Government IT leaders share success stories

High-level federal managers gathered at the Government Technology Leadership Institute in Washington Tuesday to discuss what works and what doesn't when managing IT projects. Woody Hall, the chief information officer at the U.S. Customs Service, spoke about the trials and tribulations of the Automated Commercial Environment, Customs' overarching systems modernization project that has had funding problems for years. First, Hall said, IT managers must gain buy-in from inside their own organizations and then must focus on gaining support from the project's external stakeholders, such as appropriations committees on the Hill. Hall also said agencies need to create credibility with agency oversight committees on the Hill. "We learned we had to do some of our homework better," Hall said. As a result, Customs hired a firm to help craft its business case for the project and then had an independent auditor investigate the proposal. As for securing funds for IT projects, Hall said, "if you don't keep reinforcing your story, it will get lost in the noise." Jack Kelly, director of the National Weather Service, counseled agencies to give control of a project to a single person. "I abhor multiple people being in charge of something," Kelly said. "Big IT projects are tough to do. More fail than succeed." Kelly helped the Weather Service turn around its troubled modernization program, the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System. Jan Hite, deputy director of the Intelink Management Office, said that sometimes success is both good and bad news. Intelink is the federal intelligence community's secret intranet on which intelligence is disseminated. Success means project managers will have to keep up with technology and continue giving customers better and better service. Hite said Intelink's success is based on the threat of intelligence agencies becoming irrelevant if they did not participate in the project. "If you don't put the product out there no one will know it exists," Hite said. "And if no one knows it exists, what good is it?" The Government Technology Leadership Institute, co-sponsored by Government Executive, continues in Washington Wednesday.