Alright Apple fans, are you jealous yet? Steven VanRoekel, a former Microsoft employee, has been named successor to Vivek Kundra as the Chief of Information Technology for the federal government. That’s right, he’s a PC guy, not Steve Jobs (although, if we’re being honest I’m sure he was offered the job).
VanRoekel worked for fifteen years at Microsoft and at one time was even an assistant to co-founder himself, Bill Gates. His more recent positions include a stint as the managing director of the Federal Communications Commission. The government is hoping to get more productivity out of its investment in technology, which runs at about $80 billion a year – more than any corporation.
With this change in office comes a hope for a change in productivity, as the White House does not believe it is growing as much as the private sector has from its investments in technology. In fact it is not; the New York Times reports that productivity in the private sector has gained at about 1.5% a year recently, while that of the government is at less than a third of that rate. Those in office want to bridge the technology gap between the public and the private while making their work more efficient and resourceful.
Filling his predecessor’s shoes will be a large task for VanRoekel, as Vivek Kundra has made great strides during his reign. His accomplishments include cutting back on technology projects which were not proving as effective as had hoped at their beginning and getting a great deal of government info on the web. Kundra helped close extraneous data centers, move the government to cloud computing, and sped up the time of applying technology updates as well.
VanRoekel wishes to follow in Kundra’s footsteps and continue the work he has done thus far. His goals include creating even more efficiency in the government IT department and applying how tech has helped the private sector to the White House.