Cspan, created by americas cae companies in 1979, brought to you as a Public Service by your television provider. Host steven ran roque l, what is a u. S. Chief Information Officer do . Guest well, the u. S. Chief Information Officer wears a few hats. One is sets the budget for the technology span of the executive branch, so it covers all the agencies of government and the department of defense to think about and form late the president s budget every year and do that. The second thing is through the egovernment act that we have in the u. S. , the u. S. Chief Information Officer has the ability to set policy, Statutory Authority to set policy government wide with. So thinking about, you know, visionary view of Technology Use in government and driving that forward as part of the, part of the, what we do. And then the third is and this is really under this administration the u. S. Chief Information Officer, a title and role created by president obama acts as an adviser to the president and the administration on the use of technology, the smart spend on Technology Driving both efficiency and effectiveness of technology in a 21st century government. Host how big is the Technology Budget for the u. S. Government . Guest its around 80 billion a year, and that ebbs and flows depending on the day, but its roughly stayed the same. Prior to 2009 that budget was growing about 7 a year. In this administration we flatlined the spend and have been able to innovate with less and drive Technology Forward on a flatter, in some cases, declining budget. Host how coordinated is the technology amongst the various agencies and cabinets . Guest its coordinated in some ways, many some ways its not coordinated, and thats part of the work we bring. I think if you look at our use of Cybersecurity Technology and how we share information around threats and things that are happening both inside and outside of government, thats something we are highly coordinated on. Where you tend to not see coordination is really where technology has grown up, and you see this as well in the private sector where agencies will, because of the nature of both appropriations and just history, have deployed technology in disparate ways, in duplicate ways where, you know, a Single Agency will be running more than one email system, something thats now unthinkable in the private sector. Theyll do things in a very disconnected way. So part of what we do and we bring both on the budget front and the ideology we bring to federal i. T. , its about lets do things once and often. Lets drive efficiency into every corner, fully taking advantage of what technology can bring to the game. Host how did you get into this position . Guest well, i have a long history in the private sector. When i left college in the early 90s, i joined what was then sort of a scrappy startup called microsoft and spent my entire private sector career there. Nearly 20 years there and some other jobs that i did in college. Host doing what . Guest i started in, kind of on the Corporate Support side thinking about how do you support large corporations and their use of technology. Back then there werent a lot of products to support. There was windows, and office was just starting to emerge as a product. I eventually spent quite a bit of time as bill gates assistant doing some speech writing more him, some strategy work and other things. Then i went on to lead an effort to think about Internet Technologies across, across the industry. Some of that now what we take for granted as we use the internet and use a lot of modern ecommerce systems and things. And then i, the last job i had was a part of the servant Tools Division at microsoft which is now the second Largest Division within the company. Host and goth service . Guest joined the Obama Administration in 2009, first as managing director of the federal Communications Commission. Did that for two years. I then spent a her while i was with transitioning into the executive branch at the u. S. Agency for International Development helping administrator shaw think about technology and Global Development and the overlap of those two things, which theres a very important overlap. And then in august of 2011, joined the team at the white house as u. S. Chief Information Officer, the second u. S. Chief Information Officer in the history of the country. Host well, joining us to talk about some of the issues that the chief Information Officer faces is Jessica Meyers of politico. And youve been a devoted advocate of open data, the desire to make information transparent and accessible, and youve discussed its ability to decrease cost and inefficiencies, but what benefit does this have for the vast majority of americans . How is this helpful for more than a few people that want to know how health care is cheaper in missouri than kansas . Guest right. The example i love to contemplate is the most, for most americans what is their most expensive purchase of their life, which is their first home. If you think about what is society, what do the internet and systems today give us on the purchase of your first home, and you can certainly know from the multiple Listing Service where is the location of the home, how many bathrooms, how many bedrooms, whats the rooftop position, those sort of things. And if you think about that set of information for this very important decision you have to make in this life and then think about what government could bring to that, interesting notions start to emerge which is, you know, if i was buying my first home understood and is there an organic farm within 25 miles of this home, or is it in a food desert, whats the air quality, whats the water quality, what do Crime Statistics look like, whats the quality of education, mass transportation, what investments have been made in this area, what is the quality of health care, things like that, what are the broadband capabilities at this home . All of the things i just mentioned are data that the government holds that belong to the people. And if you unlock that data, if you are able to bring that to that equation, you could fundamentally not only change the valuation of homes, but really enrich the experience, i think, for people to make very, very important decisions about their future and what it holds. I would pick a house based on broadband capabilities over rooftop position any day of the week. I think we could bring this to bear in an important way. There are other examples that extend into all of those areas, energy, health, the skys the limit on what the value, i think, Government Data could bring to the average american. The other part of this is that by unlocking this data, by creating and opening this data, you suddenly create opportunity for private sector innovators and entrepreneurs to create new Business Models based on the data. So jobs of the future. You know, steel factories are going to convert into day factories as we think about the future of this country and where jobs get created, the value that can be created for the average american can extend into creating jobs and economic value. How do you reconcile this, these opportunities for all of this open, transparent data and allegations that the government is too secretive with some of the data it collects . Guest well, you know, the key tenet of all of our work here is really two major things. One is the administration is very much, you know, very focused on protecting americans and the american way of life, and there are certain, you know, certain aspects of that that are about confidentiality, privacy and other things. The second part of it is as we move forward and if you were to read our open data executive order, the open data policy that i issued in may and other things, that policy begins and ends talking about privacy, confidentiality and the importance of making sure that we not only protect, you know, national information, but also and more importantly protect the private and confidential information of the american. And so insuring that we are keeping peoples Information Safe and secure is of utmost importance. And so part of the motion in this policy is that as we have ordered agencies to make data open and machine readable and interoperable, it doesnt always imply public, but we want them to take these 21st century approaches to the way we treat data. Weve ordered modified existing investments. Part of the challenge you may have on certain information, we have Tax Information or Health Information or other things that the goth may hold the government may hold is that the way we collected that in the past by its inherent collection was secure and kept confidential, just the fact that you filled out a paper form can that forms inside a building behind layers of physical security, in the 21st century that changes because of electronic transfer. So making sure we are cognizant of safety and security is key here. And when were talking about funding for all of these efforts, talk about sequestration. How what does sequestration mean for the i. T. Budget . The government has done a lot to try to squeeze savings with data Consolidation Centers and migrations to the cloud, but what is the future for i. T. Spending, and how is this going to work with the adoption of new technologies given our fiscal constraints . Guest well, sequestration makes everything more difficult. Just the blunt instrument nature of the cuts are not a way you would run a private Sector Company effectively even though, you know, when i was in the Server Division and we were growing that division, you know, in doubledigit percentages quarter after quarter for 26 consecutive quarters, we never raised the budget. We kept things on a flat or declining. And the notion of the private sector is keep costs low, keep profits high, and the way you run government should be similar. How do we contain costs, how do we live within a flatter, declining budget, and you cut and invest. You think about where do you find savings and how do you reinvest those savings. An argument can be made that we need to do acrosstheboard cuts, we need to look at declining budgets and drive that forward. Technologys a little bit different in that in an investment in technology often gives you efficiencies that go beyond the actual investment in the technology. If you go and look at the history of this country, over 50 of the fortune 500 were founded in the worse Economic Times in our countrys history, and if you trace those back, my alma mater of microsoft, ibm, procter gamble, the list goes on of Great American companies, often times you can directly tie it to inflections in technology. Those companies took advantage of some technology at some certain time in our history to do things better, faster and cheaper. And i think we as a government have an opportunity, if we invest in technology in smart ways and effective ways, that we can drive both efficiency and effectiveness into the equation of what, how we run the government. And were definitely seeing that. So its a little counterintuitive. While were cutting, we need to invest. Guest thats right. Host Steven Vanroekel, when people visit government web sites, are they tracks as we often are on private web sites . Guest not at the individual level. So something we do, we do get analytics from people that visit government web sites to know what part of the country are they coming from. We cant tie it to individual houses or anything like that. But it might be interesting to know that, you know, some issue is emerging in some part of the country where people are navigating the web or to know that when certain people come online, when theyre looking for something, that theres other information that they are maybe looking for. And from a Customer Service standpoint, you know, we need to take, i think, a onegovernment approach to think about how would we run government like a private Sector Company to best serve our citizens. So were looking at Technology Using the data that we get thats abstracted out so we cant tell actually who individually is doing anything. Taking that information and then really tying it to our Customer Service motions. If youre an american thats maybe going up and changing your name for some reason, youre married or some life circumstances come along that youre changing your name, you will want to do that on the Social Security web site. Well, the government web should be aware that youre there visiting that page and present to you the passport page to go change your name or the tax page to change your name and things like that and start to look at government as a service center. So weve kicked off initiatives like the president ial innovation fellows to bring in private sector entrepreneurs and innovators to work within the goth to think about 21st century ways for things like that. One of the things theyve worked on is my usa which is aimed directly at doing what i just described, thinking about the overlay of how government information relates to each other. So its important for us to get data to understand how people are using the web to best serve the americans. Host how much of the information that the federal government maintains is in the cloud now . Guest thats a we have a Broad Perspective on that. There is no direct way that we track the Cloud Computing infrastructure. Cloud computing providers in the United States are well over 6080 of the capability for the entire world. And so we know, you know, as an american motion this is something we do. We know that when investing in new technology, weve order toed Government Agencies to consider Cloud Computing first. We tend to find Cloud Computing as much as 3050 cheaper, it also shifts you into a mode of spending not in an assetbased way, but more of a subscriptiontype way where youre spreading your payments out which is a more palatable way to pay for things in the context of federal budgeting. So were encouraging people to make this motion and doing mechanisms and programs to make sure that information that goes to the cloud is safe and secure, something that i launched call fed ramp, the federal risk authorization and Management Program that has now fined the Cloud Computing for defined Cloud Computing for our country at lower costs with higher levels of security and predictability. So were excited about Cloud Computing and where thats going. How fast are hose Cloud Computing contracts growing . The federal program is a rigorous process by which we can ask, we set out a long list of security requirements for the, for private sector providers to satisfy. Once theyve satisfied those and they go through an Authorization Board to do so, theyre then put on a list, and those are the door for that opened up just this summer. And i think were at about six or eight contracts that have made it through right now. And these are major providers, hp, amazon. Com, others are now in the fedram pipeline and able to provide Cloud Computing services. So by a lot of these providers, were covering a lot of the water front as far as the marketplace, and thats only going to grow. Its every few weeks to a month or so were starting to get more providers in, and we have a long pipeline thats waiting to make it through the process. Were excited about that. On the topic of clouds, will the news about the nsas involvement with Tech Companies collection of data, will that hurt u. S. Businesses that want to sell their Cloud Computing services to European Companies and the government . Guest i think, you know, the way that we approach Cloud Computing and, you know, my focus is much more on the federal network, how were running the federal computing inside the executive branch and all of that, so im not the resident expert on the overlay you do have some experience. Guest for sure, i do. But its not my wheelhouse from a statutory standpoint. I think the, you know, we have to have safeguards in place as we work with these private Sector Companies to define the way they do Cloud Computing. What weve done is largely defined a spectrum of type of scenarios that go into Cloud Computing, everything from things like web sites that we find being replicated around the world to the most secure information that should run on u