Kundra: Transparency Will Take Time

Speaking at a Washington conference on government technology, the Gov 2.0 Summit, federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra acknowledged that to achieve the transparency the Obama administration has promised there would need to be upgrades to many agencies' antiquated IT infrastructures. Delivering those upgrades on the other hand, may be a task that outlasts both Kundra and the administration. During his conversation with Sunlight Foundation Executive Director Ellen Miller, Kundra touted the administration's efforts to post government data online via sites like Data.gov and the IT Dashboard on USASpending.gov. However, when Miller pointed out that USASpending is often slow to deliver data, Kundra responded that agencies have been held back by their aging IT infrastructures. He argued that systems based on decades-old technology would be unable to handle the increased demand that would result from posting data online. Of course USASpending's troubles started well before Kundra began his job. The site still does not comply with the 2006 Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, which mandated its creation. Bush administration officials told Nextgov last year that the main barrier to posting contract data online was the uneven quality of data submitted by agencies and cultural resistance within agencies to openness.