Bringing government up to data

Technology drove Barack Obama's presidential campaign. And Obama's three tech "chiefs" drive his administration's technology. Their goal: Create government websites that are more like an Apple app store than the Department of Motor Vehicles.

And for Vivek Kundra, Jeffrey Zients and Aneesh Chopra, that means trying to turn Obama's vision of data-driven and digital government into reality. "In our personal lives, we live in a culture where 'there's an app for that,' but for whatever reason we came into Washington, and it still looks like a culture where 'there's a form for that,'" said Chopra. But it's not just creating whiz-bang websites. In the current political climate, the stakes are high for the president and congressional Democrats, who need to prove that government can handle the challenge posed by their overhaul of the health insurance industry and other initiatives, by minimizing paperwork, lines and months of delay that have become typical of the government experience. Technology, they believe, can be the answer.