By Lilia Guan

 

Enterprise computing vendor, Salesforce.com brought one of its newest members of its team, Vivek Kundra former chief information officer of the United States, for a visit to Australia last week.
 

Mr Kundra joined the company as executive vice president of emerging markets in January this year and Government News was there when he gave a talk about his previous career and the part cloud technology had to play in overhauling the “old guard” method of purchasing IT.
 

During the talk Mr Kundra took the audience back to 2008 when President Obama was first elected as the president.
 

Mr Kundra said President Obama set up a transition team dubbed TIGR - a team focused on technology, innovation and government reform.
 

“Before that every administration that had come into power created a team focused on national security, health care or the economy,” he said.
 

“Not a single president focused on technology innovation and government reform.”
 

According to Mr Kundra President Obama challenged the team to create a strategy where investment in technology would “pay dividends for the American people”.
 

“Fuelled by coffee, we started to think about how to change an organisation as large as the United States government, which spends $80 billion on IT and has over 12000 major IT systems across the planet,” he said.
 

“[It would be] difficult [to] change preconceived notions of how technology was deployed.”
 

Mr Kundra said he armed himself with knowledge gained from his time working at a local government level for Arlington County Virginia, the City of Virginia and the District of Columbia.
 

During his time in Virginia, he saw many tobacco farms and furniture shops shut down because they didn’t have access to broadband.
 

“[Without] access to broadband they got left behind because in this 21st Century economy if you aren’t plugged in then you will get left behind,” he said.
 

“Second thing I found while I was at the District of Columbia was the customer experience in dealing with government was one which you detested.

 

"You are made to wait on the phone or stand for hours in line and take weeks to fill out a form.”
 

Mr Kundra found the projects across the government board, did nothing to help in alleviating the problems he had encountered during his time in local government.
 

“There was (US)$24 billion worth of IT projects that had gone out of control,” he said.
 

“Over a decade the number of data centres purchased went from 432 to 2094. The old model status quo wasn’t sustainable.”
 

In the past, Mr Kundra said, building a infrastructure was much easier and it was easier to put out a procurement or acquire massive data centres that did nothing to solve any customers problems.

 

“I was shocked that some agencies were spending (US)$50 million on a binder folder full of architecture drawings that couldn’t be implemented,” he said.
 

“You can buy a book off Amazon.com or book a flight on QANTAS in a couple of minutes.
 

“Look at Silicon Valley companies these guys are using cloud computing and not having to amass technology.”
 

Mr Kundra said as CIO he enacted a cloud technology policy not just because of cost savings but also because the provision of services has been reduced.
 

“What use to take five years, now only takes five weeks,” he said.
 

“This frees up resources and human talent to refocus on services that matter to customers.”
 

For the full talk go to the April/May edition of Government News