n the Cabinet departments and large agencies, about half the CIOs are career federal employees and half are from outside government. CIOs inherit the territory where career managers and political appointees meet. GSA's Joe Thompson and Commerce's Ray Kammer, among others, have made careers in the federal government but were appointed by the White House to their jobs.
Two of the most visible and widely admired CIOs, USDA's Anne Reed and Treasury's Jim Flyzik, were acting CIOs for more than a year for reasons that seem to have more to do with White House inertia than doubts about their performance. Both had provisional status when they were named because of the troubled IT and management histories of their departments. Both became full-fledged CIOs in August.
Other departments have had trouble hiring qualified CIOs. One issue could be salaries, Thompson says. One survey found that CIOS in large corporations are paid about $350,000 per year, on average. Government CIO salaries top out at $125,000. "I get offers in the $250,000 range all the time now," Thompson says.
The pay disparity could explain why several of the CIOs come from the very organizations that achieved poor track records in managing IT under the old regime. Although he lauds the CIOs as a hard-working, well-meaning group, one Senate staffer says he'd hoped more of them would be outsiders who would come into agencies and shake them up. That view is somewhat at odds with the notion of a collaborative, consensus-building CIO.
"Ultimately, what speaks in Washington is control over the budget," a General Accounting Office official suggests.
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