A former Microsoft executive who has been in government service since 2009 has been appointed as the nation's chief information officer and administrator of the Office of Electronic Government. The OEG is part of the Office of Management and Budget.
Short History
Steven L. VanRoekel, 41, will be the nation's top official in charge of managing the nation's information-technology investments at a time when the country faces an onslaught of cyberattacks and must implement system upgrades while slashing spending.
He replaces Vivek Kundra, the first person to hold the post created by President Obama in 2009. Previously, the responsibilities were performed by the administrator of the Office of Electronic Government and Information Technology, which was created by the E-Government Act of 2002 to boost Internet-based technology that improves the public's access to government.
Kundra stepped down earlier this summer to accept a Harvard University fellowship. VanRoekel is currently executive director of citizen and organizational engagement at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Before taking that job this year, he was managing director of the Federal Communications Commission, overseeing operational, technical, financial and human-resource aspects of the agency and heading up efforts to introduce new technology and social 
media.
VanRoekel, who has a B.A. in management of information systems from Iowa State University, worked at software giant Microsoft from 1994 to 2009, most recently as senior director for the Windows Server and Tools Division.
Kundra was well-regarded for consolidating the government's data centers and implementing cloud applications that reduce hardware investments.
Big Shoes To Fill
"I'd say that VanRoekel's first order of business is to ensure that the efforts initiated by Vivek Kundra remain on track," said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT . "That includes the enormous data-center consolidation effort currently under way -- closing 800 facilities -- shifting to cloud-service provisioning, measuring/improving the overall efficiency of government IT projects, and expanding the availability of government data sets to organizations and individuals."
King noted that while the slumping economy poses a significant challenge, most of the OEG's efforts have resulted in more efficiency and reduced cost.
"Personally, I believe there's a lot of room left for improvement [since] government-sponsored/managed IT has been a morass for decades," he said. "But it will be important to keep a spotlight on how things are progressing."
Complicating the security concerns, King added, is evidence that "the U.S. public and private sectors are being targeted and infiltrated by foreign governments that are supposedly our allies. In other words, the trick will be in slowing or stopping these activities without causing too many painful diplomatic incidents."
VanRoekel told The New York Times on Thursday: "We're trying to make sure that the pace of innovation in the private sector can be applied to the model that is government."
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