D.C.'s Kinetic Tech Czar

"The weakest link in this construction process, of which there have been many, has been the office of the technology officer," Lynch said. "We've had to go back and reorder everything from security wiring to Internet contracts. It's supposed to be a 21st-century campus, and it's nowhere near it."

Kundra argues that significant progress has been made, including installing new equipment in several schools in time for the first day of fall classes and a new technology wing at Jefferson Middle School. He secured a million dollars in donations from companies such as Microsoft, Dell and Intel to build a technology classroom. About a dozen of Kundra's staff work on the site and occasionally hold technology demonstrations for students.

Some corners of the District bureaucracy have not welcomed some of Kundra's initiatives. For example, not all of the District's agencies are eager to make city data about health care, crime rates and police response times available to residents and Web developers.

Kundra said he's learned to move more slowly. He starts small, implementing a project with one agency to see whether it works before expanding it to others. "Sure, it's sometimes hard to get people on board. But I keep pushing."

Kundra generally arrives at his office before the sun comes up and doesn't head back to his Penn Quarter home and wife of six months until it is dark again. His colleagues say he packs his day so full with meetings and brainstorming sessions that he usually skips lunch and makes calls on his BlackBerry while e-mailing on his iPhone as he dashes between appointments.

He speaks quickly and decisively, and politely interrupts when a conversation veers off course. People in his office are used to getting e-mails at 3 a.m. and on weekends. He treats technology projects like stock portfolios -- if a project is not succeeding, he cancels, or "sells" it, and invests in another area. He has ditched $25 million in failing projects and redirected that money elsewhere.

A few times a week, he joins Obama transition advisers on conference calls that go late into the night. He regularly consults venture capitalists and computer science professors and spends at least one week a year visiting the research labs of such firms as Google, Apple and Cisco.

"He exhibits a passion one would expect when you really love what you're doing," said Aneesh Chopra, Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's secretary of technology, who met Kundra about eight years ago in Northern Virginia's growing Indian American community. At the time, Kundra was an entrepreneur, having started two companies. Chopra, also an Obama tech adviser, recommended Kundra for Virginia's assistant secretary of commerce and trade, and later as the assistant secretary of technology.

"I find myself checking my BlackBerry at odd hours of the night, which makes it so much fun to work with him," Chopra said. "You don't think about the fact that it's 2 a.m. and you're having a policy discussion."

Arun Gupta, a partner at venture capital firm Columbia Capital who often joins Kundra's brainstorming sessions with District employees, said "there's normally a dividing line between the public and private sectors -- a different culture and mindset." A government agency could take years to make changes a start-up would do in weeks, Gupta said. "Vivek is someone who can bridge those sectors to really unleash innovation."

That strategy is likely what Obama is trying to replicate in the federal government, Gupta said. Giving citizens access to government data and letting entrepreneurs and other firms develop new technologies are considered cornerstones of Obama's agenda.

"You have to have the confidence to say, 'I don't need to control everything,' " Gupta said. "That's very much a Web 2.0 mentality. Is that the panacea to everything? Probably not. But it's a step in the right direction."