Vivek Kundra, the federal government's first chief information officer, has a grand vision about transparency that goes well beyond just putting more official documents online and keeping the public informed.

Kundra also wants spreadsheets and all kinds of obscure statistical data to be made available all in one place online, a plan that Wired calls the Obama administration's "most radical" and "geekiest" idea. His plan for the new website, Data.gov, is to make all the information easy to find and access.

This is a far cry from the normal government policy of refusing to release data or keeping it hidden. Kundra tells Wired: "The core principles are using open standards, presenting raw data, and distributing it in as many formats as possible. Public policy decisions are made using the data anyway, but the raw data is important because if it is massaged too much, you can lose the big issues."

For more on the full Kundra interview:
- see this Wired article