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FCWPerspectives
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November/December 2017 FCW.COM
dates. “There’s talk of small and micro agencies being on the chopping block,” he said, and “that’s getting them real- ly motivated because they don’t want to get on the radar. There’s $3 million here, $10 million there, so that’s an excuse to just roll them up and roll them out the window.”
The real problem with political vacancies is the stasis it allows in the career ranks, one executive said. Not- ing that his agency has had acting lead- ership “for quite some time,” he said the top career of cials have been in place for years, with mindsets that are similarly unchanged. Multiple agency CIOs have tried to change that, he said, but “it’s a huge in uence on what we’re able to do or not do.”
Other participants acknowledged that challenge but stressed the impor- tance of using pressure from the top to drive change.
“You get the culture of how it affects their day-to-day mission,” one execu- tive said of the career of cials resisting reinvention. “And you get the culture about how it affects their source of funding.” But in every meeting with the Of ce of Management and Budget, he said, the questions are the same: How are you aligning to the execu-
tive orders on cybersecurity and mod- ernization, and how are you driving ef ciency?
“Whatever interests my supervisor fascinates me,” the executive quipped. “The leadership team above me is very interested in driving down costs. They have turned to me and told me to get things done, and we’re going to get things done. I make sure every one of the CIOs and CISOs of the components is tied in. And if they’re not fascinated, they are fascinated when I do their per- formance reviews.”
Speaking CFO
Participants agreed that one key to driving that change is framing IT modernization and transformation in terms the chief nancial of cers can understand.
“CFOs want us to save money,” one executive said. “We want some- thing that’s easily maintained so we can understand our cost savings, so we can start driving some of the other priorities.”
But “the savings calculation has been a lot simpler when it’s a like-for- like” change, another said. When the conversation turns to transforming the IT infrastructure, “it’s not an apples-
to-apples comparison from the cost perspective.”
Some participants suggested build- ing a full modernization strategy and then developing multiple roadmaps to match different budget scenarios.
“We look at it as delivering this in chunks,” one executive said. “As we have the budget to do certain things, we work on those things, but we’re thinking innovation in the back of our minds.”
Others, however, said the best approach is to nd ways to self-fund transformation efforts, then use those results to show the CFO why such investments make sense.
The old approach of “give me more dollars and I’ll transform” is no longer valid, one CIO said. “You need to show the CFO how you extract money from somewhere else and apply it here. I think it’s a fundamental mind shift.”
Another executive said that, in some cases, risk management can be the lin- gua franca. But the language absolutely has to change. “You have to be direct, but you’ve got to be direct in terms they understand,” he added.
“When I’m talking to the CFO, I’m talking money numbers,” he said. “When I’m talking to acquisition, I’m