Page 55 - FCW, May/June 2018

one participant said. “We’ve changed that paradigm so we have CIOs for specific mission areas. And now instead of 22 CIOs within the depart- ment, we’re down to nine. You have to bring all those things together because otherwise it means the CIOs only have their discussions at the bureau level, for that bureau. Sometimes they bring the agency CIO just because they say, ‘I need to have the IT guy so they can do the things I tell them to do,’ as opposed to saying, ‘What do we need and want, and how can we get there together?’”
Another executive said that even as a small agency, “we have to take our org changes to Capitol Hill. We wanted to rename one of our branch- es. It took eight months for the Hill to agree to it. So we put the same per- formance element in everybody’s job description, which allows me to pull all the right people without having to rearrange the organization. The secret was giving everybody those same proj- ect management criteria so that they could get credit, even if they’re work- ing under another team.”
At least one participant is using a similar tactic. “I’m not so much mov- ing divisions and branches around but looking at skill sets. I need to have more guys who can manage
data and leverage the data analytics. I need more guys who can do machine learning and deep learning. So I start- ed looking at where I can bring these guys in and how they fit within the existing organizational chart.”
Skill sets and leadership
The need for developing a work- force with the right mix of skills and ensuring leadership from the top were recurring, intertwined themes.
“With the administration change, we’re still waiting for our political leadership to deal with a number of front-of-the-house issues, and so we’re taking the opportunity while they’re sorting all that out to put as much focus as we can on what I call back-of-the-house issues,” one execu- tive said. “They’re not critically sexy, but they’re easy to see when you get sideways because typically stuff stops working. We have to be able to create space for failure in certain areas, and one has to receive input thoughtfully because the network being down is unacceptable.”
Another participant agreed, saying, “We focus on back-office activities because they have results that every- one can see. When you start mov- ing away from a brick-and-mortar data center construct to a cloud and
making it hybrid, then you’ve got to look at the skill sets necessary with- in the cloud infrastructure. So the catch is how do you ensure that you have uniformity of the capabilities and enforce your security controls around a hybrid brick-and-mortar and a cloud environment? You can’t do that if your leadership’s not on the same page.”
That statement struck a chord with colleagues. “Change like this takes time and it takes focus, and part of the challenge I see is a con- tinuity of leadership,” one partici- pant said. “I think the average tenure for a CIO is below two years. How do we get important things done if leadership is always flipping over? And how do we work through bud- get uncertainty?”
The group agreed that the conver- sation is becoming more complex and multilayered by necessity. “The technology part in the past has been more like an infrastructure piece, but now it’s a business enabler,” one par- ticipant said. “CIOs and the technol- ogy people can slide the innovation toward technology, such as cloud, AI or whatever is needed. But the CIO has to work with the CHCO, CFO and the program leaders to build the future up for us.”
May/June 2018 FCW.COM 47