No Gmail in DC Government

On my post about Gmail and government on Tuesday, two anonymous commentators informed us that District of Columbia government employees do not use Gmail accounts for official business, but rather the more common Microsoft Exchange email system.

That seemed rather strange to me, considering how much attention former D.C. Chief Technology Officer and current Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra has received for implementing Google Apps for District employees.

Turns out our anonymous friends were right. I spoke with a D.C. government employee today who informed me that while employees were assigned Google accounts, including Gmail addresses, they still use their Exchange accounts for emails. My source said D.C. employees use Google Apps for tasks such as collaborating on documents but not for sending emails.

That's fairly interesting, since I've heard Kundra reference Google Apps many times but never heard him explain why his department would choose to implement the service without making use of its most popular feature. Especially since many of the other comments from Tuesday's blog item have assured me that Gmail is still more reliable than the email systems that most federal agencies are running.

Perhaps like his well-publicized efforts to bring accountability to D.C. technology investments, this is another example where the hype around Kundra's achievements at his old job exceeded the results.