.
Additionally, federal systems are being put in place to protect citizens. "You'd be shocked to see how many attacks there are per second," he said.
Also, prior to having a CIO, the government's main security activity was getting consultants to do white papers on the need for security at what Kundra estimated to be a price of about $95,000 per page. Since then, he said, the government has set up "red" and "blue" teams to attack each other to look for vulnerabilities.
The fourth priority Kundra identified during his tenure as the U.S. government CIO was driving innovation through an open, transparent infrastructure. "The citizens don't care how many data centers the government has," he said.
Instead, citizens expect government to bring important developments to business and consumers, such as the use of Department of Defense satellites to add value to the GPS system or the move by the National Institute of Health to release human genome data to companies to develop better pharmaceuticals, he said.
Such moves led Kundra to consider whether the amount of government data could be scaled to make possible new applications, and so set up data.gov, which started in May of 2009 with 47 data sets and has since expanded to over 2,000 to provide data that third parties could use to create new innovations.
Along with providing the data, Kundra said the government, through the America Competes Act, provided funding to all agencies to release to third party organizations to stimulate innovative use of government data.
He cited several successful applications already using the government data, including one which allows smart phone users to scan items in their homes to see if anything has been recalled by the manufacturer, one in which consumers can rate medical care, and one which links with real-time flight information to let users determine the best time to leave their homes to go to the airport to pick up passengers.
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