FBI Raids Washington D.C. CTO Office of Vivek Kundra, Obama’s New CIO

The spotlight just turned up a notch for Vivek Kundra, President Barack Obama’s choice for the newly created position of federal CIO for the United States. Kundra had previously been serving as Washington D.C.’s CTO, before being named to the new federal CIO post last week: According to published reports, the FBI raided the Washington, D.C. CTO office this morning as part of what early reports call a bribery investigation.

The FBI has arrested two men with connections to the office on bribery charges.

As reported by Grant Gross of the IDG News Service, those men arrested were Yusuf Acar, reportedly an information security and contracting officer in the CTO’s office, and Sushil Bansal, CEO of Advanced Integrated Technologies, a Washington-based tech services and outsourcing firm.

The CTO’s office has used Advanced Integrated Technologies for several projects, including an IT security support contract announced in May 2008 and the installation of more than 20,000 McAfee software packages, announced in August 2008, according to information on the company’s Web site.

Kundra spoke just this morning at the FOSE conference for government IT attendees.

Reuters is reporting that the FBI is not focusing on Kundra as part of what is described as an ongoing FBI operation.

Of Kundra’s appointment to the CIO post, Obama said in a statement that he has directed Kundra “to work to ensure that we are using the spirit of American innovation and the power of technology to improve performance and lower the cost of government operations. As chief information officer, he will play a key role in making sure our government is running in the most secure, open, and efficient way possible.”

Kundra is known in IT leadership circles for a willingness to try new technologies; for instance, he rolled out Google Apps to 38,000 people in his D.C. post.

CIO.com will have more details on this story as it develops throughout the day.