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:
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.
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.
I don't want to get into Mr. Kundra and his abilites or whatnot, but do you actually know people that have had to deal with the city of Washington DC's bureaucracy? It's not a pretty sight. I can say that the folks I know say he didn't make things much better than when he started.
...but do you actually know people that have had to deal with the city of Washington DC's bureaucracy?
Yes. My customer went out of business when the city of Washington, D.C. would not pay its 7 figure 180 day late bill. Their biggest mistake? Letting one deadbeat customer get too big.
I've always thought that if you really wanted to learn politics, take a look at these vendors who deal with government agencies all day long.
They make the average nationally-known slippery politician look like amateur night.
It's simply a survival skill at that level. Bunch of guys from one party in charge? You're their guy: you know all the people they do, you contribute to the right causes, you feel their pain, you attend all the social functions they do, etc.
Next party come to power? Hey -- you're their guy: you know all the people they do, you contribute to the right causes, etc.
And then there's the hands-on politicking you have to do in order to get contracts and payments and such. The guys that do that have a special kind of magic that the rest of us can only hope to have.
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.