Page 23 - FCW, May/June 2018
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 He added that the agencies with empowered CIOs “were the ones — not coincidentally, I would argue — that achieved the most interagency success.”
A political evolution
Historically, government technology policy has been a fairly bipartisan affair. Two of the most impactful laws in the past five years — FITARA and the Modernizing Government Technol- ogy Act — were inserted into annual defense authorization bills through voice votes. In addition, the House and Senate unanimously passed the FITARA Enhancement Act last year.
Even today, some former and cur- rent CIOs characterize government IT as one of the last bastions of federal policy untainted by politics. Many pre- fer to keep it that way.
“I would hope [the position] doesn’t become political in the sense of excit- ing the molecules where you get a bunch of partisan battles,” Scott said. “Good IT is good IT, and I think we’ve been fortunate to have — at this point at least — good bipartisan support in Congress.”
David Bray, former CIO at the Fed- eral Communications Commission, echoed those thoughts, telling FCW he believes federal CIOs operate best when they stay out of the political arena. However, he acknowledged that the trend toward politicization of the position is accelerating and wondered whether there is still room for nonpar- tisan CIOs in government.
Bray cited two incidents in the past five years that have set the position on a course for greater politicization: the botched rollout of HealthCare.gov in 2013 and the Office of Personnel Man- agement data breach in 2015.
“Nowadays IT mishaps are more fre- quently used as political tools for one party to toss mud on another political party, even if the IT was challenged because of poorly written policy...or the project was under-resourced or digitized poor processes,” he said.
Both episodes created embarrass- ment for the Obama administration, and the fallout demonstrated how politically effective it could be to highlight the technological stumbles of your political opponents, even if the underlying reasons had little to do with ideology.
Adrian Gardner, until recently CIO at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said that the more integral technology becomes to the delivery of an agency’s mission, the greater the impact it has on constituent and stakeholder perceptions.
“I think [the role] is definitely more political,” he said. “You think about the way that IT impacts the missions of these agencies and departments: It’s central to the way that they are executed. And when it goes wrong or it goes extremely well, we are impacting the brand.”
Not everyone views that shift as neg- ative. In an environment in which many agency authorities and operations are criticized as being hopelessly siloed, having an explicit connection to the White House can sometimes help a CIO wade through the bureaucratic mire.
“I found being a senior political [appointee] very helpful,” said Stan Soloway, who was a deputy undersec- retary of Defense during the Clinton administration and is now president and CEO of Celero Strategies. “I tend to lean toward the position that I’d like to see a lot of these C-suites be more political because they tend to have more authority and clout and ability to move things.”
However, that status can be a dou- ble-edged sword. Kevin Nally, CIO at the U.S. Secret Service, said making the role more political could benefit a CIO’s agenda when his or her political benefactors are in power but poten- tially undermine it when they’re not.
“My perception is if you tie yourself to a political party, eventually it is going to go away in four or eight years, and then if you want to stay in the federal workforce, you’re labeled,” he said.
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