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CIO turnover, is it time for CIO 2.0? – Plus the 7 Gov Stories

Christopher Dorobek

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But up front: CIO turnover – is it time for CIO 2.0?

Is it time for government CIOs: The next generation? In some ways it is happening.

We told you yesterday about the departure of Robert Carey, the Defense Department’s widely respected principal deputy chief information officer. (Read the note to his staff on GovLoop’s DorobekINSIDER.)

But Carey is not the only one. In fact, he is only the latest in what feels like something of a parade:

This certainly isn’t a flood and we all acknowledge a certain amount of ebb and flow. That being said, we also know that there are many CIOs that will be leaving in the coming months as the presidential transition starts to loom. (Yes — it isn’t that far away.)

Yet it also feels as if there is a certain transition going on… maybe even a changing of generations.

It has been 18 years since the Clinger-Cohen Act created agency chief information officers. Yet nearly two decades later, there is still debate about the role, whether IT has a ‘seat at the table,’ and even if CIOs should have authority for agency IT spending, sometimes called the power of the purse.

Interestingly, these discussions go on in the private sector too. Earlier this week, Andrew Horne, the managing director at Corporate Executive Board, wrote an oped for The Wall Street Journal that could have been written for the public sector:

Bringing Business-Led IT Out of the Shadows: How CIOs can tap business-led IT spending. Business leaders and frontline employees are best placed to identify the technology that meets their needs. Horne shows four areas where progressive CIOs can support business-led IT spending while increasing their own impact and their companies’ success at obtaining full value from technology investments. But to address these interests, “CIOs will need staff with strong communications, negotiation, and teaching skills, who don’t shy away from challenging their counterparts outside IT,” he said.

To that end, I will be moderating a discussion on Thursday, April 17 at the Association of Federal Information Resource Managers (AFFIRM) where we will be discussing the changing role of CIO with Karen Evans, the former federal CIO, Dave Wennergren, formerly with DOD now with CACI, Szykmam, and others.

The SEVEN stories that impact your life

  1. FedNewsRadio: Cuts to military pay and benefits can’t wait, Pentagon tells Congress – “Pentagon leaders say the reductions to military personnel spending they are proposing as part of the fiscal 2015 budget weren’t easy decisions, but Congress needs to okay them this year, or the overall military budget picture will get far gloomier over the next five years.”

  2. Washington Post: Secret Service incident in Netherlands was on heels of car wreck during Obama’s Miami trip – “As the U.S. Secret Service arrived in the Netherlands last weekend for a presidential trip, managers were already on high alert to avoid any further em­barrassing incidents involving agents. The agency’s director had admonished supervisors after two counter-sniper officers suspected of drinking were involved in a March 7 car accident during a presidential visit to Miami, according to several people with knowledge of the incident. The driver passed a field sobriety test and was not arrested.”

  3. Washington Post: Even with more than two years to go, the chances for Obama nominees are falling rapidly – “Even with more than two years left in his term, President Obama’s ability to fill many of his administration’s most important jobs is rapidly diminishing. White House officials are scrambling to reassess their confirmation strategy in the wake of two major setbacks this month: the Senate’s rejection of lawyer Debo P. Adegbile to head the Justice Department’s civil rights division and signs that surgeon general nominee Vivek H. Murthy could go down in defeat as well. On Tuesday, the administration appointed Karl Remón Thompson as acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel — bypassing the Senate confirmation process.”

  4. GovExec: IRS Chief Warns Delivering Documents to Congress Could Take Years – “After three months on the job, Internal Revenue Commissioner John Koskinen faced a grilling on Wednesday from House GOP lawmakers who accused him of withholding internal agency emails demanded in a February subpoena. But Koskinen said his staff is fully responding to the request as originally defined, warning that a broadened interpretation of which categories of documents are relevant ‘will get you not thousands but millions of documents, and we’ll be at this not for months, but for years.’”

  5. FedNewsRadio: OPM’s focus in hiring reform shifting from speed to quality – “Starting this year, agencies will no longer be required to report the percentage of new hires completed in under 80 days as mandated in a 2010 OPM roadmap to improve the hiring process. Agencies will still report the average number of days a new hire takes.”

  6. GovExec: Bill Would Give Feds a 3.3 Percent Pay Raise in 2015 – “Federal employees would receive a 3.3 percent pay raise in 2015 under a House bill unveiled by a Washington-area lawmaker. The legislation, introduced by Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., would apply the increase to both General Schedule employees and wage-grade workers.”

  7. Gigaom: Amazon Launches Workspaces, New Government Certifications and (Finally) Price Cuts! – Amazon Web Services has received Defense Department approval, meaning that the AWS GovCloud, which earlier received FedRAMP certification, can be used by “more security-aware agencies,” GigaOm reports.

DorobekINSIDER water-cooler fodder… yes, we’re trying to help you make your water-cooler time better too…

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