Time For The Second Federal CIO

A week ago today, I wrote:

No matter what your political persuasion, if you're an IT professional you have to feel good about President Obama appointing the first federal chief information officer.

Today, not so much. As most of you probably have read, the FBI Thursday morning raided the former offices of new federal CIO Vivek Kundra, who recently left his post as chief technology officer for the District of Columbia. The action was part of an investigation into bribery charges and resulted in the arrests of the district's IT security chief and the chief executive of an outside contractor.

Kundra reportedly is not a target of the investigation, but took a leave of absence from his week-old job while the investigation continues.

I don't think that's good enough. If the White House is serious about rekindling trust in the federal government, you can't allow the first federal CIO to have a giant cloud of corruption over his head. Further, we don't know what's coming down the road.

In addition, it calls into question Kundra's vaunted management expertise. The head of IT security for the district isn't some low-level, obscure worker far removed from the CTO in the chain of command. In this detailed Washington Post article, Yusuf Acar is described as a "mid-level" employee -- one of 50 managers in a department of 300 employees -- but he had enough power to approve sizeable contracts and has been working in the department since 2004. So maybe Acar wasn't second in command, but Kundra certainly must have known him fairly well. Or maybe not.

The article also says Acar told an informant he could use department computers to make bogus D.C. birth certificates and allegedly approved fraudulent time sheets for non-existent employees. Lovely.

All this bribing and kickbacking had been going on since as far back as 2006, according to the FBI. And while these are only charges right now, the informant was wired during meetings and his phone tapped during conversations with Acar. Doesn't bode well.

This is a big country with a lot of high-level talent. The Obama Administration is best off looking elsewhere for a federal CIO. In my view this one already is too tainted.