FOSE 2009 Keynote – Vivek Kundra and Louis Freeh

March 12th, 2009 by Julia Lim

Today is the last day of FOSE and things were kicked off with the morning keynote. Louis Freeh, former director of the FBI, was originally scheduled to do the keynote, but it only made sense to add on Vivek Kundra, newly appointed federal government CIO to speak to the mainly federal workers and vendors crowd. The space was packed – 9am, after all, is mid-morning in the federal day – and there was an air of anticipation and excitement that was heightened as Kundra took the stage directly after Freeh.

What an interesting contrast of speakers. Freeh – out of the federal government since 2001 (not counting his stint on the Fannie Mae board) and that’s pre-9/11 for those of you who are wondering. Kundra – just starting a new position (Federal CIO) as part of a new administration that continues to promise change, change, change. Old School vs New School.  And their speeches and the q&a reflected this contrast at the same time that they agreed on the fundamental idea that the old way of doing government has to change.

Freeh took us back to the founding of the country, bringing up the debate against a centralized government and even touching upon the attack on Pearl Harbor. Like 9/11, he said, the government was shocked but not surprised; they knew a pre-emptive attack by the Japanese was coming just as they knew bin Laden and Al-Qaeda had been ramping up anti-American terrorist attacks. But after 28 years in government service, Freeh pointed out the government tradition not to get up to speed on a problem until it becomes a crisis. This still holds true – whether it’s counter-terrorism or cybersecurity efforts. The infrastructure and budgets are simply not in place beforehand for the federal government to be effective.

If Freeh was a historian during his speech, can we say Kundra was a visionary? Certainly, he focused on future efforts, plans, core principles or “pillars” for how government operations must change and adapt to the speed of technology and the challenges facing the US today. They are:

1) Transparency and Open Government – President Obama has already signed a memo on the principles that government should be open, collaborative and participatory. An OMB directive should be coming out within the next few months (they need to appoint that CTO PDQ)

2) Engaging Citizens – beyond transparency and providing information that the private sector can use to innovate, the government should provide ways for citizens to actually be involved in daily government operations

3) Lowering the Cost of Government Operations – I got the distinct impression that this was a truly hands-on project for the CIO, as it should be. He seemed almost to take it personally that the federal government is paying too much and at the same time taking too long to provide necessary IT services. The short-list of alternatives – cloud computing and free technologies already available to consumers that will drastically cut costs, time to value/implementation and enable government IT to provide services as effectively and efficiently as possible. His mini-rant: If it takes 2-3 years for the procurement process alone, we’ve just bought obsolete technology. (should not be an aha moment)

4) Don’t Take the Same Path – Find the Innovative Path – You don’t throw good money after bad. Instead of fixing what’s broke, sometimes it takes an entirely new approach to get things done. He’s talking about innovation here – and not just in the technology itself but in how you address the problem. The example: explosion in web 2.0 technology which should be used in government but the issue is not so much re-engineering the technology itself, rather it’s the training and change of mindset for a whole group of people and teams in the federal government.

On a final note, I’ll say this. While Freeh seemed to focus on the past and Kundra on the future, I wish someone was focusing on the present. I think believing someone is focused on that would make a lot of us feel better.

Stay tuned for more info on Kundra: in his pledge to be open and accessible, he promised to hold Saturday or Sunday roundtable sessions where people could come and talk openly about their ideas for improving government operations.

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7 comments March 12th, 2009