They'd Check the "It's Complicated" Box; The Oppositional Approach to Getting from Here to Five Million; Transition's Tech Team Taps Beltway and Beyond; Government Guide to Marijuana (Vendors); Nanobama, the Microscopic President; DC's Apps Contest Names Winners; Progressives' Annual Participatory Debrief; and more.

We all have wishes for what Federal CIO Vivek Kundra will do during his term. The item at the top of my list concerns data.gov, which Kundra mentioned yesterday to the press:

Kundra, in conference call today with reporters shortly after President Barack Obama named him as federal CIO said one of his first projects is to create a data.gov Web site to "democratize" the federal government's vast information treasures by making them accessible in open formats and in feeds that can be used by application developers.

"How can we leverage the power of technology to make sure the country is moving in the right direction?" asked Kundra, stressing that his ambition is to "revolutionize technology in the public sector." (emphasis added)

A lot of people are really excited about Kundra's appointment. Most of these people want to see government data mashed up for public consumption. Such applications of this data are great, but I care more about mashing it up for internal consumption: government IT is decrepit, and the public tools that we (rightfully) complain about are light years ahead of the stuff available from government desktops. So I was excited to read that last sentence: Kundra wants data.gov to help the government. He is probably envisioning for data.gov something similar to Apps For Democracy, a project that, while successful, resulted primarily in public-facing applications instead of better tools for DC employees.

If his goal for data.gov is to help government IT, he'll need to engage more than application developers.