US CTO Candidate and Open Source

Vivek Kundra is the current CTO of the DC Government. He is in the running to be the next CTO of the US Government as per the following article in the Business Week.

Keeping the title of the Business Week aside which hints at both the candidates being born Indian, the following paragraph caught my eye.

In D.C., he runs his 600-person staff like a startup, experimenting in cloud computing, open source software, social networking, and other cutting-edge technologies. Kundra advises Obama's transition team on technology issues.

Impressive that a potential candidate is hands-on and has had experience in open source. :)

According to GovTech, Mr.Kundra is a big proponent of OSS.

Washington, D.C., Mayor Adrian Fenty appointed Kundra the District of Columbia's CTO in March 2007, and Kundra has quickly made a name for himself as an innovator who is unafraid of new ideas.

Last week, Kundra and Fenty announced winners of the district's Apps for Democracy contest, which challenged participants to design open source applications that integrate data from the D.C. Data Catalog, information that's released in real time by several government agencies. Fenty said last week the contest would save Washington, D.C., millions of dollars in software development costs.

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