Perhaps looking to stay the course, the freshly-named Federal CIO said he intends to carry his predecessor’s grand vision forward.
In an article about the appointment of Steven VanRoekel to the Federal CIO post, Jack Lew, director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) wrote that “under his leadership, I am confident that we will continue to build on the remarkable gains that we have made in changing the way the Federal government manages IT.”
[Cloud-First, part 3: Kundra keeps laying consolidation foundation.]
Lew was referring to the progress Vivek Kundra, VanRoekel’s predecessor and the first-ever Federal CIO, made during his time in office, including “opening up data in new and innovative ways, rooting out waste and duplication in IT spending [and] steering the Federal government toward more energy-efficient and cost-effective technologies,” Lew wrote in the post, adding that "in this time of budgetary and fiscal challenges, sustaining and expanding on those efforts is more important than ever.”
Such gains came in the form of Kundra’s grand 25-Point Plan to Reform Federal Health IT, which includes the Cloud-First Policy, an ambitious vision to consolidate some 800 physical datacenters into clouds by 2015. Cloud-First’s future has come into question since Kundra announced he is stepping down from the Federal CIO post to return to Harvard.
“Vivek Kundra did a great job of laying out the vision for IT modernization – the vision is bold,” said Steve O’Keefe, founder of MeriTalk, a government IT network. “We understand that Steven VanRoekel plans to stay the course on cloud, data center consolidation, cyber security, transparency, and mobility initiatives.”
VanRoekel, indeed, suggested last week that he intends to carry forth with Kundra’s plan. “We’re trying to make sure that the pace of innovation in the private sector can be applied to the model that is government,” VanRoekel told the New York Times.
Several analysts in the government and IT realms agree that Cloud-First – particularly on the back of the cloud computing trend so prevalent in the private sector – already has enough momentum to carry on after Kundra. And there is evidence that VanRoekel is of a similar “tech-forward” mindset as Kundra, particularly when it comes to leading federal agencies to harness the same technologies that Americans use on a daily basis, as well as consolidating IT resources and Web sites to reduce tech spending.
“We’re taking a page from the online entrepreneur’s playbook, releasing products quickly and often, and letting the many eyes of the Web drive the continuous improvement we hope FCC.gov will come to embody,” VanRoekel wrote on the FCC’s official blog in April. “Built in the cloud, and developed with open source software, the new FCC.gov lowers barriers to future development as part of a long-term IT cost-cutting strategy.”
[Related: Cloud-First, part 2: What tech analysts are saying. See also Part 1: Can Cloud-First carry on after Kundra?]
The expectation is for VanRoekel to continue that practice as Federal CIO. "Everybody in Federal IT is looking forward to collaborating with Mr. VanRoekel to map the operational path forward to achieve these lofty and noble goals," Meritalk’s O’Keefe said. “Public-private collaboration will be critical to success. We need to prioritize and put in place resources to make the vision a reality.”
VanRoekel’s first day as Federal CIO was Friday, August 5. VanRoekel comes to the White House from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), where he was executive director of citizen and organization engagement. Prior to that role, he served at the FCC, after spending nearly 15 years working in Microsoft’s Windows server and tools division.