

Verified: Kundra Did Receive an M.S. in Information Systems Management - luigi
http://techinsider.nextgov.com/2009/08/on_kundras_college_records.php

======
calambrac
When in doubt, always remember that John C. Dvorak is a complete jackass.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Please don't attack the messenger, even for a bad story.

Unless you have proof that Dvorak was purposely lying, slandering him doesn't
make your case any better.

After all, if he screws this one up, he's going to have a very hard time
getting respectability and credibility for future articles. That punishment is
enough.

~~~
jhancock
I hear you, but Dvorak did publish a slander against Kundra based simply on
his rudimentary queries. This is hardly good journalism.

from the article: "But I was able to verify Kundra's degree with just a few
phone calls in under two hours."

If your going to publish something so incendiary, you really must do your
homework.

~~~
socratees
Its dishonest to imply the degree is from University of Maryland. UMUC is not
UMCP. It is in the University of Maryland system, it is not "University of
Maryland".

~~~
shpxnvz
UMCP is no more the definitive "University of Maryland" than UMUC. While they
may be the "flagship" university in the system, according to their site, they
are still UMCP, not simply UM.

------
eli
This is why professional journalists _actually pick up the phone and call
people_ before publishing accusations about them. And this is also why
bloggers and "online columnists" are often not considered real journalists.

~~~
tokenadult
Dvorak said he telephoned the White House for comment on his story. That is
what caught my eye in that story, the lack of White House immediate response.

~~~
eli
True, but you can't just make a token phone call so that you can write that
they didn't return your calls.

I think it's pretty irresponsible to publish a hit piece on someone with
making an honest effort to get their side of it. Om Malik was able to track
Kundra down and get response within hours.

------
look_lookatme
(repost from other thread)

Dvorak called the University of Maryland, College Park and they said they had
no record of him receiving a degree at there, which is what everyone things of
when they read University of Maryland. NextGov confirmed he has an MS at UMUC,
which might have a shared history with UMD, but only UMD is allowed to be
known as the University of Maryland.

This is so obviously a non-story, or at least not worth more than a short,
transparency inspired blog post. Of all Dvoraks bonehead stories, this one
takes the cake.

Still, I'd like to see Kundra's bio updated to reflect the actual university
he received that degree from. I would never say I received an MS from the
University of Texas, when in fact I received one from some other UT system
school, and certainly wouldn't phrase it that way on my .gov bio page.

------
alexgartrell
Sorry to ask the obvious question, but who cares? IS Programs (even the top
ones) aren't the most rigorous things in the world. Anyone who is in a CIO
type position should probably have real world experience, professional degrees
be damned. Why aren't we talking about that instead?

~~~
eli
Agreed. The fact is he did a pretty good job with the DC.gov websites
according to just about everyone involved. They're the most data rich and
accessible complex government site I've ever seen. e.g.
<http://data.octo.dc.gov/>

Visual design aside, DC may well have the best website of any city or state in
the country.

~~~
warfangle
Are you serious?

"They're the most data rich and accessible"

Visual design aside, there's a distinct possibility that DC.gov is one of the
most data rich government sites out there. The only problem is, well, finding
the information. The findability level of this information is about like the
hand-curated Yahoo! Directory from 1999.

And then there's accessibility. Maybe that means something different to you
than me, but let's delve into it.

First of all, the page uses tables. That makes it a nightmare for any screen-
reading software to utilize.

Turning off styles and javascript renders the main navigation useless.

The markup of the page is entirely table cells and font tags, granting no
semantic meaning to the content whatsoever. This makes deep-searching the site
even more problematic, as search engines have no context for the textual
information contained within the page. E.g.; Google looks at h1 elements as
having more important content than, say, a p element. It also limits the
usefulness of screenreaders, as they read cell by cell, row by row. (thus, if
two related pieces of content are in two cells, one on top of each other, they
won't be read together - it will read the first one, then finish up the row
before continuing on with the second cell).

Then there's deep-link URLs like,
[http://www.rrc.dc.gov/rrc/cwp/view,a,1182,q,447149,rrcNav_GI...](http://www.rrc.dc.gov/rrc/cwp/view,a,1182,q,447149,rrcNav_GID,1417,.asp).
What does that even mean? Is it some attempt at securing the "Play in DC" page
(which, to be honest, is fairly useless: all it does is list links to the
history, entertainment, libraries, etc subpages.. the only reason it's needed
is because the entire site design is one big Charlie Foxtrot).

Anyone who thinks this website is a "pretty good job" and has anything to do
with: design, usability, accessibility, and SEO - well, you should probably
turn in your card. Sorry to say. And if a C-level executive doesn't understand
how -- especially with government sites -- accessibility for visually impaired
individuals is extremely important, well. He either needs to be educated or,
if ineffective, fired. It's nearly criminal (especially for a government
website).

In finality:

Being a data rich site means nothing if accessing that data is akin to
crawling through a swimming pool filled with broken glass and lemon juice. And
then not even getting the information you were looking for when you first dove
into the miasma of pain.

~~~
eli
OK, so find a city or state website anywhere in this country that does better.

Most municipalities don't even have government data available in scanned PDFs,
let alone a huge set of documented XML feeds published live on the website.

(And incidentally, it's a myth that screen readers require semantic markup
with CSS to work. They do not. Nor does Section 508 require it. Screen readers
generally work just fine with table-based tag soup. The dc.gov site claims to
be Bobby 508 compliant and I'm not in a position to dispute that.)

~~~
warfangle
Anywhere in our luddite country? not likely. If I could read european
languages, I'm sure I could find one in, e.g., Sweden.

Even if Section 508 doesn't require semantic markup, it still doesn't fix my
primary issue with the site: zero findability. Let's see if I can find, say, a
map of the DC metro from DC.gov. Probably a pretty common action. Except
there's no link to it anywhere. Not that bad, I suppose - google brings up the
first result, and most people would probably start there anyway. If I were
adamant about using DC.gov to find it, though, I would have to click on
"Residents" (what if I'm a visiting tourist?), find the "Ride the Rails" (what
a worthless title!) link, find the Metro link (listed last - Amtrak is listed
first. Do people in DC use Amtrak more than the Metro?), and then finally I
find wmata.com. (what a useless domain name, why not.. oh.. dcmetro.com is
being sat on.)

What's another piece of data I might, as a constituent, want to look up? Maybe
something to do with politics. Maybe I just moved to the area and want to know
who my representative is.

Government -> DC Council gets me a list of councilmembers and which ward
they're elected from (ward1, ward2, etc), along with their phone number.
Fairly useful, if I know which ward I live in. Let's see if I can figure that
out from the website, without using google.

Live in DC -> Civic Information -> ehhh, nothing useful for my quest here.
Let's try another route.

Search box: "ward" results in a search results page which lists some full-
english questions (that look naggingly like the sponsored links on google's
results), one of which ("Where can I find information about wards?" - if this
is a frequent search, they should probably think about making this more
prominent on the homepage) looks like it might be able to help me. The rest of
the results are garbage.

Oh, damn. That link resulted in a 404. Of course, if I were someone normal I
probably would have just googled "washington dc wards" and found the wikipedia
page which gives me the information I wanted.

Now, let's see how it gives me information about parks. Parks are pretty
important in an urban environment, right? Say I have a dog, let's see what it
takes to find a dog park in washington dc with their site.

Residents -> Play in DC -> Parks and Recreation -> oh, damn. I just found a
list of stuff that I don't really care about. Registry, department of parks,
national park service... No, just give me say .. uh, a map of the parks?
That's what I'm looking for. Maybe some events happening in the parks. Let's
see if the Department of Parks link helps me. Ah, nope. Just a bunch of red
links that look scary to click on and are impossible to skim (to find what I'm
looking for). And a picture of some random woman in the header with the title,
"Department of Parks and Recreation." I'm guessing it's someone who runs the
stuff, but I wouldn't know from the title. Ah, here it is. In this list of
serifed, red, bold links. Dog Parks. I actually have to spend about 10 seconds
searching for the link again every time I go back to that main page listing.
Those brightly colored boxes announcing aquatic programs and tennis programs
kept drawing my eye over to the right, distracting me from what I was looking
for. Alright, after clicking on "Dog Parks," I get another list of links. This
is getting tiresome. Fortunately, one of them is "Dog park locations." Cool,
there's two of them. Unfortunately, in order to see where they are on a map
(remember, I hypothetically just moved here!) I've got to copy-paste the
address into google maps. Why not just provide a link?

And the most prominent think on the "Dog Park Locations" page is uh. "Dog Park
Rules & Regulations," a link to another page entirely. Not the locations.
Weird thing is, a google search brings up a page from doggeeks.com listing
even more dog parks than are listed on the dc.gov page. Good goin'.

Let's approach it as a developer. Say I want to make a mashup with one of
their documented XML feeds. Can't find anything. I give up.

One cool thing, if rather hidden (findability!) is the school map. You have to
go to that tiny dropdown on the bottom left of the main page labeled
"Searchable Databases" (very useful title, by the way). Cool, there's a splash
page with a screenshot of the tool and a notice that it's now available.
That's nice, but I wanted to access the tool, not find out if it's available.
I'd assume that going directly to the tool would effectively tell me that it's
available.

In short: while I'm not belittling the sheer amount of information available
on the site, actually finding and utilizing that information is an exercise in
pain, suffering, and frustration. Information is worthless if you can't find
it. It's a step in the right direction, and they got the hard part done
(getting all the data digitized and available online). Now they just need to
bring the interaction style (SELECT elements with onChange firing a navigation
event? Welcome to 1999 and Usability Hell) and usability of the site into this
century.

And this isn't even going into the HTML and CSS validation errors.

My comments aren't to belittle the engineers who worked on getting the
information out there. It's belittling the fact that they hired cut-rate
front-end developers and information architects, and ended up with a site
that's mostly worthless unless you know its cthonic structure by heart. And it
probably cost them a bundle, too, wasting their taxpayer's dollars by building
a UI/front end that'll likely need to be rebuilt entirely from the ground up
if they want people to, well, actually use the damn thing. And if the UI
layer's code is anything as atrocious as the markup and IA is.. well, let's
just say I'm glad I'm not the one spelunking my way through that guano cave.

~~~
eli
Hey, I never said it was perfect, but do you agree it's the best in the
country? I submit that this fact is evidence that making a good government
site is harder than it looks. Or do you really believe _every single_ other
city and state technology office is full of luddites?

Yes, findability is a problem. It's probably always going to be a problem when
you've got lots of pages generated by dozens of autonomous agencies. But most
government sites don't have this problem because _they don't bother putting
any of this information online in the first place_. It either doesn't exist or
exists only on paper. I'd take a site full of useful information that's a bit
hard to navigate over a pretty site with nothing on it.

Also, I take issue with some of your examples. If you click on "Visitors"
there are indeed links to Metro right on the main visitors page. It's a
different domain because it's a different entity; Metro extends well outside
the city limits and is funded by DC, VA, and MD. Also if you had searched for
"ward" or "what's my ward" the first link is _How can I use "Where You Live"
to find out about DC neighborhoods, wards, and school districts? (DC Guide)_
which would have answered several of your other complaints. Search for "xml
feeds" and the first link it to the catalog of XML feeds. It ain't perfect,
but it ain't nearly as bad as you make it out to be.

~~~
pyre
> Or do you really believe every single other city and state technology office
> is full of luddites?

They don't have to be filled with luddites to have a crappy webpage. They just
need a crappy IT staff or to hire some 'lowest bidder' option to build their
site that learned HTML by reading some Microsoft Press book on Frontpage.

There are some sites that have perfectly fine webpages that are screwed up
because bureaucrat somewhere decides that the site needs to be 'updated'
either because they feel that flash animations on the front page are 'the next
big thing' or because they want to hire a friend/campaign contributor to do
the job. Then they end up with a site that it worse off than the one they had
in the first place, but they don't fix it because then they would be admitting
that they wasted all the money that's already been sunk into the project.

------
krschultz
The shocking thing to me was that

1) People trusted a random blogger over people getting paid full time to vet
people. Understandably vetters miss things such as taxes (complicated) or
illegal immigrant maids (hidden), but something as simple as a degree will get
checked.

2) Dvorak didn't call all the campuses, there are multiple UMD campuses just
like there are multiple Penn State campuses etc.

3) Dvorak trusted it based on the sole person he talked to. Does the school
even have the obligation to tell a complete stranger these things? Did he try
and find people who knew Dvorak in college? Did he find anyone but himself who
thought to the contrary? Everyone has enemies, when you get thrust into public
office they come out posting stuff against you, if you had skipped college
someone would know.

4) Dvorak's question about teaching was trying to slide tense under the radar.
He asked if Kundra was a professor. The person he talked to said no. That
person was probably just an operator with a directory of proffessor RIGHT NOW.
How did he know they looked at a list with every person who ever gave a
lecture at UMD?

~~~
pyre
Maybe at the Federal level the 'vetters' are held to a higher standard, but I
remember a local government official (can't remember if it was city or county
level) in Michigan getting called to task over a degree that he never actually
earned (or even went to the school). He had been on the job a few (3-4?) years
when this came out. I can't remember the details of what happened, but some
people wanted to overlook the lie because he was actually doing a good job in
his position (i.e. he wasn't incompetent, just a liar I guess). It was in the
Detroit area, I guess someone could look it up if they were interested for a
similar case, though on a local rather than a Federal level.

------
stanleydrew
University of Maryland University College is not exactly the same as the
University of Maryland. It's their adult continuing education program
basically.

~~~
eli
Huh? University College is exactly as much a part of the University of
Maryland as College Park.

The complaint is that his bio doesn't specify which campus he attended? This
really matters?

~~~
look_lookatme
From <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_Of_Maryland>

"However, in 1997 the Maryland General Assembly passed legislation allowing
the University of Maryland, College Park to be known simply as the University
of Maryland, recognizing the campus' role as the flagship institution of the
University System of Maryland."

No one of thinks "oh one of those Maryland universities with different
faculties and different quality of education" when they hear University of
Maryland. They think of College Park.

It may be splitting hairs, but we shouldn't even be having this conversation,
as it should be clear on the bio page.

~~~
eli
I didn't know that, so I guess you have a point, but it does indeed sound like
splitting hairs.

And the reason we are having this conversation is because Dvorak screwed up
pretty badly and implied he had no degree at all. No one would have noticed a
post alleging that he committed the crime of omitting the name of his college
campus from his resume.

------
TravisLS
The fact that this is even a story is pretty distressing. As far as I can
tell, the guy's gotten good results, which is much more than I can say for
plenty of "qualified" people in Washington.

~~~
pyre
It still says something about someone's character nonetheless. Just because
he's getting good results, doesn't also mean that he is not doing something
dishonest in the shadows, while performing his duties admirably in the
limelight.

------
huherto
In any case it is fair to raise those questions. Government should be ready
answer to public scrutiny. If there are good answers for them: Good.

~~~
leviathant
I think it's important that if you are going to raise questions about
someone's reputation, you make a real effort to find answers before throwing
those questions out into the public. An irresponsible question can still be
very misleading.

As an example: Do you still beat your wife?

------
justin_vanw
I'm going to side with Dvorak here. "University of Maryland, University
College" is a correspondence school. These days they also have online classes
of course. They offer only nontechnical majors, including Information Systems
Management (they do not offer CS, Math, Physics, etc). I believe many of the
courses at UMUC aren't even accepted as transfer credits to the University of
Maryland.

The bottom line is that everyone who has gone to school at a state school in
maryland knows that "University of Maryland" == "College Park". To list UMD as
where you got your degree when you went to UMUC is both technically incorrect,
and intentionally misleading.

------
j2d2
But where's his birth certificate?!

