Today columnist John C. Dvorak made the claim that Vivek Kundra was a phony.  In his story he disputed the education and qualifications of Mr. Kundra.  Among the claims he made was that Vivek Kundra had lied about his MS degree in Information Technology.  It appears shortly after the release of this blog entry GigaOm reported:

University of Maryland University College spokesman, confirmed that Kundra graduated from the school with a Masters of Science in Information Systems Management.

This fact seems to clear up the fact that he did in fact have a MS from University of Maryland.  However there still is no evidence he had a degree in Biology as he claimed in his Washington DC bio. While the education stuff is entertaining and controversial I find the questions about his background more interesting.  Here you have a man placed in charge of multiple billions of dollars of US IT spending.  This same man seems to lack any significant experience in IT that would justify such an important position.  While I agree that he is more than willing to throw resources towards Web 2. 0 technologies this will not solve the underlying problems that exist in Federal IT spending and implementation.  The fact that he spent $18 million dollars to build Recovery.gov is ridiculous.  His spending might be justified if he had made significant improvements in data availability.  However according to OMB watch:

…administration has yet to release much new information that wasn’t previously available online.

Obama did what he always does in his appointments.  He choose a candidate that was politically connected over skill set and experience.  That is why he choose a Leon Panetta for CIA Director.  He choose a politically connected individual over someone with a strong military or intelligence background.  Consistently he has proven that he would rather find someone that benefits him in some politically strategic way rather than choose individuals for their qualifications and experience.