The federal government, despite being the largest purchaser of IT goods and services, has largely missed out on productivity improvements brought about by IT that the private sector has realized, White House CIO Vivek Kundra told an audience at the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Affairs recently.
The White House has begun calling this the "technology gap" and is making noise about how to close it. According to Kundra, the government has not made tough enough management decisions to terminate, halt or turn around failing projects. He cited estimates that 585 investments were poorly planed or managed in 2009, representing bout $27 billion.
Kundra said the government is so big it operates under a fragmented infrastructure, "tends to operate in a closed, secretive, and opaque manner," emphasizes compliance over results, and has accepted the notion of adopting rather than driving technological innovation from a business standpoint.
Partly based on a forum convened in January that included input from 50 CEOs from top companies, Kundra told the audience that in order to close the technology gap, the government needs to cut waste, improve performance and deliver better service, foster an open, transparent and participatory government, and secure the computing environment.
Such efforts could include increased pressure to terminate existing struggling IT projects and programs.
