Last week, I wrote about the ever-changing job of the federal CIO for FCW. Despite how crucial the role is, for many federal agencies the CIO is hampered by bureaucracy. As I write in the op-ed:
When the Government Accountability Office interviewed 30 CIOs at major agencies in 2011, only 56 percent said they had direct access to the agency secretary or administrator, down from 70 percent in 2004. Combine that downward trend with the proliferation of other chiefs and it’s easy to see that CIOs are struggling in a crowded management environment.
Because CIO is perceived as an “IT geek” rather than a strategist and business partner, their contributions are ignored and their need for control and information unmet. The result is an ineffective structure limiting the CIO’s ability to successfully govern the data at hand.
So what’s the solution? Based on my previous experience as staff director of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s Government Management subcommittee, I suggest empowering the CIO by leveraging the same model used to empower the CFO, namely the statutory requirements of the CFO Act, as applied at the Department of Homeland Security through legislation I drafted 9 years ago.
Our argument was simple: If we expected the CFO at DHS to play a major role in shaping [DHS’s] financial future, that person needed access to the top. We recognized that the only way to ensure that this would happen was to put it in statute. The same argument now holds true for federal CIOs.
As the government continues to incorporate data into its day-to-day operations, the CIO will serve as an important figure. The federal government needs to give CIOs the power necessary to control and understand the wealth of data that can be used for a more efficient and productive government entity.
Michael Hettinger is VP for the Public Sector Innovation Group (PSIG) at SIIA. Follow his PSIG tweets at @SIIAPSIG. Sign up for the Public Sector Innovation Roundup email newsletter for weekly updates.