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.