Main CIO of the USA: state orders are divided by cartel from mega-vendors

Vivek Kundra, the Chief information officer of administration of the White House of the USA and a key figure of the American IT industry, at a meeting with the leading advisers to the president Barack Obama on science warned colleagues about dangers of open data access and complained of IT cartel and collusion of mega-vendors. He also let know that the U.S. Government needs to reduce the number of the used DPCs.

Kundra whose activity in the U.S. Government comes to the end in the middle of August informed the gathered advisers for science and technologies a set of the alarms concerning information technologies of the federal center. His concern, in particular, is caused by unforeseen effects of sharing of government data where information is integrated and accumulates by such methods which can damage confidentiality and pose security risk.

During an era of Facebook and Twitter when the set of personal data is already available, government information, it is probable "in the past harmless", it can be used for "identification of the persons who are not wishing publicity", Kundra told.

He quite sharply criticized practice of the conclusion of government IT contracts and reported to committee that "we, within federal IT, already almost had an IT cartel" which is made by the "very few companies" receiving benefit at the expense of state orders "because they it is better, than someone, understands process of state procurements". "And it at all not because they provide the best technology", - he noted, speaking about contractors.

According to Kundra, the government knows, "that true informative value is on a joint of its different sources", but he also understands - there can be problems if data issue "actually without thinking of effects for national security". He told, as an example that its office conducted negotiations with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on data which it intends to release, and, without disclosing specifics, was recognized that around these negotiations "there was very rough debate". According to him, use of confidentiality is extremely important.

Two and a half years ago Kundra was appointed by the president Obama to a position of the first government CIO. Accepting a position, at the beginning of 2009, he showed discontent with the big contract for occupations with the senseless actions and contractors who uttered to themselves "salary accrual for an indefinite time frame".

If Kundra also the IT was upset with the work on management of $80 billion annual expenses on federal, then it can be connected with the fact that it could not increase the number of the companies competing for the federal order. "How to us to pick up the innovative companies, most the innovation people ready actually to come and fight for federal contracts?", - Kundra said.

The member of the committee of the White House, the executive chairman of Google company Eric Schmidt, asked Kundra why the federal government does not try to cut down expenses as it is done by corporations - due to standardization. Whether "This model makes to [standardization] sense for you? And if yes, that why it does not occur? – Schmidt spoke. - In other words, so occurs because people want to control their own systems? Because of a method of financing of works? Whether there are legal justifications why the standardized platform is not created?"

Kundra answered that the reason for which a federal system "throws down a challenge to logic" partly is explained by the system of financing. Not one committee in the congress devoted to technologies "thinks of these questions horizontally", and the decision on financing is made from bureau to bureau, Kundra noted. He also emphasized that the government has 12 thousand main systems today, and he called for their consolidation and referred to the initiatives suggesting to reduce number of federal data processing centers. The government has their about 2 thousand. According to Kundra, the U.S. Government should have, only three main data processing centers.

As the director of information technology of the U.S. Government, Kundra supported sharing of data, criticized contracts of large government suppliers and believed in new technologies, in particular, of "cloud". He will leave the position soon and will work in Harvard University.