Ex-Microsoft executive appointed top US tech post
Steven VanRoekel, who worked at Microsoft from 1994 to 2009, replaces Vivek Kundra, who is stepping down as federal chief information officer to take up a fellowship at Harvard University.
As CIO, VanRoekel will direct policy and strategic planning for government information technology and will be responsible for the $80 billion in annual federal technology spending.
At Microsoft, VanRoekel was an assistant to Bill Gates and the senior director of the US software giant’s Windows Server and Tools Division.
VanRoekel left Microsoft in 2009 to serve as managing director of the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
He left the FCC earlier this year to serve as executive director of citizen and organizational engagement at the US Agency for International Development.
Kundra, the US government’s first CIO, was charged by Obama with improving performance and lowering the cost of government operations through the use of technology.
Kundra has piloted a government move to greater reliance on Internet-based “cloud” computing and a number of other initiatives including a website called Data.gov, which provides ufiltered access to government data for use by the public, and another called IT Dashboard, which tracks IT spending.
Obama relied heavily on the Internet during his presidential campaign for organizing, fundraising and communicating and has created MySpace, Facebook and Flickr pages and a Twitter feed since entering the White House.
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