On my post about Gmail and government on Tuesday, two anonymous commentators informed us that District of Columbia government employees do not use Gmail accounts for official business, but rather the more common Microsoft Exchange email system.
That seemed rather strange to me, considering how much attention former D.C. Chief Technology Officer and current Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra has received for implementing Google Apps for District employees.
Turns out our anonymous friends were right. I spoke with a D.C. government employee today who informed me that while employees were assigned Google accounts, including Gmail addresses, they still use their Exchange accounts for emails. My source said D.C. employees use Google Apps for tasks such as collaborating on documents but not for sending emails.
That's fairly interesting, since I've heard Kundra reference Google Apps many times but never heard him explain why his department would choose to implement the service without making use of its most popular feature. Especially since many of the other comments from Tuesday's blog item have assured me that Gmail is still more reliable than the email systems that most federal agencies are running.
Perhaps like his well-publicized efforts to bring accountability to D.C. technology investments, this is another example where the hype around Kundra's achievements at his old job exceeded the results.
COMMENTS
May (all?) govt employees have been directed not to use external mail servers (gmail. yahoo, hotmail etc) for official business. There are two good reasons I can think of why this makes sense.
1. All e-mail correspondence to or from the government is required by law to be archived. These archives are used to support investigations or other legal purposes where e-mail records need to be searched.
2. e-mail to/from teh government often contains either sensitive or proprietary information thats not appropriate to store on an external system.
think about it.
That microspft exchange servers are used throughout govt? I haven't a clue why a proprietary, non-comforming systems have so many times been chosed over open, free solutions where SMTP originated... The gov't often wants to buy packaged complete solutions where the implementation decisions are typically outsourced because the government does not have the expertise internally to make the decisions on their own.
barney 09/19/09 10:08 pm ET
Those in the IT community are aware of many solid alternatives to the widely used Microsoft Exchange. In my estimation Gmail is one of the best, but as indicated it is not flawless, and none are. The government is now open to change and open source technology will surely be considered as well as Google Applications such as Gmail will merit strong consideration. I feel strong consideration should be given to consider implementation on some level, and the major justification for this will be cost savings. The questions are: how much change can the government embrace and what are the trade offs. We will soon learn the answers to these as well as other very important questions.
Ken Matthews 09/08/09 09:38 am ET
It appears that this story has hit a nerve with the Pro-Kundra Mafia. They seem to be blocking any reference to it on the Vivek Kundra Wikipedia page.
This is not the first time an anonymous editor using an IP address of 66.171.128.239 has quashed facts that rebut the all knowing whiz-kid hype of Kundra.
Seems that a fair and balanced philosophy is one thing that Wikipedia has lost
Check out the edits at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vivek_Kundra&action=history
Just A Reader 09/07/09 10:54 am ET
The advent of so called "cloud computing" applications has presented us with a dilemma. They can allow great flexibility and functionality but at the same time create security risk. I believe the deciding factor is where does the data reside and how is it protected. Government email is of course government data and probably should not reside out in the cloud.
Jeff Jones
http://www.nmccord.com/
Jeff Jones 09/05/09 05:36 am ET