A Conversation with Federal Government CIO Vivek Kundra

Vivek Kundra was appointed as the first Federal CIO of the United States by President Obama in March 2009. Prior to joining the Obama administration, Kundra served in Mayor Fenty’s cabinet as the CTO for the District of Columbia and Governor Kaine’s cabinet as Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Technology for the Commonwealth of Virginia. He also served as the Director of Infrastructure Technology for Arlington County, Virginia. In the private sector, he has served in leadership roles at Evincible Software, Creostar and SAIC.

Kundra has been recognized by InfoWorld among the top 25 CTO’s in the country and as the 2008 IT Executive of the Year for his pioneering work to drive transparency, engage citizens, and lower the cost of government operations. He has also been named to Government Technology magazine’s Top 25 Doers, Dreamers, and Drivers. Kundra attended college at the University of Maryland where he received a degree in Psychology and a master’s degree in Management Information Systems from the University of Maryland, University College. He is also a graduate of the University of Virginia’s Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership.

Ellen S. Miller is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based, non-partisan non-profit dedicated to using the power of the Internet to catalyze greater government openness and transparency. She is the founder of two prominent Washington-based organizations in the field of money and politics – the Center for Responsive Politics and Public Campaign – and a nationally recognized expert on government transparency, campaign finance and ethics issues. Ms. Miller is a well-recognized public speaker, commentator, and writer on the issues of money, politics, and power. Her experience as a Washington advocate for more than 35 years spans the worlds of public interest advocacy, grass roots activism and journalism. In addition to her more than two decades of work on the issue of money in politics, Ms. Miller served as Deputy Director of Campaign for America’s Future, where she directed its Project for an Accountable Congress, the publisher of TomPaine.com and a senior fellow at The American Prospect. She spent nearly a decade working on Capitol Hill. She blogs regularly at the Sunlight Foundation site and has written frequently for TomPaine.com, The Hill, The American Prospect, and The Nation. She was named by WIRED Magazine in the 2008 Smart List as one of the “15 People the Next President Should Listen To”, and appeared in Fast Company’s February 2009 “Most Influential Women in Technology.”