Page 102 - FCW, August 2021

FCWPerspectives Post-pandemic IT
leadership
Have the heroic efforts of the past 18 months altered the CIO role?
Since at least the days of Clinger- Cohen, there have been efforts to secure IT leaders “a seat at the table” — to be full partners in
the business and strategy of an agency, rather than serving as
tech support after the decisions are made. And nearly 18 months of COVID-upended operations showed just how important that seat at
the (now-virtual) table can be. IT modernization and tech-driven innovation were the cornerstone of effective government operations though the pandemic.
FCW recently gathered a group of IT leaders from both the federal and local levels to explore how they are adapting to the “new normal” as emergency pandemic measures give way to permanently changed citizen and employee expectations. The goal was to see how CIOs, CTOs and other key leaders have seen their fundamental roles and priorities evolve, and where they expect to focus their energies in the months to come.
The discussion was on the record but not for individual attribution (see page 102 for full list of participants), and the quotes have been edited for length and clarity. Here’s what the group had to say.
IT in the spotlight
For most of the participants, the pandemic was a very public demon- stration of the value that their teams deliver. “I think people have a deeper and a more relevant appreciation for the power of technology and enable- ment from a leadership perspective,” one CIO said. That was true to some degree pre-COVID, but “now it’s def- initely a peer-to-peer understanding that the mission, the operations aren’t possible without the undercurrent of the technology.”
Whereas top agency executives might have previously viewed VPNs and bandwidth management as opera- tional minutiae, the “started to really see the pipes because they were living through them,” the official said. “And so people were seeing real time that, ‘Hey, I think we need to make sure we have the tech folks involved in this because that could be the linchpin.’ And so I’m hoping that that stays the same. I think that we all have short memories.”
The speed at which many agen- cies pivoted to telework and remote collaboration also earned new cred- ibility for the IT leaders who made it possible. “If nothing else, what that showed is we can move fast when the stops are out,” one official said. “When we set the bureaucracy aside, it is absolutely possible.”
“In no period of time that I can remember have we spent more of our corporate time talking about issues of IT,” another participant said. “Both in
terms of, ‘help me get my VPN work- ing for telework,’ and also the imper- ative to change the way we do our mission.”
Several participants also reported being sought out by business owners within their organization — not just for the IT to support remote work and digital transformation, but also for strategic advice.
A local-government official recount- ed that major departments used to operating on the ground in the com- munity had never really thought about what it would take to transition to vir- tual citizen services. “Not having peo- ple in the office meant that you had to really think and address how you were going to provide your service to citizens remotely. So IT became the go-to and the authority on how to apply a digital, equitable lens to cus- tomer service in a society like ours.”
“We had to serve up information about how customers could be ser- viced to those departments, and then help them come up with solutions on how they would continue customer service.
Not every organization embraced that perspective. “My biggest chal- lenge over the last year is getting my superiors to have a realistic expec- tation of what a small IT team can do,” said one official who said they were rarely if ever included in stra- tegic discussions. “There’s a lot that we have been able to do, and I salute my team on a regular basis for mak- ing it happen. But getting the bosses
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