IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Those fail to succeed due to procurement issues are government projects related to IT or modernization. During a recent roundtable discussion on government procurement, some member CIOs pointed out reasons for such delays and came up with various papers citing the problems as well as coming up with suggestions to improve procurement.

“A government CIO should be at least the number two or number three executive in an agency,” said Tim diaz de Rivera, director general of the National Computer Center and concurrent commissioner of the CICT, echoing similar sentiments by Customs Deputy Commissioner Alexander Arevalo and Internal Revenue Deputy Commissioner Lilia Guillermo.

“The approach to ICT in e-governance is like the Philippines archipelagic nature. There’s an urgent need for all these ICT projects in government departments and agencies to be held together in a single agency. You will see the [positive] effect in the economy,” Chief Information Officers Forum Foundation Inc. (CIOFFI) president Ivan John Uy said.

Aneesh Chopra, CTO of the United States, is a Johns Hopkins- and Harvard- trained professional who was serving as Secretary of Technology for the Commonwealth of Virginia when President Obama tapped him for the CTO position. In general he gets very good grades for bringing attention to the highest levels the role of technology in addressing the nation’s priorities. With respect to his job, the White House website quotes him as saying, "Our mission is to assist the President in harnessing the power and potential of technology, data and innovation to transform the Nation's economy and improve the lives of everyday Americans."

The IT function in government organizations is at a crossroads. According to a recent study, 18 per cent of Chief Information Officers (CIOs) said that they expected their jobs to be eliminated in the next five years. The very success of technology is threatening to undermine the traditional position of IT departments. As government technology enters the organizational mainstream, public sector IT professionals need to redefine their roles within the organization – or face their inevitable fate.

Adobe conducted a survey in partnership with Fortune with more than 500 CIOs from the United States (200) and EMEA (150) and APAC (156) regions to better understand how the role of the CIO has evolved .

The study shows that these executives are at the center of almost every major business initiative, with 90% of US CIOs (75% in EMEA and 85% in APAC) saying they feel under pressure to digitally transform their businesses . With vaccine delivery, companies are turning to CIOs to ensure that employees can work productively and safely anywhere.

The CIO Council is the first initiative to bring together CIOs from across all parts of the public sector to address common issues. The Council has the strong support of the Prime Minister, Tony Blair and Cabinet Secretary, Sir Andrew Turnbull.

It would be hard to find a bigger fan of IT in government than Chancellor Gordon Brown.

In last year’s budget he twice noted that by "unlocking productivity gains from technology" and "[our] £6 billion investment in modern technology" which creates "the potential for greater economies in back-office and transactional services," he could promise a cut in administrative overheads by at least five per cent by 2008. That is on top of a cull of 40,000 civil service jobs.

The cross-government panel of Chief Information Officers, known as the CIO Council, has launched its own dedicated website at www.cio.gov.uk.

The new site contains further details of plans for a central team of 'heavy hitters' tasked with ensuring that government departments implement major IT projects successfully.

The Transformational Government report and Varney review have once again thrust IT up the government agenda, from big modernisation programmes such as NHS IT to the push for shared services. Andy McCue looks at the CIOs in both central and local government who are playing a key role in delivering a joined-up public sector IT strategy.

The fragmented political structure of London means that it would be extremely difficult to appoint a CIO or CTO to oversee IT policy for the whole city, according to the government agency tasked with managing e-government initiatives across the capital.

The Association for Federal Information Resources Management asked a panel of federal CIOs and other top technology officials to reflect on how the CIO role has changed since it was officially instituted by the 1996 Clinger-Cohen Act and where the role stands today.

The National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) held its annual conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, this past week. So what were the highlights? From the Internet of Things (IoT) to cloud computing to data center consolidation, which projects, technologies and issues rose to the top of the agenda? Most important, what’s on the minds of government CIOs, and what projects are they actually implementing as we move into 2016?

If you ask state government technology leaders about their enterprise priorities, what’s happening regarding the management of technology in government, and what actions are likely as we head into 2016, what would they say?

The role of federal CIOs includes a multitude of critical responsibilities—compliance, procurement, records management, privacy and security, as well as bringing mission-supporting technology to the workforce and citizens they serve. To deliver on these core obligations, CIOs must ensure that the services they manage are accessible to all, including users with disabilities.

Throughout my 28-year career in government, our commitment to accessibility for all users was unwavering. Yet the alphabet soup of accessibility requirements is complex, and slows the ability to provide services that meet the latest standards. Promoting a global accessibility standard will reduce friction between competing standards and create a more efficient path to accessibility, both in the U.S. and abroad.

That was the question posed to six individuals, all of whom have had a career in federal IT management, most of them working in the Office of the Chief Information Officer.

“There are some CIOs who have been fairly successful in implementing technology reforms in their agencies, but it’s getting harder and harder as we burden the system with additional regulations,” said Paul Brubaker, director of planning and performance management in the Office of the Deputy Chief Management Officer at the Defense Department. “It’s a hard job, and we dilute the responsibility with the proliferation of C-level executives.”

Each organization is different, and management structures also tend to vary across industries, but there are some common themes that emerge from the study. One is that senior management tends to perceive the IT group as a support function or as a manager of outsourced services. CIOs also too often fail to discuss IT issues in terms of the value they add to the business. Finally, some simply lack the political or business acumen necessary to succeed in the C-suite. Nonetheless, most CIOs still say they aim to become innovative leaders of the business. But how they can achieve that transformation?