Page 13 - FCW, May/June 2018

Commentary|BY DAVID WENNERGREN
The future of federal IT leadership
DAVID WENNERGREN
is a managing director at Deloitte Consulting and a former federal agency CIO and vice chairman of the federal CIO Council.
It’s time to confront, not ignore, the changing expectations for CIOs and shift the focus from compliance to innovation
Priorities and expectations for federal IT leaders are shifting, and it’s worth examining what this shift implies for the future of CIOs. At press time, IT efforts at eight of
the largest federal agencies are being led by an acting CIO. Almost 13 months passed before Suzette Kent came on board as the federal CIO, and the federal CTO position remains vacant. At the Defense Department, it will have been well over a year until Terry Halvorsen’s replacement (Dana Deasy) steps into the job. After seven months with an acting CIO, the Navy is reorganizing the position and office.
There are some outstanding individuals serving as acting CIOs. But having a named CIO with the confidence and backing of the agency head sends a message about the importance of the work and provides a stronger position from which to execute plans that require realignment of agency resources and changes to existing programs.
Recently, there has been a proliferation of new chiefs —
CTOs, chief data officers, chief digital officers, etc. Data analytics and digital solutions are widely embraced in industry and worthy of focused federal leadership attention. And CTOs in particular serve an important role in bringing attention to the use of new technologies rather than remaining wed to the outdated solutions that currently consume the vast majority of the federal IT budget.
Nevertheless, success continues
to require bringing together advances in technology with leading industry practices and leveraging technology to deliver mission results. For a federal agency, that effort spans a massive hierarchical organization with processes and governance that have been in place for decades.
Shifting to a more lean and agile organization will be hard
We should move beyond the status quo and hire technology leaders with the skills to transform legacy IT.
work. In reorganizing, it would
be wrong to take away the responsibilities for mission
results from mission owners. That typically leads to a lack of authority aligned to responsibility and expectations. Similarly, it would be counterproductive to establish or maintain “cylinders of excellence” that work independently on pieces of the technology puzzle, leaving the agency head to knit together and deconflict efforts.
And yet, while some federal agencies are shifting responsibilities away from their CIOs, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that the role of CIOs in industry has been increasing in influence by being
the focal point for change. Private- sector CIOs are driving the adoption of digital solutions and new technologies, focusing on corporate strategy and being deeply engaged in improving business operations.
If those priorities sound familiar, you might be having flashbacks to the early days of the Clinger-Cohen Act. Although the technologies have changed, the prize remains successfully bringing together people, processes and technology. Today, though, CIO roles at
some agencies have drifted away from those priorities in favor of compliance, certifications and checking the work done by others.
Rather than avoiding the issue, we should face it head on. Perhaps the “I” in “CIO” should emphasize the importance of innovation. The future will likely be less about multiyear, multibillion-dollar IT system development efforts and more about rapid deployment of incremental capabilities on mobile, digital platforms that engage customers and deliver results.
Whether we continue to call
them CIOs or not, we should move beyond the status quo and fill the senior technology leadership job at each agency with an individual who has the innovation skills necessary to transform legacy IT organizations. Those leaders must bring the ability to orchestrate across technology, processes and people to deliver
the results we seek rather than
the status quo we have known. We deserve no less. n
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