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Canada needs an IT leader like Vivek Kundra

Canada needs an IT leader like Vivek Kundra

By:  Rafael Ruffolo  On: 13 Oct 2011 For: ComputerWorld Canada Creator

OPINION: The former chief information officer of the U.S. government was the highlight on day one of this year’s Dell World conference. Find out what he had to say

AUSTIN, TX. – While the Canadian government appears to be following some of the blueprint laid down by former U.S. CIO Vivek Kundra with its Shared Services Canada plan, the government could also learn some valuable lessons beyond technology changes.

Speaking at this week’s Dell World conference in Austin, Tx., outlined the challenges he faced with changing people as opposed to just setting a technology policy.

The former U.S. CIO said that there’s a reason why dealing with the government isn’t as simple as booking a flight or buying a book online.  “And it’s not due to lack of funding,” Kundra said, referring to the government’s $80 billion yearly federal IT spend.

Kundra said the government consolidated “13 e-mail systems that weren’t talking to each other” at one federal department alone. His team also implemented a “zero growth” policy for new data cetnres that stressed “cloud first” for government IT projects.

“The federal government should basically have three digital Fort Knoxs when it comes to its infrastructure,” he said, referring to the need to shrink down to just a few government-run data centres.

In its three-year plan to consolidate government e-mail systems, reduce government data centres and streamline department networks, the Canadian government is implementing many of the intiatives that worked south of the boarder.

But while the Conservative government has followed Kundra’s “don’t throw good money after bad money” approach, the former U.S. CIO did a lot more than just cost cutting.

Right off the bat, Kundra pushed forward an IT dashboard plan aimed at identifying which departments and IT leaders were responsible for which projects. This was motivated by Kundra’s first visit to the White House, where he was handed a stack of .pdf documents outlining a list of “27 IT projects that were years behind schedule and hundreds of millions over budget.”

With the IT dashboard, Kundra put a picture of a government CIO right next to the IT project they were responsible for. This puts the emphasis, he said, on building projects with fast deliverables as opposed to “boiling the oceam” and trying to create a massive in-house solution.

“You don’t build an airline to travel or a car company to move around,” Kundra said, pointing to the need for IT shops to focus on their core compentencies and outsource the rest.

This move also attempts to change the culture of government IT, forcing individuals and teams to take public ownership of the projects they undertake.

Additionally, Kundra’s team built a labs environment which strived to test and implement innovative technologies as fast as possible.

“The new generation born digital isn’t going to wait around for CIOs and enterprises,” he said.

“You need to introduce the same Darwinian pressure that you see in the consumer space to enterprise IT.”

While the little we’ve heard about the Conservative government’s Shared Services Canada is promising, I can’t help but think a big picture IT thinker like Kundra is missing from Ottawa.

The idea that corporate culture has to be changed along with technology is something that Kundra obviously understood. I’m hoping federal IT leaders in Canada can borrow more of his ideas than just straight up cost cutting.

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Tags: Canadian government, U.S. government
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Rafael Ruffolo Rafael Ruffolo was a senior writer for ComputerWorld Canada from 2006 to 2011. He was the winner of a Kenneth R. Wilson award for business journalism in 2009.
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