Hooray for Vivek Kundra

In my post yesterday about data transparency, I promised to write more today about someone named Vivek Kundra, claiming that simply Googling his name could reveal profound truths about the Obama administration's likely approach to data, transparency, disclosure, and civic engagement.

Okay, so who is Vivek Kundra?

Until recently, residents of Washington, D.C. (myself among them) have known him as Mayor Adrian Fenty's dynamic, innovative Chief Technology Officer. As CTO, among other things, he undertook a massive initiative to basically put a huge amount of data online. Not a portal, not a PDF -- just raw data. Wondering what construction projects are currently underway here in our fair District? Let's just go to the real-time Google Map. Want to keep track of crime in D.C.? Check the RSS feed. Want to track individual contractors and their hourly rates? Not a problem.

Why did I say "until recently"? Because, about two weeks ago, Kundra was tapped to join the Obama Administration as OMB's Administrator for E-Government and Information Technology. The position, created in 2002 by the E-Government Act (pdf), is charged specifically with "provid[ing] effective leadership of Federal Government efforts to develop and promote electronic Government services and processes." (Wikipedia, of all places, has a nice article summarizing the Act's other provisions.) During the Bush years, the job focused primarily on enhancing efficiency, increasing government's capacity to use IT strategically, and providing citizens with clearer access points to various government services.

Of course, technology has moved forward a lot since 2002 (c.f. Whitehouse.gov in 2002!). Today, consumers define the computing experience largely through web-based services like Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and yes, even these crazy blogs -- mashed up through Google Maps and aggregated in RSS. The one thing that nearly all of these divergent services have in common is that they rely on user-generated content -- i.e., external data -- to function. (Think about it: The world's largest supplier of video on the Internet isn't a production company, but instead a company-slash-website that has nothing to do with video production. If you said that would be true in 1996, you'd get looked at awful strange.) Needless to say, and government hasn't exactly caught up. Portals proliferate, but the lifeblood of nearly every application that actual people actually use -- raw data -- is hard to come by.

I have a feeling that's about to change, and you'll (largely) have a man named Vivek Kundra to thank for it. Don't say I didn't warn you.

UPDATE: Via Twitter, Gautham Nagesh reminds me of this great profile of Vivek that ran on Nextgov back in November '08.