Separate and Unequal

"If I compare myself to the CIO of Ford Motor Co., I don't have the same authority to make broad decisions, such as the decision to all move to one e-mail system," notes George Molaski, Transportation Department CIO. "Instead, I have to gain consensus from among all of the agencies. Then I have to get everyone to agree that the system we want to move to is acceptable to everyone. It's a very long and protracted process. I've got a pretty strong bully pulpit, but that's pretty much the extent of my authority."

A March 2000 document from the General Accounting Office called "GAO Executive Guide: Maximizing the Success of Chief Information Officers (AIMD-00-83)," describes other reasons why government CIOs don't have the same autonomy and authority as their counterparts in industry. Because the agency head is a political appointee who often is focused more on policy than on internal management and operations, he or she is sometimes less interested in the role of information technology, the guide says. The unique federal budget process for information projects creates other challenges.

Many of the differences between government and commercial CIOs have to do with the government's unique requirements, such as compliance with laws and with rules regarding records retention, procurement and contract management, says James Flyzik, Treasury Department CIO and vice chairman of the CIO Council.

But lack of authority is perhaps the biggest difference between the two types of CIOs. It's something that has to change, says Paul Brubaker, deputy CIO at the Defense Department. "There are some CIOs in the private sector who are weak, but for the most part they have control over the IT expenditures and some operational control over the infrastructure. And they report to the CEO in a meaningful way. That's . . . anything but the norm in the government today," he notes.

There are enough differences in power and influence that the CIO Council, in concert with the Industry Advisory Council, a group representing nearly 300 technology companies that do business with the federal government, recently met to identify smart practices from both public and private organizations. The goal of the combined group is to create suggested qualifications and criteria for a governmentwide CIO position and to better delineate the relationship between the governmentwide CIO and outside groups.

The government can learn from best practices in the private sector, but the learning goes both ways, says Sally Katzen, former deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget. "Some of the smart practices are coming from government," she says. "For example, even though there was all sorts of angst about whether the government would be prepared for the year 2000 date change, it turned out that we were in extraordinarily good shape. A lot of the things our government CIOs did in terms of developing teams and managing the process and refining the technology were very useful to industry."