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question is: ‘OK, it’s there — now are we going to do something about it?’ It’s always about the implementation.”
The business that remains unfinished after his tenure includes challenges that have plagued the federal IT community for decades. Although CIOs are more empowered today than they were 16 years ago, nine of the 24 agencies governed by the Chief Financial Officers Act still do not have direct reporting relationships between their CIO and the agency’s top leader. CIOs continue to have only limited visibility into or control over their agencies’ IT spending, which GAO auditors say leads to duplicative and poorly conceived IT contracts.
Laws like the Clinger-Cohen Act and FITARA, as well as a recent executive order signed by President Donald Trump, have attempted to codify the role that CIOs should play as primary stakeholders within agencies’ leadership, but Powner said he believes more must be done to signal to IT professionals that their talents can be put to good use in government.
“Folks come here from the private sector,” Powner said. “Who wants to be buried at some agency?”
has put IT — with the President’s Management Agenda, the modernization strategy and the American Technology Council and all that stuff — at a more prominent level
than some other administrations.
Now the
question is:
‘OK, it’s there —
now are
we going to
do something
about it?’
It’s always
about the ” implementation.
Building up and maintaining the federal IT workforce remains a substantial challenge at all levels. The shortage of qualified IT employees — particularly systems engineers and architects who have technical and coding skills — puts agencies at a disadvantage when it comes to overseeing contractors.
“Contractors come in with their technical folks [and] blow the government out of the water,” Powner said. “You need to have some horsepower on your side to do the same.”
Another root cause of the government’s IT woes: The average tenure for a federal agency CIO is only 16 months to two years, which Powner said has a tremendous impact on the government’s ability to tackle big problems and implement a long-term vision. He said Congress should consider legislation that would make such positions subject to a five- year appointment so that CIOs would be encouraged to focus on hard problems rather than the quick and easy ones.
“They come in, pick the low-hanging fruit, claim a few wins, put a strategy in place and then leave without effectively implementing the strategy,” he said. “Then someone else comes in, and you know what? It’s a new strategy.”
Powner’s work has received praise from technology-minded policymakers in both parties. Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas), lead author of the Modernizing Government Technology Act, said Powner should go down in history for his role in holding agencies accountable for the technologies they buy and use. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), one of the lead authors of FITARA, credits Powner with using his audit power and congressional testimony to keep the pressure on IT leaders to implement the law effectively.
Filling that oversight role typically creates conflict, and often Powner’s job involved challenging agencies’ overly positive narratives about the state of their systems and networks. He has based his approach on a simple mantra: The facts are the facts, and people won’t respect you if you gloss over the true nature of the problem.
“It’s kind of this blend where you can hit them hard when you need to but be balanced [and] end on being constructive,” Powner said. “At the end of the day, you want to walk away being constructive.” n
“I think this administration
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