8 ms·

Is US Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra a Phony?

157 points by chanux 17y ago

luigi 17y ago
How is everyone just accepting that Dvorak is right? This is the same guy who said "[t]here is no likelihood that Apple can be successful in a business this competitive", referring to the mobile phone industry: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-should-pull-the-plug-on-the-iphone http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-should-pull-the-plug-... The same guy who thought that the Windows System Idle Process being at 95% was a bad thing: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000873.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000873.html And predicted that spam will kill wikis: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1835857,00.asp http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1835857,00.asp
krying_krab 17y ago
Now I'm no expert on this but, wouldn't it be a security risk if any old citizen could inquire about the credentials of another person? Recent homegrown terrorists come to mind. That said, he could just be a phony who invented degrees. The White House really should say something about this.
qeorge 17y ago
If this is true (I don't think it is), he apparently duped the University Of Maryland itself: "Kundra holds an undergraduate degree from UM in psychology and a master's of science in information technology." http://www.newsdesk.umd.edu/facts/mm/08-09/mar.cfm http://www.newsdesk.umd.edu/facts/mm/08-09/mar.cfm Took all of 1 minute to find that on Bing: http://www.bing.com/search?q=site%3Aumd.edu+%22vivek+kundra%22&go=&form=QBRE&qs=n http://www.bing.com/search?q=site%3Aumd.edu+%22vivek+kundra%... Can we move on please?
- tokenadult 17y ago
  That's an interesting clash of sources. The university registrar is the authoritative source on who has a degree. The university news service is a captive journalistic organization--it will be interesting to see if its report rather than Dvorak's is confirmed from the primary sources.
- zhyder 17y ago
  Your link has "Kundra holds an undergraduate degree from UM in psychology and a master's of science in information technology." Which actually doesn't indicate that the MS in IT was from UM, and hence doesn't clash with Dvorak's post. Edit: Interesting that the Wikipedia page, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivek_Kundra http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivek_Kundra , has already been updated with "claims to hold... but no record" using Dvorak's post as the citation. Should have waited a few days to see how this gets resolved or at least backed up by more journalists.
- jdminhbg 17y ago
  We should move on because the U of MD PR office didn't fact-check his degree in putting out a press release?
tokenadult 17y ago
"This is the sort of question you might ask after trying to actually verify his supposed MS in Information Technology from the University of Maryland, College Park campus. The registrar has no record of it. "I have already queried the White House concerning this and have heard nothing back." Wow. This looks like a total muff in checking the background of quite an important (supposedly) government official. How many more errors of background checking like that have happened?
- jpwagner 17y ago
  Multiple appointments had tax evasion issues. This type of thing seems fairly common, which is of course horrifying.
  - eli 17y ago
    They weren't especially serious lapses, if I recall. I think it's that a large number of people have, at some point in their life, fudged on their taxes. I'm not sure we should be surprised that this is the case in a few appointments out of hundreds.
    - jpwagner 17y ago
      Daschle paid $140,000 in back taxes and resigned. Geithner did not pay $34,000. Killefer seemed to have a reasonable mistake. We all probably screw up our calculations, tax code is a mess, but 10's of thousands (by an individual) is likely not an honest mistake.
      - eli 17y ago
        I suggest you look into the details. They all seem like mistakes I could have made by accident. And, like I said, lots of people fudge their taxes a little. Not outright fraud, but maybe not declaring something if they aren't sure if it's taxable or not. Daschle's main problem is that he did not declare as income the limo and driver that was provided to him by the company he was consulting for. It's not like he was laundering money through shell companies in Antigua.
deleted 17y ago
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brown9-2 17y ago
Is it really possible for a regular citizen to check with a university to find out what degree(s) someone has been awarded, or even their attendence record? Is this something a registrar will divulge to just anyone? Or do the screenshots of the University of Maryland's registration application imply that someone on the inside checked into this for Dvorak?
- RK 17y ago
  Usually it's very difficult to get a university to confirm if someone is a current student (of course it's often easy to just look in the online directory). For graduation lists, usually the student has to explicitly opt out of having their name included.
- xlamnfoqp 17y ago
  anyone can check degrees with just a phone call, try it out right now
- dschobel 17y ago
  Universities publish degree announcements by the tens of thousands for commencement and often on their websites so I don't think it's a closely-held secret.
  - tokenadult 17y ago
    Yes, universities make this information easy to check, because not exposing liars about degrees damages the value of each degree.
- patio11 17y ago
  The National Student Clearinghouse collects this information and makes it available to anyone with a credit card about about $5 ~ $8 to spend. http://www.studentclearinghouse.org/secure_area/DegreeVerify/dv_ParticipatingSchools.asp http://www.studentclearinghouse.org/secure_area/DegreeVerify...
  - eli 17y ago
dschobel 17y ago
With the amount of legit tech people in Obama's orbit this is seriously disappointing. Even if his credentials are authentic (TBD!), they're really underwhelming.
raheemm 17y ago
These are really troubling assertions. However, I went over and took a look at data.gov, which is the first project under the fed CTO's office and it is really impressive. I am troubled and impressed. Regardless, Vivek Kundra should address the points brought up in this blog.
edw519 17y ago
I have mixed feelings upon reading this. On one hand I want to say Thank you, John, for the kind of muchraking we need now more than ever. I sure hope this goes somewhere. On the other hand, I have no problem busting my butt for thousands in hopes of millions. Until I realize how dishonest posers steal the key to billions without doing any work at all. Knowing that this sort of thing goes on all the time doesn't diminish the anger that comes from reading about it.
- luigi 17y ago
  Why do you trust Dvorak on this? He said that cable modems would never happen: http://web.archive.org/web/19970415081814/http://www.pcmag.com/issues/1415/pcm00059.htm http://web.archive.org/web/19970415081814/http://www.pcmag.c... He doesn't understand what the System Idle Process is: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000873.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000873.html Why do you believe Dvorak but not the guy who was vetted by a presidential administration?
  - jdminhbg 17y ago
    I'm not really sure what the System Idle Process has to do with made-up degrees and companies.
    - eli 17y ago
      Well if you're going to complain that a guy "[does] not sound like someone who studied computers or technology" it would be more convincing if there weren't several well-known instances of you demonstrating a lack of knowledge of computers and technology.
      - plinkplonk 17y ago
        "Well if you're going to complain that a guy "[does] not sound like someone who studied computers or technology" it would be more convincing if there weren't several well-known instances of you demonstrating a lack of knowledge of computers and technology." but that is not the real "complaint". Dvorak just says that led him to dig deeper. The accusation (or "complaint"if you will) is that Kundra fudged his credentials. It doesn't matter how technical Dvorak is for the truth or falsity of that statement. Attack the accusation (which is very specific and can be easily disproved) not the accuser.
socratees 17y ago
Vivek Kundra should definitively address these allegations.
kakal 17y ago
I agree with an prior poster. Kundra's credentials, even if not phony, are terribly underwhelming. Why on earth did the Obama administration not choose from among the tens of people in the US who are much more recognized and accomplished ?
- eli 17y ago
  I'm personally pretty indifferent to him, but I know Kundra is well respected here in DC. He did visibly good work with the DC government websites. Check out the list of available data feeds: http://data.octo.dc.gov/ http://data.octo.dc.gov/ Most cities and states still keep this sort of public data in a filing cabinet in the basement. I find it surprising that so many Hacker News readers are focusing on his (lack) of academic degrees rather than his real-world experience.
  - jpwagner 17y ago
    What real-world experience? Wasn't that part of the point? That website is about as ugly as a manatee in fishnet stockings...
    - eli 17y ago
      If the worst thing you can say about a government site is that it looks ugly, that's one hell of a win. I challenge you to find a site for a city, state, or municipal site with more accessible data or more interactive functionality.
      - jpwagner 17y ago
        I can find 100,000 in the private sector. Why the double-standard?
        Poiesis 17y ago
        I work for a defense contractor, so I have some experience here. There are at least two obstacles to making good looking software/sites paid for by the government: 1. Nobody wants to pay for "Looks pretty." You have a list of requirements to satisfy. Each feature costs a certain amount of money. If it comes down to a feature or a pretty UI, it's going to be pretty hard to justify to someone that you spend money making it look good when it otherwise works perfectly well. 2. "Looks pretty" is a testable requirement. Sure, you can have focus groups say what they like (but that costs money, see #1), and you can have requirements like "no functionality shall be more than 2 mouse clicks away from the main screen"--but then you get a screen with 300 buttons on it. There are heuristics you can use to do good design, sure--but there's very few ways to create general, testable requirements that reflect good design. 3. Sometimes there's the problem that the entity paying for the software is not the entity using the software. To clarify: this situation is usually the case, it's just that sometimes the people with the money care about the users, and sometimes they don't or have their own agenda.
bitwize 17y ago
Where was the mainstream media? Where was the right wing media? Those two are different?
- pyre 17y ago
  I think you'll find that a lot of right-wingers call it the 'liberal media' and that a lot of left-wingers call it the 'conservative media' that is 'in bed with the White House.' Which is true? I wonder.
qeorge 17y ago
The potentially bogus credentials are disturbing, but I'm not ready to jump on this ship yet. IMHO, this article is poorly written, and reveals how little the author knows about the subject matter. For instance: "What websites costs $18 million? And that's with no warrantee. The incredibly popular Digg.com, one of the most advanced news gathering sites in the world was initially coded from scratch for between $1200-2500 according to one of its founders." This is a ridiculous comparison. We've already discussed this on Hacker News ad nauseam. Let's wait for more information before jumping to any conclusions.
- batasrki 17y ago
  I agree. Digg may have started with a small amount of money, but they keep raising VC funds, in the millions, to keep it running. This is Dvorak at his best, link-baiting, self.
marcusestes 17y ago
Far too little credit is paid in that article to Mr. Kundra's unsurpassed work to provide the citizens of D.C. with the best public data feeds of any city on the country: http://data.octo.dc.gov/ http://data.octo.dc.gov/ I believe he was hired to manage a similar initiative at the federal level. I heard him speak at a gov 2.0 convention in Portland, OR, and I was deeply impressed with both him and the program.
- deleted 17y ago
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  - Retric 17y ago
    He does have the MS, what else do you want? http://techinsider.nextgov.com/2009/08/on_kundras_college_records.php http://techinsider.nextgov.com/2009/08/on_kundras_college_re...
- luigi 17y ago
  NextGov has called the University of Maryland and verified that he did receive an M.S. in Information Systems Mgmt in 2001: http://techinsider.nextgov.com/2009/08/on_kundras_college_records.php http://techinsider.nextgov.com/2009/08/on_kundras_college_re... Dvorak, on the other hand, appears to have used a website that cost $6.50 as his source (see his screenshots).
  - look_lookatme 17y ago
    Dvorak called the University of Maryland, College Park and they said they had no record of him receiving a degree at there, which is what everyone things of when they read University of Maryland. NextGov confirmed he has an MS at UMUC, which might have a shared history with UMD, but only UMD is allowed to be known as the University of Maryland. This is so obviously a non-story, or at least not worth more than a short, transparency inspired blog post. Of all Dvoraks bonehead stories, this one takes the cake. Still, I'd like to see Kundra's bio updated to reflect the actual university he received that degree from. I would never say I received an MS from the University of Texas, when in fact I received one from some other UT system school, and certainly wouldn't phrase it that way on my .gov bio page.
PonyGumbo 17y ago
If it's true, it's terrible - but I had to laugh when I saw this: "I first suspected something was fishy about this fellow by listening to him on CSPAN where he simply did not sound like someone who studied computers or technology. His common referrals to Twitter and Google Docs as some sort of high-tech breakthroughs and a way to save money and empower the public stemmed from pure cornball pop culture and the blogosphere, not from computer science or Information technology." Ironically, this is exactly how I feel every time I read Dvorak.
- lsb 17y ago
  Luckily, it's not true, as was debunked just a few hours later, and retracted by Mr Dvorak himself!
balding_n_tired 17y ago
Disturbing, but hardly unheard of. Anyone remember the Notre Dame football coach who suddenly resigned when somebody looked closer at this resume? There have been academic administrators in the last couple of years with degrees that didn't really stand up under scrutiny, haven't there?
anigbrowl 17y ago
What surprises me is that when the Obama administration came in it was widely noted for performin background checks which were unprecedentedly strict - 60 page questionnaires and so forth. One wonders whether this level of scrutiny was so time consuming that it was quietly dropped later. It does strike me that since Creostar was involved in cybersecurity and information warfare, its activities might be less public than you would expect - if its primary customers were government intelligence agencies, for example. However, I think it's up to Kundra to clarify that. It'll be interesting to see how this one turns out.
mojonixon 17y ago
There are multiple Univ. of Maryland campuses, so it is quite possible he really does have an MIS. Even still his resume is a bit light. But he's a political appointee. None of them are appointed for their expertise. The head of the EPA was the chief of staff for the New Jersey governor. Appointments are made for political reasons, and not much else. The mark of a good appointment is someone who doesn't get in the way of their career staff.
eli 17y ago
I find it funny that John C Dvorak -- who once famously decried the "System Idle Process" eating up all his CPU time -- is challenging someone else's knowledge of CS and IS.
DanielBMarkham 17y ago
I don't know the particulars of this case, but I can share some things I learned as a freelance writer 20 years ago. It doesn't matter what you know or how good you are: government appointments are done on a "good old boy/girl" basis according to who knows whom. That means that knowing and impressing the right people is much more important than cost savings, innovation, or any of the other things we associate with being somebody in power. There's nothing new or unique about this -- it's been going on since the first time anybody was appointed by anybody else. It IS good, however, to see the tech community working to vet those who claim to have the knowledge to make tech community decisions. I always told people if I had any sense I would have went into politics in my early 20s. With an affable personality and a sharp mind, you can make a lot more bucks than actually having to struggle through forming a startup, and it's a lot more interesting than suffering through a corporate career.
tptacek 17y ago
A CS degree isn't a requirement for most F-500 CIO positions. The CIO of a real company doesn't make low-level technology decisions. A business background is more important for most CIO roles than a computing background. If Kundra lied about his resume, he should resign or be terminated; no question. However, Dvorak's column makes me think he doesn't know what a CIO is.
vaksel 17y ago
Something like this is extremely common. After you get that first job, noone will ever check your credentials. The thing is, noone really remembers college. Well at least I don't. I'm trying to think now, but I can't really remember a single teacher, or a single building off the top of my head. And I only graduated 2 years ago. So you can't really quiz someone on their status, even if you wanted to. And think about this for a moment, pretty much every person who's been exposed like this, was exposed at the national level.
harry 17y ago
I personally work at the University Registrar in a data analysis and records protection postion. Due to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA - http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html) we do not disclose ADHOC queries about "does so and so have a degree from you" without consent from the party or a formal & legaleze "Open Records Request." http://www.provost.ku.edu/policy/updates/open_records_act/ http://www.provost.ku.edu/policy/updates/open_records_act/ There is a considerable amount of effort and time involved in securing an Open Records Request here in Lawrence. The lawyers prevent people from just calling up and say 'hey what is Ex Gov. Sebeilius minor in?' Anyway...
lyime 17y ago
I am pretty sure that the White House guys did due diligence before hiring this guy.
Seiwynd 17y ago
Link to HN item where his degree is verified - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=758840 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=758840
gehant 17y ago
Isolated ignorance is bad enough. Vocal ignorance (or laziness) is dangerous & irresponsible. I guarantee a significant percentage of the US population will take this headline as fact, despite all efforts to refute it in the future.
w1ntermute 17y ago
Turns out Dvorak just made it all up: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=758840 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=758840
deleted 17y ago
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krschultz 17y ago
Flagged as inaccurate, the article has been factually proven wrong, get it off HN http://gigaom.com/2009/08/12/dvorak-raises-doubts-about-us-cio-vivek-kundra/ http://gigaom.com/2009/08/12/dvorak-raises-doubts-about-us-c...
tptacek 17y ago
No.
chrischen 17y ago
You don't need a degree to be a tech wiz...

157 points by chanux 17y ago

luigi 17y ago

How is everyone just accepting that Dvorak is right? This is the same guy who said "[t]here is no likelihood that Apple can be successful in a business this competitive", referring to the mobile phone industry: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-should-pull-the-plug-on-the-iphone http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-should-pull-the-plug-... The same guy who thought that the Windows System Idle Process being at 95% was a bad thing: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000873.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000873.html And predicted that spam will kill wikis: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1835857,00.asp http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1835857,00.asp

krying_krab 17y ago

Now I'm no expert on this but, wouldn't it be a security risk if any old citizen could inquire about the credentials of another person? Recent homegrown terrorists come to mind. That said, he could just be a phony who invented degrees. The White House really should say something about this.

qeorge 17y ago

If this is true (I don't think it is), he apparently duped the University Of Maryland itself: "Kundra holds an undergraduate degree from UM in psychology and a master's of science in information technology." http://www.newsdesk.umd.edu/facts/mm/08-09/mar.cfm http://www.newsdesk.umd.edu/facts/mm/08-09/mar.cfm Took all of 1 minute to find that on Bing: http://www.bing.com/search?q=site%3Aumd.edu+%22vivek+kundra%22&go=&form=QBRE&qs=n http://www.bing.com/search?q=site%3Aumd.edu+%22vivek+kundra%... Can we move on please?

tokenadult 17y ago
That's an interesting clash of sources. The university registrar is the authoritative source on who has a degree. The university news service is a captive journalistic organization--it will be interesting to see if its report rather than Dvorak's is confirmed from the primary sources.
zhyder 17y ago
Your link has "Kundra holds an undergraduate degree from UM in psychology and a master's of science in information technology." Which actually doesn't indicate that the MS in IT was from UM, and hence doesn't clash with Dvorak's post. Edit: Interesting that the Wikipedia page, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivek_Kundra http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivek_Kundra , has already been updated with "claims to hold... but no record" using Dvorak's post as the citation. Should have waited a few days to see how this gets resolved or at least backed up by more journalists.
jdminhbg 17y ago
We should move on because the U of MD PR office didn't fact-check his degree in putting out a press release?

tokenadult 17y ago

"This is the sort of question you might ask after trying to actually verify his supposed MS in Information Technology from the University of Maryland, College Park campus. The registrar has no record of it. "I have already queried the White House concerning this and have heard nothing back." Wow. This looks like a total muff in checking the background of quite an important (supposedly) government official. How many more errors of background checking like that have happened?

jpwagner 17y ago
Multiple appointments had tax evasion issues. This type of thing seems fairly common, which is of course horrifying.
- eli 17y ago
  They weren't especially serious lapses, if I recall. I think it's that a large number of people have, at some point in their life, fudged on their taxes. I'm not sure we should be surprised that this is the case in a few appointments out of hundreds.
  - jpwagner 17y ago
    Daschle paid $140,000 in back taxes and resigned. Geithner did not pay $34,000. Killefer seemed to have a reasonable mistake. We all probably screw up our calculations, tax code is a mess, but 10's of thousands (by an individual) is likely not an honest mistake.
    - eli 17y ago
      I suggest you look into the details. They all seem like mistakes I could have made by accident. And, like I said, lots of people fudge their taxes a little. Not outright fraud, but maybe not declaring something if they aren't sure if it's taxable or not. Daschle's main problem is that he did not declare as income the limo and driver that was provided to him by the company he was consulting for. It's not like he was laundering money through shell companies in Antigua.

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brown9-2 17y ago

Is it really possible for a regular citizen to check with a university to find out what degree(s) someone has been awarded, or even their attendence record? Is this something a registrar will divulge to just anyone? Or do the screenshots of the University of Maryland's registration application imply that someone on the inside checked into this for Dvorak?

RK 17y ago
Usually it's very difficult to get a university to confirm if someone is a current student (of course it's often easy to just look in the online directory). For graduation lists, usually the student has to explicitly opt out of having their name included.
xlamnfoqp 17y ago
anyone can check degrees with just a phone call, try it out right now
dschobel 17y ago
Universities publish degree announcements by the tens of thousands for commencement and often on their websites so I don't think it's a closely-held secret.
- tokenadult 17y ago
  Yes, universities make this information easy to check, because not exposing liars about degrees damages the value of each degree.
patio11 17y ago
The National Student Clearinghouse collects this information and makes it available to anyone with a credit card about about $5 ~ $8 to spend. http://www.studentclearinghouse.org/secure_area/DegreeVerify/dv_ParticipatingSchools.asp http://www.studentclearinghouse.org/secure_area/DegreeVerify...
- eli 17y ago

dschobel 17y ago

With the amount of legit tech people in Obama's orbit this is seriously disappointing. Even if his credentials are authentic (TBD!), they're really underwhelming.

raheemm 17y ago

These are really troubling assertions. However, I went over and took a look at data.gov, which is the first project under the fed CTO's office and it is really impressive. I am troubled and impressed. Regardless, Vivek Kundra should address the points brought up in this blog.

edw519 17y ago

I have mixed feelings upon reading this. On one hand I want to say Thank you, John, for the kind of muchraking we need now more than ever. I sure hope this goes somewhere. On the other hand, I have no problem busting my butt for thousands in hopes of millions. Until I realize how dishonest posers steal the key to billions without doing any work at all. Knowing that this sort of thing goes on all the time doesn't diminish the anger that comes from reading about it.

luigi 17y ago
Why do you trust Dvorak on this? He said that cable modems would never happen: http://web.archive.org/web/19970415081814/http://www.pcmag.com/issues/1415/pcm00059.htm http://web.archive.org/web/19970415081814/http://www.pcmag.c... He doesn't understand what the System Idle Process is: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000873.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000873.html Why do you believe Dvorak but not the guy who was vetted by a presidential administration?
- jdminhbg 17y ago
  I'm not really sure what the System Idle Process has to do with made-up degrees and companies.
  - eli 17y ago
    Well if you're going to complain that a guy "[does] not sound like someone who studied computers or technology" it would be more convincing if there weren't several well-known instances of you demonstrating a lack of knowledge of computers and technology.
    - plinkplonk 17y ago
      "Well if you're going to complain that a guy "[does] not sound like someone who studied computers or technology" it would be more convincing if there weren't several well-known instances of you demonstrating a lack of knowledge of computers and technology." but that is not the real "complaint". Dvorak just says that led him to dig deeper. The accusation (or "complaint"if you will) is that Kundra fudged his credentials. It doesn't matter how technical Dvorak is for the truth or falsity of that statement. Attack the accusation (which is very specific and can be easily disproved) not the accuser.

socratees 17y ago

Vivek Kundra should definitively address these allegations.

kakal 17y ago

I agree with an prior poster. Kundra's credentials, even if not phony, are terribly underwhelming. Why on earth did the Obama administration not choose from among the tens of people in the US who are much more recognized and accomplished ?

eli 17y ago
I'm personally pretty indifferent to him, but I know Kundra is well respected here in DC. He did visibly good work with the DC government websites. Check out the list of available data feeds: http://data.octo.dc.gov/ http://data.octo.dc.gov/ Most cities and states still keep this sort of public data in a filing cabinet in the basement. I find it surprising that so many Hacker News readers are focusing on his (lack) of academic degrees rather than his real-world experience.
- jpwagner 17y ago
  What real-world experience? Wasn't that part of the point? That website is about as ugly as a manatee in fishnet stockings...
  - eli 17y ago
    If the worst thing you can say about a government site is that it looks ugly, that's one hell of a win. I challenge you to find a site for a city, state, or municipal site with more accessible data or more interactive functionality.
    - jpwagner 17y ago
      I can find 100,000 in the private sector. Why the double-standard?
      - Poiesis 17y ago
        I work for a defense contractor, so I have some experience here. There are at least two obstacles to making good looking software/sites paid for by the government: 1. Nobody wants to pay for "Looks pretty." You have a list of requirements to satisfy. Each feature costs a certain amount of money. If it comes down to a feature or a pretty UI, it's going to be pretty hard to justify to someone that you spend money making it look good when it otherwise works perfectly well. 2. "Looks pretty" is a testable requirement. Sure, you can have focus groups say what they like (but that costs money, see #1), and you can have requirements like "no functionality shall be more than 2 mouse clicks away from the main screen"--but then you get a screen with 300 buttons on it. There are heuristics you can use to do good design, sure--but there's very few ways to create general, testable requirements that reflect good design. 3. Sometimes there's the problem that the entity paying for the software is not the entity using the software. To clarify: this situation is usually the case, it's just that sometimes the people with the money care about the users, and sometimes they don't or have their own agenda.

bitwize 17y ago

Where was the mainstream media? Where was the right wing media? Those two are different?

pyre 17y ago
I think you'll find that a lot of right-wingers call it the 'liberal media' and that a lot of left-wingers call it the 'conservative media' that is 'in bed with the White House.' Which is true? I wonder.

qeorge 17y ago

The potentially bogus credentials are disturbing, but I'm not ready to jump on this ship yet. IMHO, this article is poorly written, and reveals how little the author knows about the subject matter. For instance: "What websites costs $18 million? And that's with no warrantee. The incredibly popular Digg.com, one of the most advanced news gathering sites in the world was initially coded from scratch for between $1200-2500 according to one of its founders." This is a ridiculous comparison. We've already discussed this on Hacker News ad nauseam. Let's wait for more information before jumping to any conclusions.

batasrki 17y ago
I agree. Digg may have started with a small amount of money, but they keep raising VC funds, in the millions, to keep it running. This is Dvorak at his best, link-baiting, self.

marcusestes 17y ago

Far too little credit is paid in that article to Mr. Kundra's unsurpassed work to provide the citizens of D.C. with the best public data feeds of any city on the country: http://data.octo.dc.gov/ http://data.octo.dc.gov/ I believe he was hired to manage a similar initiative at the federal level. I heard him speak at a gov 2.0 convention in Portland, OR, and I was deeply impressed with both him and the program.

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- Retric 17y ago
  He does have the MS, what else do you want? http://techinsider.nextgov.com/2009/08/on_kundras_college_records.php http://techinsider.nextgov.com/2009/08/on_kundras_college_re...
luigi 17y ago
NextGov has called the University of Maryland and verified that he did receive an M.S. in Information Systems Mgmt in 2001: http://techinsider.nextgov.com/2009/08/on_kundras_college_records.php http://techinsider.nextgov.com/2009/08/on_kundras_college_re... Dvorak, on the other hand, appears to have used a website that cost $6.50 as his source (see his screenshots).
- look_lookatme 17y ago
  Dvorak called the University of Maryland, College Park and they said they had no record of him receiving a degree at there, which is what everyone things of when they read University of Maryland. NextGov confirmed he has an MS at UMUC, which might have a shared history with UMD, but only UMD is allowed to be known as the University of Maryland. This is so obviously a non-story, or at least not worth more than a short, transparency inspired blog post. Of all Dvoraks bonehead stories, this one takes the cake. Still, I'd like to see Kundra's bio updated to reflect the actual university he received that degree from. I would never say I received an MS from the University of Texas, when in fact I received one from some other UT system school, and certainly wouldn't phrase it that way on my .gov bio page.

PonyGumbo 17y ago

If it's true, it's terrible - but I had to laugh when I saw this: "I first suspected something was fishy about this fellow by listening to him on CSPAN where he simply did not sound like someone who studied computers or technology. His common referrals to Twitter and Google Docs as some sort of high-tech breakthroughs and a way to save money and empower the public stemmed from pure cornball pop culture and the blogosphere, not from computer science or Information technology." Ironically, this is exactly how I feel every time I read Dvorak.

lsb 17y ago
Luckily, it's not true, as was debunked just a few hours later, and retracted by Mr Dvorak himself!

balding_n_tired 17y ago

Disturbing, but hardly unheard of. Anyone remember the Notre Dame football coach who suddenly resigned when somebody looked closer at this resume? There have been academic administrators in the last couple of years with degrees that didn't really stand up under scrutiny, haven't there?

anigbrowl 17y ago

What surprises me is that when the Obama administration came in it was widely noted for performin background checks which were unprecedentedly strict - 60 page questionnaires and so forth. One wonders whether this level of scrutiny was so time consuming that it was quietly dropped later. It does strike me that since Creostar was involved in cybersecurity and information warfare, its activities might be less public than you would expect - if its primary customers were government intelligence agencies, for example. However, I think it's up to Kundra to clarify that. It'll be interesting to see how this one turns out.

mojonixon 17y ago

There are multiple Univ. of Maryland campuses, so it is quite possible he really does have an MIS. Even still his resume is a bit light. But he's a political appointee. None of them are appointed for their expertise. The head of the EPA was the chief of staff for the New Jersey governor. Appointments are made for political reasons, and not much else. The mark of a good appointment is someone who doesn't get in the way of their career staff.

eli 17y ago

I find it funny that John C Dvorak -- who once famously decried the "System Idle Process" eating up all his CPU time -- is challenging someone else's knowledge of CS and IS.

DanielBMarkham 17y ago

I don't know the particulars of this case, but I can share some things I learned as a freelance writer 20 years ago. It doesn't matter what you know or how good you are: government appointments are done on a "good old boy/girl" basis according to who knows whom. That means that knowing and impressing the right people is much more important than cost savings, innovation, or any of the other things we associate with being somebody in power. There's nothing new or unique about this -- it's been going on since the first time anybody was appointed by anybody else. It IS good, however, to see the tech community working to vet those who claim to have the knowledge to make tech community decisions. I always told people if I had any sense I would have went into politics in my early 20s. With an affable personality and a sharp mind, you can make a lot more bucks than actually having to struggle through forming a startup, and it's a lot more interesting than suffering through a corporate career.

tptacek 17y ago

A CS degree isn't a requirement for most F-500 CIO positions. The CIO of a real company doesn't make low-level technology decisions. A business background is more important for most CIO roles than a computing background. If Kundra lied about his resume, he should resign or be terminated; no question. However, Dvorak's column makes me think he doesn't know what a CIO is.

vaksel 17y ago

Something like this is extremely common. After you get that first job, noone will ever check your credentials. The thing is, noone really remembers college. Well at least I don't. I'm trying to think now, but I can't really remember a single teacher, or a single building off the top of my head. And I only graduated 2 years ago. So you can't really quiz someone on their status, even if you wanted to. And think about this for a moment, pretty much every person who's been exposed like this, was exposed at the national level.

harry 17y ago

I personally work at the University Registrar in a data analysis and records protection postion. Due to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA - http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html) we do not disclose ADHOC queries about "does so and so have a degree from you" without consent from the party or a formal & legaleze "Open Records Request." http://www.provost.ku.edu/policy/updates/open_records_act/ http://www.provost.ku.edu/policy/updates/open_records_act/ There is a considerable amount of effort and time involved in securing an Open Records Request here in Lawrence. The lawyers prevent people from just calling up and say 'hey what is Ex Gov. Sebeilius minor in?' Anyway...

lyime 17y ago

I am pretty sure that the White House guys did due diligence before hiring this guy.

Seiwynd 17y ago

Link to HN item where his degree is verified - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=758840 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=758840

gehant 17y ago

Isolated ignorance is bad enough. Vocal ignorance (or laziness) is dangerous & irresponsible. I guarantee a significant percentage of the US population will take this headline as fact, despite all efforts to refute it in the future.

w1ntermute 17y ago

Turns out Dvorak just made it all up: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=758840 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=758840

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krschultz 17y ago

Flagged as inaccurate, the article has been factually proven wrong, get it off HN http://gigaom.com/2009/08/12/dvorak-raises-doubts-about-us-cio-vivek-kundra/ http://gigaom.com/2009/08/12/dvorak-raises-doubts-about-us-c...

tptacek 17y ago

No.

chrischen 17y ago

You don't need a degree to be a tech wiz...