No Consultants

How many CIOs have said they don’t need consultants for big projects? [SFX: crickets] I thought so.

President Obama’s newly-named Federal CIO, Vivek Kundra, said just that:

Whether it’s to serve the public or government employees, Kundra said federal agencies should be embracing off-the-shelf technologies and formats like cloud computing that are ubiquitous in the private sector.

“You don’t need to hire consultants to build out all this infrastructure,” he said. “You just leverage what’s on the cloud itself, yet in the federal government, we don’t have a single platform that allows us to do that.”

Using off-the-shelf, as well as open-source technologies, Kundra said, could result in significant savings for the federal government, which typically spends about $71 billion in IT purchases.

“One of the biggest ticket items in that $71 billion is the money the federal government spends on contracts, some that, frankly, haven’t performed very well, and there haven’t been consequences,” he said.

Consultants may do a good job for you, but where are they two years after the project’s done? Do it yourself: you’ll learn it better.

Take a look at how he used Googe Apps in this video:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JZus5bvC3M]

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