Agency CIOs support consolidation efforts

The Office of Management and Budget's plan to consolidate agencies' noncore services should be successful in the long term, but several obstacles must first be navigated, a panel of senior government information technology officials concluded.

In the panel's report, sponsored by the nonprofit Association for Federal Information Resources Management, the 10 participating high-level government technology executives voiced support for the trend of consolidating agencies' business operations.

The consolidation effort--which OMB calls its lines of business initiative--is an attempt to redefine how the government works and how agencies' management systems can be merged into superservice centers. OMB supports six consolidation efforts, covering legal case management, financial systems, grants, human resources management, federal health architecture and cybersecurity.

Panelists were split on whether legislation would be necessary to give the consolidation effort "lasting legs," with one saying it already has support from existing legislation and arguing that additional legislation would help reorient agencies' thinking on the concept.

Panelists also noted that agencies must be sensitive to congressional concerns about appropriations being used to fund cross-agency projects.

The IT chiefs on the panel voiced support for consolidation, adding that it will be necessary to measure cost savings to determine the success of the lines of business projects and that support from agencies' top leaders is important.

"Yes, it can work. Yes, it can be successful. Yes, it can fail," concluded one panel member. "The [lines of business effort is] not IT. Leadership for the initiative] outside the CIO is important."

Concluding that agencies are becoming better at managing services rather than simply providing them, the panel said the real issue to concentrate on is the quality of goods and services, not where they came from.

The panelists also concluded that CIOs have evolved from merely having a seat at the decision-making table to participating and leading in business transformation across the government.

The panelists included Scott Charbo, Agriculture Department chief information officer; Linda Cureton, Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Bureau deputy CIO; Lawrence Gross, Treasury Department associate CIO; Charles Havekost, Health and Human Services Department CIO; Randy Hite, Government Accountability Office director of IT architecture and systems; Mark Krzysko, Defense Department deputy director for e-business; Tarrazzia Martin, Citizenship and Immigration Services CIO; Price Roe, Justice Department senior policy advisor; John Sindelar, General Services Administration's Office of Governmentwide Policy deputy associate administrator and Melissa Wojciak, House Government Reform Committee staff director.