As part of the Obama administration's ongoing love affair with technology, President Obama today appointed the first federal Chief Information Officer. As CIO, Vivek Kundra will be responsible for advising the administration on technology issues, helping guide internal policy to best make use of what tech's available and ensure the government uses it as efficiently and securely as possible. In a conference call earlier today, Kundra discussed what his goals are as CIO and what big changes the U.S. needs to make regarding how the government uses the IT resources it has available.

One of the key areas where the government needs to improve is in its adoption of commercially-available hardware and software solutions. Kundra alluded to the power of today's smartphones, which are relatively cheap, easy to use, and gloriously portable. The CIO doesn't like how many government agencies try to develop in-house systems to meet their needs, when it would be far more efficient to purchase off-the-shelf gadgets and then adapt them. A smartphone with the right software could replace any number of proprietary communications devices as used by police and public works officials.

Another topic that Kundra was anxious to see the government take better advantage of is cloud computing. This network strategy takes the load off individual PCs by running applications largely on an external group of servers. Considering how many hundreds of thousands desktop computers the government uses, switching to a cloud model would save vast amounts of resources, ultimately allow processing power to go where it was needed, when it was needed, and offer advantages when performing ongoing upkeep and maintenance tasks.

Kundra also spoke about using web sites to enhance citizen involvement and increase government transparency. In addition to the recovery.gov site, the CIO mentioned plans for data.gov, which would publish information produced by federal agencies. While admitting it will be require a "massive transformation", Kundra wants to see all non-restricted federal information made available online. That's quite the ambitious task, but we hope that seeing this kind of ambition from him during his first day on the job is a sign that the CIO plans on actually getting things done.

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