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FCWPerspectives
In addition, the IT team needs to broaden its expertise. “One of the things that we’ve put an incredible focus on is embedding finance and procurement skills on the IT team,” another executive said. “I’ve got proj- ect managers handling some of this stuff a lot better than their colleagues, and we found that it was crucial for our modernization accomplishments over the last three years to nail down some of those unsexy administrative competencies that are so critical to execution in the IT space.”
As one participant summed it up: “Modernization involves moderniz- ing so many different things — the workforce, the business principles or processes, the underlying technology. I always say what interests my super- visor fascinates me. My supervisors are interested right now in change, so my team is fascinated with deliver- ing plans that we can share weekly to meet the expectations of my lead- ership. We’ve gone multidisciplinary, and we pull people with different skill sets who may not actually be the right fit, but if they have the right drive, the right technical skills and the right curiosity, we want to reach out to them.”
Evolving technology capabilities
Of course, the technical details cannot be overlooked. “You can’t do a lot of the IT modernization work without laying the foundation and thinking about infrastructure,” one executive
said. “You can’t have an aging infra- structure. To put something like arti- ficial intelligence on it, you’ve got to have it secured, and it’s got to be fast and scalable.”
“And you’ve got to make sure pro-
PERSPECTIVES
Participants
Anita Byrd
Program Manager, Natural Resources Conservation Service, Department of Agriculture
Guy Cavallo
Deputy CIO, Small Business Administration
Jeffrey Donahue
Chief of Contracts Administration, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.
Stephen Holden
Associate CIO for IT Policy and Oversight, Department ofTransportation
Rebecca Piazza
Acting Executive Director, 18F, General Services Administration
Stephen Rice
Deputy CIO, Department of Homeland Security
Francisco Salguero
Associate CIO, Department of Agriculture
Todd Simpson
CIO, Food and Drug Administration
Elanchezhian Sivagnanam
Chief Architect, National Science Foundation
Howard Spira
CIO, Export-Import Bank of the United States
Antonio Villafana
CIO, Office of Health Affairs, Department of Homeland Security
Note: FCW Editor-in-ChiefTroy
K. Schneider led the roundtable discussion.The March 13 gathering was underwritten by CATechnologies, but both the substance of the discussion and the recap on these pages are strictly editorial products. Neither CA nor any of the roundtable participants had input beyond their March 13 comments.
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