The Commander in Chief of Information?

With a nice week off for spring break, I have been catching up with the news in the information technology world, and I have learned that the United States has its own chief information officer!  President Obama created the new federal position and selected his technology adviser Vivek Kundra during his presidential campaign for the position.  According to an article in the Washington Post, the CIO is "expected to oversee how government agencies purchase and use information technology and will be in charge of all federal technology spending. He also will be responsible for making sure agencies' networks and systems work together and share information while maintaining security and privacy standards."  In addition to the creation of the chief information officer position, Obama is expected to create a chief technology officer who will be responsible for overall technology policy.

As an Information Sciences and Technology major, I think it is pretty awesome and about time that our federal government have a chief information officer.  Our government has enormous amounts of data and needs massive resources in order to make this data meaningful in any way.  Hopefully, the new CIO can prevent government agencies such as the FBI from spending over $170 million in a failed attempt to upgrade their computer database system in order to better track terrorist suspects after 9/11.