Capital planning, program management, the information technology workforce and computer security are the top concerns of the government's chief information officers, according to participants in a panel discussion Wednesday.
The CIOs also talked about the roles they now play in their organizations and how much power they have at the executive management level.
"As a CIO I have a big, red 'Stop' sign that can make any IT project die," said Roger Baker, CIO at the Commerce Department. "But," he added, "I don't have any 'Go' sign." Baker said the lack of control over IT budgets and the fluidity of the budget process has affected the development of future IT goals.
Even so, Baker wants every bureau with Commerce to have a strong CIO, who would report both to the bureau's head and Baker himself. This would create an IT management team across the department that could help make decisions on on issues such as whether Commerce needs a single telecommunications network, help desk and data center, Baker said.
Harold Gracey, whose last day as CIO of the Department of Veterans Affairs was Wednesday, said he has seen IT grow from a function located deep within the chief financial officer's organization since he took over the role of CIO in 1998.
As CIO, Gracey had a seat at the executive management table and reported directly to the VA Secretary. During his tenure, he said, dealing with stovepiped systems and offices took up much of his time. "We had to realize that we are not the department of IT," Gracey said. "We are the Department of Veterans Affairs and we have to understand the operation of our line organizations."
"It takes the strong hands of the Secretary, the CIO and the CFO to work through capital planning in order to make the right investments," Gracey said. "In IT, we build parallel structures just because we want our own system--that has got to stop."
Gloria Parker, CIO at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, said all IT investments must now be tied to an agency's mission. "The days of buying technology for technology's sake are over at HUD," Parker said.
As co-chair of the CIO Council's Federal IT Workforce Committee, Parker said she is also concerned about IT staffing issues. Agencies "need a paradigm shift," she said--moving away from a core of super-technologists toward a cadre of IT project managers. That means focusing on those who bring results to agencies, not those who focus on bits and bytes, Parker said. "We need to move away from hiring super-technical people whose skills are obsolete with six to eight months."
On the hot-button issue of computer security, Jim Flyzik, CIO at the Treasury Department and vice-chair of the CIO Council, said that his department is creating a "virtual security team" to focus on the issue across its agencies. He also said that computer security should be coordinated more closely with physical security at federal facilities.
Baker, who co-chairs the CIO Council's committee on security, privacy and critical infrastructure, argued that security should be an integral part of every new IT system and not just an add-on after it has been designed.
The CIOs spoke Wednesday at the monthly breakfast of the Bethesda chapter of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association.
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