Federal push for 'cloud' tech faces scepticism

Before cost-cutting became fashionable in Washington, Vivek Kundra, the White House’s chief information officer, was working to shrink the federal government’s enormous budget for information technology.

But even as Kundra returns to academia after a two-and-a-half-year run, his vision for a leaner and more internet-centric future for government is being met with caution by at least a few of the technology chiefs at the federal agencies that now have to carry it out.

That is because Kundra’s vision hinges on ‘cloud computing’, in which an agency’s computer programmes (like e-mail) and data (like e-mail messages) are stored by private contractors and delivered to government employees as services over the internet.