Steven VanRoekel hopes to cut tech costs

Steven VanRoekel starts his new job as the federal chief information officer on August 5, hoping to launch the next phase of technology cost-cutting efforts at the White House.

VanRoekel will replace Vivek Kundra, the first CIO who will leave the White House Aug. 12. “Rarely do you get to take over in a place where so much good work has been done and so much momentum is already established with teams charging ahead at full steam,” VanRoekel said just after the White House announced his appointment. VanRoekel will continue Kundra’s agenda of eliminating waste in bloated information technology projects, move agencies to cloud computing technologies and make the government more transparent using Web-based and crowd-sourced tools. VanRoekel will inherit oversight of roughly $80 billion in federal IT spending.