Copyright by John C. Dvorak
UPDATE
Is US Chief Information Officer (CIO) Vivek Kundra a Phony?
This is the sort of question you might ask after trying to actually verify his supposed MS in Information Technology from the University of Maryland, College Park campus. The registrar has no record of it. After initially posting this article the degree has cropped up apparently at the nearby University Campus in 2001. This was found by Nextgov.Com. But his degree in biology has yet to appear as his record shows a degree from College Park Campus for Psychology and nothing more.
I have queried the White House for clarification and still have received no response. The internet has answered the MS question. But other issues remain. Regarding a number of interesting and questionable facts, most in regard to Kundra’s bio. The most ridiculous is his assertion that he was formerly a CEO of Creostar. While records for this company are hard to come by a small Dun & Bradstreet service did turn up the following information: there was indeed a Creostar in Arlington, VA. It was founded in 2004 with the contact being Vivek Kundra. The last record for the company (online) showed sales of $67,000 with one employee – apparently Kundra, the CEO.
In fact the only job that I could find within the various Kundra bios was that of a Sales Manager and/or a VP of Marketing at a software firm called Envincible. It was sold in 2004, the same time Kundra set up Creostar. Envincible was a small security software company that sold to Exostar. Note how Kundra used a similar name with Creostar.
Most revealing is a bio of Kundra that was redacted from the Washington, DC municipal site. Luckily it was archived by the web sweeper Archive.org. In that bio Kundra added even more icing to his University of Maryland career saying he “served as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Maryland, teaching classes on emerging and disruptive technologies.”
In a conversation he had with Om Malik he confirms having a teaching job at the University College. I have not verified it, but it’s probably true.
On that old bio he also said he “was with SAIC, providing consulting services at the Health and Human Services (HHS). His work focused on growing SAIC’s $1billion business at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Kundra has worked on the World Cities Alliance initiative to advance business and economic development in Arlington, Zurich, Paris, Berlin, and Wales. Within the private sector, he worked with multiple clients to build operations in the United States, Canada, and India.”
He finishes with “He received his master’s in information technology and his bachelor’s in psychology and biology from the University of Maryland.” The biology bachelor’s comes and goes from his bio, but the University has no record of his biology degree either.
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.
During one of his testimonies before a Congressional committee he even talked about the future being something like the Star Trek holodeck. His clichés and commentary was that of a 18 year-old blogger who just got their first Macintosh.
And his sketchy background was disconcerting. It included a 1997 bust for stealing shirts from JC Penny’s and the later bust of his former staff by the FBI at the DC office during a bribery investigation.
But, to be honest about it, and despite the possible fraudulent bios and non-existent degrees, the kicker for me was that even if he was squeaky clean he has no business being the USA CIO controlling billions and billions of dollars in government contracts.
He hasn’t done anything to warrant this appointment. There are no great policy papers. There are no books. There is no invention. There is nothing but vague tech positions in city and state governments. How does this make him a “techno-whiz” as he was portrayed by the New York Times? It took him six years to get a simple undergrad degree in psychology! Was it just because he uses Facebook and likes Twitter?
So what have we got so far from this person? Well, for starters we are looking at the Recovery.gov website that will cost the taxpayers around $18 million. This news was released recently. 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. Tools to develop fancy websites have improved drastically over the years and now it costs less for fancy sites, not more. So where is the $18 million going? I can assure you that people who pay attention bugged out their eyeballs at a website expense of $18 million.
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Picture actually taken Nov. 2008 after the election. [photo removed by request of JD Kathuria. Can be viewed here.] |
The emergence of Kundra is something that needs more research. There is some indication that Kundra got his jobs in Virginia after being recommended by Aneesh Chopra another professional bureaucrat in Virginia who was apparently his friend from campaign work. On one blog there is a pic of Chopra and Kundra at a boxing match with Indian bigwig Shudkaer Shenoy. The photo was taken in 2008 before either of the two men began with the Obama administration. Since then Chopra was given the job as USA Chief Technology Office (CTO).
It would be logical to assume that Kundra managed to get his buddy Chopra the CTO job despite the fact that Chopra’s technology background is essentially nil.
According to the Chopra bio he’s really never done much outside of government committee work. His academic background shows a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1997. He graduated with a B.A. from The Johns Hopkins University in 1994. There is virtually nothing about him anywhere on the net. He has zero technology background except for perhaps using an iPOD, and he is now the country’s Chief Technology Officer.
This seems to be a team of self promoters working together. But exactly how they can be given these jobs along with responsibility for actual technology decisions that involve billions of US taxpayer dollars is incredible. And if Kundra has indeed pumped up his bio with BS, then what does that say about the Obama administration in general. After all, this guy was highly promoted by Obama himself.
But who is noticing? While the country is focused on health care protests and other distractions, this sort of betrayal of the public trust must be going on at many levels. I just happened to spot this and with the help of some researchers, namely John Stec, we quickly dug up these anomalies while they were still on the Web. Where was the mainstream media? Where was the right wing media? Is anyone doing due diligence on these important appointees holding the purse-strings to billions? Apparently not.
This lack of oversight in the public interest doesn’t get any better when you look to the technology community itself. You’d think they would be able to spot a phony a mile away. Nobody seemed to notice. In fact the opposite was true as many tech mavens gushed over both men. But why? They each have little to show except odd bragging about supposed improvements to this and that. It’s all vague. Where are the documents? The papers? The reports? They both apparently show up at a lot of meetings and conferences. I have to assume they are quite the charmers.
Look at this excerpt from the USA Today announcement for Aneesh Chopra:
“The response to Chopra is resoundingly positive. Craig Newmark (of Craig’s List) says Chopra is ‘really good for the country.’ Eric Schmidt said in a statement (via WSJ ), ‘Aneesh built one of the best technology platforms in government in the state of Virginia.’ John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins said (also via WSJ ), ‘Aneesh is an inspired appointment. His smarts and experience in technology, health care and investing will serve us well.’ Tim O’Reilly is ga-ga over the choice calling Chopra ‘a rock star’ and says, ‘We couldn’t do better.’”
Really? We couldn’t do any better?
Or do all these guys just think that Obama can do no wrong? O’Reilly, a publisher of books about computer programming, in particular, went into a euphoric fugue with a laundry list of rationales, all clichéd and dubious including classic fuzzy-headed groupthink nonsense such as: “Chopra grasps the power of open source software, Web 2.0, user-participation, and why it’s better to harness the ingenuity of a developer community than to specify complete top-down solutions.”
OK. Am I supposed to down a whiskey now? On his website O’Reilly admits that Chopra is very charismatic.
I hope there is some real explanation for what is going on here. I hope the University of Maryland can find Kundra’s records and show he taught there. I hope he has a biology degree from Maryland. And I hope Kundra can produce some records for his CEO tenure at Creostar indicating that it became a multimillion dollar company that was somehow ignored by Hoovers and D&B once it became successful. I hope the both of these men are not just drinking buddies taking advantage of dummies. I hope.
We did uncover the MS from a related campus with a different record keeping system. That’s a start.
–end
Further details of this investigation will be found there and will be discussed in great detail on the No Agenda Podcast with co-host Adam Curry. No Agenda can be found at http://noagenda.mevio.com and http://noagenda.squarespace.com as well as http://cagematch.dvorak.org.
Speaking requests regarding this story will be accepted by email to john@dvorak.org.
O’Reilly pwned you for your sloppy work, Dvorak.
I respected your work in the PC days but you seem out of your element now, Donny.
Is it that you are a cheneyshrub deadender who misses the good old days of shrubbism and shrubonomics, you Ayn Rand acolyte you?
#120
To be fair, he’d have to write his own bio for that critique to ring true. It was actually probably some Obama intern.
#120
First off, it’s University of Maryland University College, not University Campus.
Secondly, the original article has not shown any proof that Kundra mixed up the two institutions on his resume. Dvorak referred to a bio on a Web page, and it’s pretty likely that Kundra didn’t type that bio and post it himself.
Secondly, the confusion between the University of Maryland in College Park and University of Maryland University College is probably pretty common.
I’m a long-time Maryland resident, and until this crapstorm of a story came out, I didn’t know the difference. I thought University College was an extension of the main campus. University College is based in Adelphi, Maryland, which is right next to College Park, Maryland.
Blogpost sponsored by the Republican Party code word: TECH
The longest initial post I have ever seen about a completely pedestrian issue: people lie, especially on resumes, especially foreigners.
All it means is that he really wants the job and he is motivated.
What does a CIO for the USA actually charged with doing???? If its not to bring imagination to a new position, I don’t know what else should qualify him.
The author of this story must be a moron. Dun and Bradstreet info is usually crap and is always out of date. It refers to info extracted from the company people when its started and almost never updated. Even after the company hires 30 people, D&B will still say 1 person employed since that would have been the info given at the start of the company.
My 16 year old son and is really good at Powerpoint presentations. Can he be InfoCzar? If not, he is interested in being XBox Czar.
Is there a prize when the number of comments hits 666 ?
Seriously though, all Vivek Kundra has to do to prove his worth (to me) is clearly explain why it costs $18 million to set up a web-site.
Boy are you looking to end up on the “White House list”. I think you are being more than just a little judgmental asking for people to be qualified in field that they are assuming what amounts to a cabinet post in the Federal Government affecting the entire country.
With all of the qualified talent out there that could have been tapped for this job, how about Kevin Mitnick much better choice, you would think we could have done just a little better.
Lets hope we survive the next 4/8 years.
He was also caught shoplifting.
Didn’t Vivek Kundra go to White Castle with Harold and Kumar?
You’ve been thoroughly debunked John, apologize. I know your whole act has been throwing baseless bombs around the tech industry, but you’ve grown too old. Just stop before you embarrass yourself further.
Kundra is a clueless lightweight. He and Obama ought to get along great.
Please, keep up the work! quite a shocking news and rightly the topic that you should be talking about. Thanks!
I’m not a fan of Dvorak, but I think you are on to something, at least as far as Kundra’s academic credentials.
I’m from the DC area, and like previous commenters have said University of Maryland, University College (UMUC) and University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) are not even in the same ballpark as far as academic ranking. Kundra seems to be inflating his academic credentials by 1) not making it clear that he graduated from UMUC and 2) not correcting the record when other say that he graduated from UMCP. This is not simply a sin of omission on his part. He seems to actively conflate the two institutions in hopes that no one will know the difference.
In Malik’s rebuttal to your article he says that the confusion about which campus Kundra attended is due to the fact that: “He was an undergraduate at the University of Maryland’s College Park location.”
Can you find out if Kundra was ever enrolled as a student at the University of Maryland, College Park because I think this is a lie too?
JD, you are a tool of olympic proportions, utterly undeserving of the title “Journalist” (never mind the ‘Tech’ bit, since time and again you’ve been shown to have all the perception and analytical skills of Rob Enderle).
And now you’ve managed to coax all the latent racists out of the woodwork who just *know* that someone with an Indian-sounding name couldn’t possibly be honest. Nice work.
“Further details of this investigation will be found there and will be discussed in great detail on the No Agenda Podcast”
I am pretty sure you meant “found here”, not “found there”.
Gosh, I guess he DOES have a degree.
JD … still a loser after all these years.
#29, All I can say is, ’somebody’s got some ’splainen to do’.
It is generally accepted that if you are caught fudging your resume, you’re history. I see no reason not to do the same here.
*blink*
#42, I always get a chuckle out of Bush supporters who ignored that Bush was a bumbling fool, but pounce on every slip-up of the Obama administration.
And I always get a chuckle out of Two-Party Hacks who can’t think outside the square.
#116… Note to self, when making little joke about someones possible spelling or grammar error… it is Never! a good idea to misspell the very word you are commenting about. Warrantee. Two rr’s
Cripes!
And, I think I figured out John’s diabolicle plan!
“Speaking requests regarding this story will be accepted by email to john@dvorak.org.” <— fair use?
Trying to get on the "speaking" circuit where the real bucks are.
Why do people think that this guy being a fraud makes Bush a good guy? That makes zero sense.
This guy clearly lied and Bush was not that bright.
This kind of blowhard b.s. goes on all the time in the private sector, and he seems to have had his run at it with Creostar. There, he convinced a few people to give him money. More power to him – most of the vulture capitalists deserve every screwing they get (’cause they sure do enough of it when they’re the screw-er).
That said, handing a position in the federal government – with the responsibility and power to spend, literally, millions of tax dollars- to someone with this thin a resume’ is a disgrace, and another blot on the Obama administration. They seem to think they’re still handing out patronage jobs in the Chicago Public Works department.
What a crappy attempt at character assassination. Some of your statements have since been proven wrong – lack of thoroughness on your part…hmm do you have a fake degree by any chance?
Let’s say he doesn’t have the degrees that you would like to see in a CIO…So what..do you not use Windows..Gates doesn’t have a degree. Look what all the degreed pedegreed financial whizzes with MBAs did. They screwed all the middle class. I have 70 year olds coming back to work cause their 401K and other savings just vanished overnight.
About Digg…I can you give you $3000. Can you buy it for me? You can keep the change.
Geez you have some nerve…where were you when the Cheneys and the Blackwater crooks were looting the American people of billions of dollars. Nah that won’t bother you. Seems to me you are bothered by their Indian-ness and not their degrees
Another epic fail from John C. Dvorak.
I put the most famous (but certainly not the only massive Dvorak fail) below for your amusement:
“The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a ‘mouse.’ There is no evidence that people want to use these things. What businessman knows about point sizes on typefaces or the value of variable point sizes ? Who out there in the general marketplace even knows what a ‘font’ is ? The whole concept and attitude towards icons and hieroglyphs is actually counterrevolutionary — it’s a language that is hardly ‘user friendly’. This type of machine was developed by hardware hackers working out of Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center. It has yet to find popular success. There seems to be some mysterious user resistance to this type of machine.”
John C. Dvorak on why the Macintosh would fail, San Francisco Examiner, 1984
Whats all this John Hate???? Although predicting the mouse would fail is pretty downright funny. FUNNEEEEEEHEHEEE!!! I’d have nightmares about that.
Regardless of other truths, any person running a blog and letting it run uncensored and pretty interesting is “quite a guy” in my book.
Just bring back the “recent posts” feature???? Please?–make it as long as possible.
Dvorak you are an absolute IDIOT. Why are you so jealous of this young man? He clearly has a Masters in Information Systems and it is from the University of Maryland. Sorry he didn’t qualify it by putting a dash and then “University College” after it. Would that make you happy? I hope that you will at least be man enough to apologize to this guy at some point in the future.
“Show me your birth certificate!” “Show me your degrees!” This stuff is VILE, and has no place in the United States. I never expected this kind of thing from you John. Silly me.
@Bobo
You are absolutely right – anyone who has spent the last 25 years (plus) commenting almost daily on the tech industry is bound to have made some very public mistakes. The real point is that Dvorak monitors trends, understands the market and writes/speaks in a way that is interesting.
It is to his credit that anyone cares what he said 25 years ago – I once said that there was no use for hard drives among other really dumb things, but I escape from the assholes because I’m obscure. The fact that it is funny when he is wrong derives from the fact that we all have respect for the man and are shocked when we see that he is not all knowing.
Kudos Mr. Dvorak for not censoring your blog comments!
Hmm, there are a lot of smug people here.
Personally I would be happy to buy JCD a bottle of merlot if this blog pushes him to put up his profile at the OMB, or start a blog, or something.
—-“Show me your birth certificate!” “Show me your degrees!” This stuff is VILE, and has no place in the United States.—-
Oh, bulls hit.
On the BC, it is perfectly legitimate to demand one for a govt position that requires proof of US birth. I’m a conservative who firmly believes that Obama supplied a legitimate one…the birthers are insane.
Every job I’ve ever had has wanted to see my degree…and verified it. It’s vile and un-American to verify credentials? Have you ever hired someone for a company without checking their credentials? If so, you’re a fool.