Is US Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra a Phony?
dvorak.org
dvorak.org
"I first suspected something was fishy about this fellow by listening to him on CSPAN where he simply did not sound like someone who studied computers or technology. His common referrals to Twitter and Google Docs as some sort of high-tech breakthroughs and a way to save money and empower the public stemmed from pure cornball pop culture and the blogosphere, not from computer science or Information technology."
Ironically, this is exactly how I feel every time I read Dvorak.
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.
http://techinsider.nextgov.com/2009/08/on_kundras_college_re...
Dvorak, on the other hand, appears to have used a website that cost $6.50 as his source (see his screenshots).
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.
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.
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.
"I have already queried the White House concerning this and have heard nothing back."
Wow. This looks like a total muff in checking the background of quite an important (supposedly) government official. How many more errors of background checking like that have happened?
I think it's that a large number of people have, at some point in their life, fudged on their taxes. I'm not sure we should be surprised that this is the case in a few appointments out of hundreds.
Geithner did not pay $34,000.
Killefer seemed to have a reasonable mistake.
We all probably screw up our calculations, tax code is a mess, but 10's of thousands (by an individual) is likely not an honest mistake.
Daschle's main problem is that he did not declare as income the limo and driver that was provided to him by the company he was consulting for. It's not like he was laundering money through shell companies in Antigua.
There's no dispute. He was given an explicit and extra reimbursement for SS. He signed a letter every year acknowledging receipt of that money and that he owed the money.
And no, he wasn't "liable for more taxes than a normal person". For some reason, the IMF treats its senior staff as self-employed and all self-employed people pay both halves of SS in the US.
And, he had the penalties waived.
And, if he hadn't been nominated, he'd have never paid. He said as much during his confirmation hearings.
By "more liable than a normal person", I chose a confusing set of words to make the point that Geithner's tax situation was more confusing than my mom's: he was effectively self-employed, even though he held a long-term salaried full-time job.
As a businessperson paid in LLC distributions instead of W2 wages, I'm sympathetic to the complexity of self-employment tax. When you fail to pay taxes on time, you aren't a criminal. You simply incur interest and (in some cases) penalties. Penalties are frequently waived.
Like many other entrepreneurs I know, I'm also very sympathetic to the idea of not paying taxes until you have to.
Geithner didn't attempt to hide his tax liability. It was in plain sight. When it became more troublesome to avoid paying taxes than to square up, he simply paid them. I don't understand the political drama behind this. Geithner simply wasn't a tax cheat.
No, there wasn't any dispute. Someone has to pay SS taxes on earned income. US employers can be forced to pay half and deduct the other half. The IMF thinks that it is exempt from following US law wrt withholding, but that doesn't eliminate the requirement.
More to the point, the IMF GAVE Geitner money specifically to pay these taxes AND had him sign a form saying that the taxes were his responsibility. IMF's position was that they weren't responsible for withholding, not that the taxes weren't owed.
> Geithner didn't attempt to hide his tax liability. It was in plain sight. When it became more troublesome to avoid paying taxes than to square up, he simply paid them. I don't understand the political drama behind this. Geithner simply wasn't a tax cheat.
Almost every "forgot to pay" person meets that template, and we call them tax cheats.
Except that Geitner wasn't an "entrepreneur", he was supposedly a public servant.
The Treasury department includes the IRS. You remember them - they're in charge of enforcing "voluntary" compliance.
As to "it's too complicated", he's supposed to be smart guy. They even told him the rules AND he signed documents yearly acknowledging that he understood those rules AND he accepted money to pay these taxes.
Help me understand you, Andy. What are you getting at? That he owed back-taxes? I agree. He was given extra money at the time he incurred the taxes to cover the taxes. Agreed completely. Tim Geithner owed back-taxes.
Lots of people owe back-taxes. Plenty of Republican businesspeople think its their moral duty not to pay taxes as long as possible.
You're a tax cheat when you reorganize yourself as a shell S-Corporation, claim that a reasonable annual salary is $5,000, and then take your entire annual income as a distribution. Thousands of people do this, most will never get caught.
I have a hard time believing that simply not paying what you owe, or even filing an incorrect tax return, makes you a "cheat". Lots of people get audited. Many of them will owe. Most of those people are not cheaters.
You keep "forgeting" the part where he was told what that money was for.
And yes, someone who can't manage to do their taxes shouldn't be in charge of the IRS. Other jobs maybe, but the IRS, nope.
Daschle's mistake was in not reporting a free car/driver as a gift (and hence not paying taxes on the value). There's a whole other conversation to be had about the culture of ex-Senators getting free stuff from rich friends "out of the goodness of their hearts", but it's not like the guy just decided not to pay a bunch of taxes.
Geithner screwed up by not paying his own SS/Medicare taxes while he worked at the IMF. The wrinkle is that unlike most private-sector or government jobs (which is where he was before and after his time at the IMF), international organizations (or at least those) don't do automatic payroll deduction of those specific taxes, so you have to deal with it yourself. Again, not a super-common situation.
So, yeah, these guys screwed up, were in positions where they should have known better, and it's fair to hold them accountable. But it's a little unfair to suggest that they were acting in bad faith when I'm not sure that I at least would know the arcana of those rules off the top of my head (though it makes a fabulous argument for simplifying the tax code...)
To look at it another way: Daschle underpaid by $140K while making millions, knowing full well that he may want to get back into government (which would involve vetting). Is it more likely that he: a) was knowingly risking his future career by not reporting the car service that he knew was a reportable gift; or b) being blissfully ignorant of how those rules worked?
But I do think it's fair to be worried that cabinet members are "blissfully ignorant" about other matters if they are about their own careers and matters with severe punishments.
Not paying taxes on time simply isn't a crime. We have an entire IRS with bookcases full of regulations dedicated to handling situations where people dispute or are delinquent with their taxes. In both the Geithner and the Daschle cases, the system worked: they paid their taxes and the interest they owed on them.
Let's be clear how big this particular one is.
If you take any user on HN, and send an 2 or 3 IRS accountants pouring over their tax records for 3 or 4 weeks, they will turn up something. So tax issues I can see, if they were mistakes, and the person owns up to them and pays the back due taxes. That is the kind of investigation you WANT your public officials to undergo. And yes, given a byzantine tax regime, mistakes SHOULD be common. In fact, the guy to look closer at is the one who has 30 years worth of perfect tax paperwork.
This is a different thing altogether. It SEEMS . . . I'm not saying this is the case . . . but it SEEMS that these guys were not even checked out. That, in my view, should be actionable. Why were they put in their positions, leadership ability? intelligence? because they are minorities? what?
At the end of the day, it doesn't matter, because the inconsistencies outlined in the article are of the sort that lead reasonable men to question a candidates integrity. I have no problem giving a guy a shot in my company if he only has a high school diploma. Got a criminal record and you're trying to get your life back on track? Hell, let's see if we can help each other. But I will not countenance a liar, no matter how well qualified.
Consider that if they are liars, then these two are supremely unqualified. My decision becomes easy . . . IF they are liars. Which I am not prepared to say they are on the basis of this article alone.
As an aside, I would like to address the whole issue brought up in the article's comments of academic credential exaggeration being a 'cultural' issue in India.
That's fine, but this is the United States. As a younger man I attended lots of government sponsored "leadership" courses in the armpit of the East Coast, a place called Quantico. The first time I ever went to Quantico was for Platoon Leader's Class for the United States Marine Corps. I learned the first day about what was expected of me as a leader in the United States. ANY integrity violation, (lie, cheat, or steal), and you would be gone. But nothing else could get you thrown out! Yep, that drunken brawl with those Navy Academy pricks at the bar in DC, not a problem. Just don't lie about it. Was that you at that strip club during last weekend's leave? Yes Sgt. Instructor, but did you see the girl? Just don't lie. Point of the story, they didn't make exception for the Japanese guys, or the black guys, or the latinos because of any "cultural issues" those guys may have had. Enough said on that I think.
Just to make it clear, this is not an accepted cultural norm in India. There was no "issue" brought up in the comments. Some jackass claimed this was a "cultural issue" in India.
Is it a problem? Sure. Getting degree confirmation data out of a university is still a very painful process and can take weeks if not months. Some companies don't bother and some people do take advantage. If any half way decent company finds out that an employee lied on his records, the employee is fired immediately. Almost every company in India((Infosys, TCS, Wipro whoever)) takes great pains to verify the credentials of its employees. Over time the Universities have gotten better at setting up systems to help employers.
are there people who abuse this system to exaggerate their degrees? sure. Are there body shopping companies who lie ? sure.
but to suggest this is a "cultural issue " in India based on some half assed comment on a blog as a reality and react to it is a little presumptuous imho.
"That's fine, but this is the United States."
No that is not fine , and there is no difference in India either. If you lie and are found out it is a certainty you'll be fired and a police complaint registered. Just fyi.
The rest of your comment makes important points. Upvoted.
PS: and Kundra is hardly "Indian". He was born in India, sure, but left when he was one year old and never came back. I believe he grew up in Tanzania and the United States. Amazing how "Indian culture" reaches half way around the world and influences him and overwhelms the culture(s) he grew up in eh? ;-)
While true, that's not the sort of mistakes that Obama's people have made.
The treasury secretary signed a form every year that he worked for the IMF acknowledging that he was being given extra pay for certain taxes. He cashed the check as well. He then didn't bother to pay the taxes.
This is the sort of thing that "little people" go to jail over. It's a firing offense in the IRS, one of the Treasury agencies.
And, this didn't come out after he was nominated. It came out during the "vet". (When he was told that it was an issue, he paid, but penalties were waived. Think that you'd get that sort of treatment.)
Does anyone think that the current treasury secretary is the only person who could do that job as well? I'm pretty sure that there's someone who is tax-clean who could do at least as well.
But I will not countenance a liar, no matter how well qualified.
I've seen guys blow million dollar deals because they misled the customer on hundred dollar issues. I could never understand why they would do something so stupid until I realized that it had usually worked before.
http://techinsider.nextgov.com/2009/08/on_kundras_college_re...
On one hand I want to say Thank you, John, for the kind of muchraking we need now more than ever. I sure hope this goes somewhere.
On the other hand, I have no problem busting my butt for thousands in hopes of millions. Until I realize how dishonest posers steal the key to billions without doing any work at all.
Knowing that this sort of thing goes on all the time doesn't diminish the anger that comes from reading about it.
http://web.archive.org/web/19970415081814/http://www.pcmag.c...
He doesn't understand what the System Idle Process is:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000873.html
Why do you believe Dvorak but not the guy who was vetted by a presidential administration?
but that is not the real "complaint". Dvorak just says that led him to dig deeper. The accusation (or "complaint"if you will) is that Kundra fudged his credentials. It doesn't matter how technical Dvorak is for the truth or falsity of that statement. Attack the accusation (which is very specific and can be easily disproved) not the accuser.
I remember that, and I smile about that prediction as I use my cable modem to access the Internet, but I count his technical objection as prescient when I experience local modem pool latency here. Cable modems are a kluge, not a sound technical solution to broadband at home.
Fair question.
1. OP was well written and seemed well supported. If he's wrong about the degrees, then he's wrong and so am I. We'll find out soon enough.
2. "Attack the messenger" is a last resort tactic used when you don't know how to "attack the content". It doesn't work with me.
3. I believe that the vetting is strictly for political purposes, not for achievement or better use of taxpayer dollars. At least Dvorak earned his own way instead of sucking at the federal teat that I help fund. That gets him a little extra cred from me.
http://techinsider.nextgov.com/2009/08/on_kundras_college_re...
I can understand why you might wonder if Vivek Kundra is qualified after reading Dvoraks' blog. I did too, and I still haven't made up my mind, but I certainly didn't (and don't) believe Dvorak's repport just on his say so. Someone else asked "why don't you believe the White House instead of Dvorak?"
I thought the whole thing was not about belief but rather about verification of claims.
There is a considerable amount of effort and time involved in securing an Open Records Request here in Lawrence. The lawyers prevent people from just calling up and say 'hey what is Ex Gov. Sebeilius minor in?'
Anyway...
"Kundra holds an undergraduate degree from UM in psychology and a master's of science in information technology."
http://www.newsdesk.umd.edu/facts/mm/08-09/mar.cfm
Took all of 1 minute to find that on Bing:
http://www.bing.com/search?q=site%3Aumd.edu+%22vivek+kundra%...
Can we move on please?
Which actually doesn't indicate that the MS in IT was from UM, and hence doesn't clash with Dvorak's post.
Edit: Interesting that the Wikipedia page, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivek_Kundra , has already been updated with "claims to hold... but no record" using Dvorak's post as the citation. Should have waited a few days to see how this gets resolved or at least backed up by more journalists.
"What websites costs $18 million? And that's with no warrantee.
The incredibly popular Digg.com, one of the most advanced news gathering sites in the world was initially coded from scratch for between $1200-2500 according to one of its founders."
This is a ridiculous comparison. We've already discussed this on Hacker News ad nauseam.
Let's wait for more information before jumping to any conclusions.
This is Dvorak at his best, link-baiting, self.
Check out the list of available data feeds: http://data.octo.dc.gov/ Most cities and states still keep this sort of public data in a filing cabinet in the basement.
I find it surprising that so many Hacker News readers are focusing on his (lack) of academic degrees rather than his real-world experience.
I think the question is more one of "Did he lie about his degrees?" (having a degree in psych vs having one in CS for example). The issue is with the lying/fudging (if the accusations are true, yet to be established) not having the degree or not. If Dvorak is making factual errors that is easy enough to disprove.
That said, for public posts (vs, say a startup), it may be difficult to justify (politically, and this is a political appointment) why someone occupies a CIO post without a degree in CS.
due disclosure: I say this as a non US citizen. I don't really care one way or another, but if true, this might be another incident where the manstream media didn't do its job and got trumped by a blogger even someone as, errr, quirky, as Dvorak. If not true Dvorak will take his lumps. I suspect that all it would take is a couple of phone calls by a real journalist to clear this up.
The focus of the linked article is not his (lack) of academic degrees, but rather a pattern of lying about his degrees and achievements, later redacted. The article also tries to track his real-world experience, which appears similarly underwhelming based on the data dug up by the author.
And as I mentioned below, it's amusing that John C. Dvorak is the one criticizing someone else's grasp of serious Computer Science concepts versus pop Web fads.
That website is about as ugly as a manatee in fishnet stockings...
I challenge you to find a site for a city, state, or municipal site with more accessible data or more interactive functionality.
Why the double-standard?
1. Nobody wants to pay for "Looks pretty." You have a list of requirements to satisfy. Each feature costs a certain amount of money. If it comes down to a feature or a pretty UI, it's going to be pretty hard to justify to someone that you spend money making it look good when it otherwise works perfectly well.
2. "Looks pretty" is a testable requirement. Sure, you can have focus groups say what they like (but that costs money, see #1), and you can have requirements like "no functionality shall be more than 2 mouse clicks away from the main screen"--but then you get a screen with 300 buttons on it. There are heuristics you can use to do good design, sure--but there's very few ways to create general, testable requirements that reflect good design.
3. Sometimes there's the problem that the entity paying for the software is not the entity using the software. To clarify: this situation is usually the case, it's just that sometimes the people with the money care about the users, and sometimes they don't or have their own agenda.
Of all the incredibly smart and successful technologists in the US, I find it very hard to understand why this guy was chosen.
As for lying...? The only phonies in this story are people that gloss over Vivek Kundra's exceptional real-world work experience. Excuse me...but Kundra WAS the CIO in the DC Government and Virgina. Therefore, he has way more experience than anyone here attempting to "judge" his qualifications. You couldn't even come close to having that type of experience...degree or no degree.
Again...you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself.
Is this something a registrar will divulge to just anyone? Or do the screenshots of the University of Maryland's registration application imply that someone on the inside checked into this for Dvorak?
http://www.studentclearinghouse.org/secure_area/DegreeVerify...
But he's a political appointee. None of them are appointed for their expertise. The head of the EPA was the chief of staff for the New Jersey governor. Appointments are made for political reasons, and not much else. The mark of a good appointment is someone who doesn't get in the way of their career staff.
If Kundra lied about his resume, he should resign or be terminated; no question. However, Dvorak's column makes me think he doesn't know what a CIO is.
This is the same guy who said "[t]here is no likelihood that Apple can be successful in a business this competitive", referring to the mobile phone industry:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-should-pull-the-plug-...
The same guy who thought that the Windows System Idle Process being at 95% was a bad thing:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000873.html
And predicted that spam will kill wikis:
It does strike me that since Creostar was involved in cybersecurity and information warfare, its activities might be less public than you would expect - if its primary customers were government intelligence agencies, for example. However, I think it's up to Kundra to clarify that.
It'll be interesting to see how this one turns out.
It doesn't matter what you know or how good you are: government appointments are done on a "good old boy/girl" basis according to who knows whom. That means that knowing and impressing the right people is much more important than cost savings, innovation, or any of the other things we associate with being somebody in power.
There's nothing new or unique about this -- it's been going on since the first time anybody was appointed by anybody else. It IS good, however, to see the tech community working to vet those who claim to have the knowledge to make tech community decisions.
I always told people if I had any sense I would have went into politics in my early 20s. With an affable personality and a sharp mind, you can make a lot more bucks than actually having to struggle through forming a startup, and it's a lot more interesting than suffering through a corporate career.
I guarantee a significant percentage of the US population will take this headline as fact, despite all efforts to refute it in the future.
That said, he could just be a phony who invented degrees. The White House really should say something about this.
http://gigaom.com/2009/08/12/dvorak-raises-doubts-about-us-c...
The thing is, noone really remembers college. Well at least I don't. I'm trying to think now, but I can't really remember a single teacher, or a single building off the top of my head. And I only graduated 2 years ago.
So you can't really quiz someone on their status, even if you wanted to.
And think about this for a moment, pretty much every person who's been exposed like this, was exposed at the national level.
Those two are different?