The federal Chief Information Officers Council will take over the interagency board in charge of efforts to reinvent government information technology services, federal officials have told GovExec.com.
The Government Information Technology Services (GITS) Board will be turned into a committee of the CIO Council, the interagency group of federal agencies' top information technology executives. The committee will be called the Electronic Government Committee.
President Clinton created the GITS Board in 1996 "to ensure continued implementation of the information technology recommendations of the National Performance Review and to identify and promote the development of innovative technologies, standards and practices among agencies." Each year the board spurred federal information technology projects with money from an innovation fund. The board awarded up to $7 million a year to projects such as the effort by the Agriculture Department's National Finance Center to develop certification for digital signatures.
Greg Woods, director of the Education Department's Office of Student Financial Assistance, heads the GITS Board. He will step aside when the board becomes a CIO Council committee.
Officials said there was overlap between the GITS Board and the CIO Council. Several members of the GITS Board are also members of the CIO Council. Treasury Department CIO Jim Flyzik is vice chairman of both groups.
Planning has begun but a date for the merger has not yet been set, sources said.