Kundra, the Cloud and National GIS
It doesn’t sound like Vivek Kundra, the new federal CIO, is the kinda guy we’d expect to support something like the National GIS.
Kundra also wants to use technology such as cloud computing to attack the government’s culture of big contract boondoggles and its hiring of contractors who end up “on the payroll indefinitely.”
If we are going to sell Kundra on the National GIS, we should emphasize innovation instead of job protection, perhaps by focusing on Cloud based GIS. As I’ve said before, ESRI should enhance the “Author, Serve, Use” paradigm to allow the authoring of geoprocessing tools to be performed outside the firewall.
The Memory Leak 
If you look at some of the alternative NSDI proposals, such as the one proposed at http://www.nsdi2.net, a federated architecture for geoservices can be pursued, as opposed to a centralized one. Ultimately, a federated and hybridized approach, where a variety of platforms and technologies are supported, vendor-neutral and platform-agnostic is where we should be headed. Much of what Mr. Kundra did in the DC Open Data Catalog and Apps for Democracy is well-aligned with this second, alternative type of approach.
Here’s Vivek talking about his frustration with local municipalities not being able to share GIS vs. Google rolling out Earth in 6 months. Whatever the solution, it best be open. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amTdg8eGoyk