Join Ellen Millar as she talks with Vivek Kundra, the 'rockstar of government data', about the data transparency initiatives currently occurring within the Federal Government. From Data.gov to booking a campsite online, Kundra is the mastermind behind much of the more promising initiatives, however he faces the challenge of balancing privacy concerns with providing reliable and useful services at a reasonable cost to taxpayers.
Answering questions from the audience, Kundra discusses collaborating with the OpenId Foundation to create a framework that allows individuals to use government data without compromising their personal information. Addressing concerns over the cost required to build and run Data.gov, Kundra argues that the creation of the data.gov framework, combined with simple initiatives, has allowed individual departments to save money on implementing new web designs.
Ultimately the goal of sharing data with the public is to allow users to find meaningful data for public policy issues. By sharing information Vivek Kundra seeks to discover the way that government can utilize crowd sourcing to develop better, and more informed, public policy.
Vivek Kundra is the Federal Chief Information Officer and has been recognized for numerous government initiatives involving sharing public information through cloud computing. He has worked within government for Arlington County, Virginia as Director of Infrastructure Technology, and as Chief Technology Officer for the District of Columbia working on programs to adopt open source and crowdsourced applications. In 2009 Kundra launched the Data.gov platform with the goal of providing public access to raw datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government to enable public participation and private sector innovation.
This free podcast is from our Government 2.0 Summit series.
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