Obama’s Chief Information Officer Kundra to Leave Post in August

Vivek Kundra, the U.S. chief information officer who helped lead a government shift to Internet-based technology, is leaving the Obama administration in mid-August for a Harvard University fellowship, the White House said.

Kundra was named by President Barack Obama in March 2009 as the first-ever federal chief information officer with a mandate to oversee about $80 billion the government spends each year on information technology. The post put him in charge of the Office of Management and Budget’s e-government initiatives, where he worked with government agencies to improve computer systems and make more information available on the Internet.