Good afternoon, Mr.
Chairman, Ranking Member Clay, and Members of the Committee. Thank you
for inviting me to speak about role of an agency Chief Information Officer.
I have the opportunity to work closely with Federal CIOs, primarily through
Karen Evans, the head of OMB’s office of E-gov/Information Technology.
CIOs are critical
to the success of their departments and agencies. The CIO is an agency’s
manager of information resources. In this capacity, he or she is a strategic
advisor to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary about how IT investments
and activities can be used to improve service levels and program efficiency
and effectiveness. The CIO ensures that service, performance and cost
goals are clearly defined and the focus for each IT project and activity.
Additionally the CIO ensures that our systems are secure, our citizen’s
personal information is protected, and IT projects are delivered on time
and on budget (with particular attention to be paid to large projects).
Another important CIO role is reducing the amount of burdensome paperwork
created by the Federal government.
CIOs must be results-oriented
and focused on performance, not outputs. To be most effective, the CIO
should work most with and be responsible to the Department’s top
management person, which in most cases is the Deputy Secretary. The CIO
needs to be personable, broad and strategic enough to form strong partnerships
with Agency, financial, procurement, and real property leadership. Also
the CIO should be a proven people and project manager.
Finally, the CIO
must keep pace with rapidly changing technology and the need to integrate
all areas of agency service delivery (paper, phone, web, office visits).
Departments and agencies
are increasingly deploying information technologies to serve and assist
citizens, taxpayers, and Federal managers and employees, more accurately,
quickly and efficiently. We spend more money on IT than any other organization
in the world; so we should aspire to be the best at it. Our success in
this area starts with and depends most on the capabilities of our CIOs.