U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800

Fax: (202) 512–2250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402–0001

98–209 PDF 2005

WHERE’S THE CIO? THE ROLE, RESPONSIBILITY

AND CHALLENGE FOR FEDERAL CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICERS IN IT INVESTMENT OVERSIGHT AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY, INFORMATION

POLICY, INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS AND

THE CENSUS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

JULY 21, 2004

Serial No. 108–260

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

DAN BURTON, Indiana

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

DOUG OSE, California

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

JOHN R. CARTER, Texas

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee

PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio

KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. ‘‘DUTCH’’ RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

BETTY MCCOLLUM, Minnesota

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Staff Director

DAVID MARIN, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director

ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY, INFORMATION POLICY, INTERGOVERNMENTAL

RELATIONS AND THE CENSUS

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida, Chairman

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

DOUG OSE, California

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

BETTY MCCOLLUM, Minnesota

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

BOB DIX, Staff Director

DAN DAILY, Professional Staff Member/Deputy Counsel

JULIANA FRENCH, Clerk

ADAM BORDES, Minority Professional Staff Member

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on July 21, 2004 ............................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Brubaker, Paul, executive vice president and chief marketing officer,

IS International; James Flyzik, partner, Guerra, Kiviat, Flyzik & Associates; and Debra Stouffer, vice president of strategic consulting services, Digitalnet .............................................................................................. 49

Johnson, Clay, III, Deputy Director for Management, Office of Management and Budget; Karen Evans, Administrator, Office of E-Government

and Information Technology, Office of Management and Budget; and

David Powner, Director, Information Technology Management Issues,

U.S. Government Accountability Office ...................................................... 8

Nelson, Kimberly, Assistant Administrator of Environmental Information

and Chief Information Officer, Environmental Protection Agency; Steven Cooper, Chief Information Officer, Department of Homeland Security; Vance Hitch, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Information Resources Management and Chief Information Officer, U.S. Department

of Justice; and Ira Hobbs, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Information

Systems and Chief Information Officer, Department of the Treasury ..... 77

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Brubaker, Paul, executive vice president and chief marketing officer,

IS International, prepared statement of ..................................................... 51

Clay, Hon. Wm. Lacy, a Representative in Congress from the State of

Missouri, prepared statement of .................................................................. 6

Cooper, Steven, Chief Information Officer, Department of Homeland Security, prepared statement of ...................................................................... 90

Evans, Karen, Administrator, Office of E-Government and Information

Technology, Office of Management and Budget, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 14

Flyzik, James, partner, Guerra, Kiviat, Flyzik & Associates, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 62

Hitch, Vance, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Information Resources

Management and Chief Information Officer, U.S. Department of Justice, prepared statement of .......................................................................... 97

Hobbs, Ira, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Information Systems and

Chief Information Officer, Department of the Treasury, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 104

Johnson, Clay, III, Deputy Director for Management, Office of Management and Budget, prepared statement of ................................................... 10

Nelson, Kimberly, Assistant Administrator of Environmental Information

and Chief Information Officer, Environmental Protection Agency, prepared statement of ........................................................................................ 80

Powner, David, Director, Information Technology Management Issues,

U.S. Government Accountability Office, prepared statement of ............... 24

Putnam, Hon. Adam H., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Florida, prepared statement of ................................................................ 3

Stouffer, Debra, vice president of strategic consulting services, Digitalnet,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 67

(1)

WHERE’S THE CIO? THE ROLE, RESPONSIBILITY AND CHALLENGE FOR FEDERAL CHIEF

INFORMATION OFFICERS IN IT INVESTMENT OVERSIGHT AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

WEDNESDAY, JULY 21, 2004

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGY, INFORMATION POLICY,

INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS AND THE CENSUS,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:40 p.m., in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Adam Putnam (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Putnam, Miller, Murphy, Ose, Turner,

Clay, and Lynch.

Staff present: John Hambel, senior counsel; Dan Daly and Shannon Weinberg, professional staff members/deputy counsels; Juliana

French, clerk; Felipe Colon, fellow; Jamie Harper, legislative assistant; Colin Samples and Sean Hardgrove, interns; Adam Bordes, minority professional staff member; and Jean Gosa, minority assistant clerk.

Mr. PUTNAM. A quorum being present, this hearing of the Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental

Relations and the Census will come to order. Good afternoon and

welcome to the subcommittee’s hearing on ‘‘The Role, Responsibility and Challenge for Federal Chief Information Officers and IT Investment Oversight and Information Management.’’

In 1996, Congress passed the landmark Clinger-Cohen Act,

bringing fundamental changes to the way the Federal Government

manages information technology. One of the most important parts

of the act was the establishment of the Chief Information Officer

as the position that leads agency efforts to manage IT.

Now, 8 years after the passage of Clinger-Cohen, we must ask:

Where is the CIO? Who do they report to? What authority do they

have? And why is the turnover for the position so high?

As many know, this subcommittee releases a report card on each

agency’s implementation of the Federal Information Security Management Act. On the last report card, the average grade was a D.

Additionally, the scores for implementing e-government under the

President’s management agenda, although improving, are not terribly encouraging.

2

The subcommittee has held several hearings throughout this

Congress examining the CIO’s responsibilities, including managing

IT investment, developing agency-wide enterprise architectures,

and implementing sound information security practices. Throughout these hearings, I have learned that CIOs in the Federal Government are facing significant uphill challenges in meeting their

responsibilities.

To better understand these problems, I asked the Government

Accountability Office to examine the role of the CIO in Federal

agencies. As we will hear today, some of the findings, and the questions they raise, are intriguing. For example:

The average tenure for a Federal CIO is only 23 months, yet experts say that a CIO needs 3 to 5 years on the job to be effective.

CIOs often do not have control over all IT investment in an agency.

Major bureaus may buy IT systems without going through the

CIO, making capital planning and effective IT management all the

more difficult.

CIOs juggle many responsibilities and often face internal push

back as they try to institute reforms at their agencies.

CIOs have 13 major areas of responsibilities, from IT investment

management to e-government to privacy. And with time and new

laws, the role is sure to expand.

Finally, Clinger-Cohen requires that CIOs at the largest department and agencies report directly to the agency head, but this is

not always the case.

In an increasingly networked world, the Government has become

more dependent on information technology to deliver its services.

Federal agencies cannot operate efficiently without solid leadership

from a CIO that is supported by the top officials in the agency.

I look forward to hearing from our panels of experts on this topic,

including the administration’s leadership in information technology, as well as former and current CIOs, to see what this subcommittee and this Congress can do to improve the situation.

I welcome all the witnesses.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Adam H. Putnam follows:]

3

4

5

Mr. PUTNAM. As is the case with all of our hearings, it is being

Webcast and can be viewed by going to reform.house.gov and

clicking on multimedia.

I would like to recognize the distinguished Member from Missouri, the gentleman, Mr. Clay, for any opening remarks that he

may wish to have.

Thank you.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank the witnesses

for taking their time to be with us today.

I consider today’s hearing an opportunity to extend the dialog

our subcommittee established in March, when several of today’s

witnesses testified about the strengths and weaknesses of IT oversight within the CIO community. Since the Federal Government

will spend approximately $60 billion on IT in fiscal year 2004, we

must strive to utilize the best practices for implementation and

oversight of our Government’s investments.

According to GAO’s testimony, the CIO community is facing challenges due to limited resources, a strained IT work force, and the

inconsistent delegation of IT management duties among non-CIO

personnel. Further, the lack of tenure among CIOs is hindering

agencies from achieving their long-term IT management goals and

objectives. Such factors tell us why agencies rarely meet their full

potential with regard to strategic planning, IT investment management, and work force training and development.

At the heart of the matter are two issues. First, with an average

CIO tenure of 23 months, we must promote mechanisms to ensure

that long-term strategic planning and implementation does not

cease due to limited tenures among those who serve. Second, I believe we ought to examine the issue of statutorily authorized CIO

responsibilities that are being delegated to non-CIO personnel. Perhaps these problems stem from the lack of tenure among CIOs,

human capital deficiencies, or inadequate agency planning. Nevertheless, it is our responsibility to identify the root cause of these

problems and seek out appropriate remedies.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I ask unanimous consent that the

full text of my remarks be included in the record.

Mr. PUTNAM. Without objection.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Wm. Lacy Clay follows:]

6

7

8

Mr. PUTNAM. With that, I would ask the first panel and anyone

accompanying you who will be answering your questions to please

rise for the administration of the oath.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. PUTNAM. Note for the record that all the witnesses responded in the affirmative, and we will move directly into testimony.

Our first witness is Mr. Clay Johnson. We are very appreciative

of the time that he has made to be before this subcommittee. Mr.

Johnson is Deputy Director for Management at the Office of Management and Budget, where he provides governmentwide leadership to executive branch agencies to improve agency and program

performance. Before that he was Assistant to the President for Personnel, responsible for the organization that identifies and recruits

4,000 Government officials. He received his undergraduate degree

from Yale and a master’s from MIT’s Sloane School of Management.

Welcome to the subcommittee, and we look forward to your testimony. You are recognized.

STATEMENTS OF CLAY JOHNSON III, DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR

MANAGEMENT, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET;

KAREN EVANS, ADMINISTRATOR, OFFICE OF E-GOVERNMENT AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET; AND DAVID POWNER, DIRECTOR,

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT ISSUES, U.S.

GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Clay, thank you

for having me here today. I bet that I am going to refer you to

Karen Evans for a lot of your questions, but let me give you my

general comments and a general view of IT and e-government in

the CIO world.

As you mentioned, Ranking Member Clay, we spend almost $60

billion a year on IT, more than anybody else in the world. We

ought to be nearly the best at it, and we are not, and we share that

goal. We need to figure out what we need to do to make sure that

we are the best at IT since this is a goal we share.

Something that the Federal Government does a lot of is sending

information to people and receiving information from people; we

send them money, they send us money. A lot of information and

money changes hands. We take large amounts of information and

we try to make sense of it for intelligence purposes; we take a lot

of information and put it in the hands of Federal managers so that

they can manage programs and costs more effectively. We move a

lot of information around, and it costs us $60 billion a year to do

that.

The CIO is the person in the agency who is responsible for making sure that money is being spent most intelligently, and that the

IT operations are producing the functionality that we intended

when you all authorized and appropriated the money consequently,

the CIO is extremely important.

Relative to a couple of questions that have been asked and suggested here, I personally do not believe that the CIO needs to report to the Secretary of the department. The CIO needs to work for

9

somebody who can help him or her be successful, and that is typically not the Secretary. The CIO is plenty important in an organization without having to report to the Secretary. I think the CIO

ought to report to the senior management person in an organization. At Homeland Security, for instance, that is Under Secretary

for Management, Janet Hale, who works most closely with Jim

Loy. In a lot of agencies, it is the Deputy Secretary. To me, working

for the Secretary is not the issue; it is working with somebody who

is most involved in how the department is managed.

And I think in terms of the primary responsibility that a CIO

has, that the CIO in an organization does a whole lot. I think the

CIO’s primary responsibility is to make sure that it is very, very,

very clear what a new IT project or an old IT project is supposed

to accomplish and what the desired functionality is. Usually, is the

bigger the project, the more disastrous it is or the more telling it

is. Oftentimes, we will get in the middle of the development of new

IT projects, and it is not clear what it is we are trying to accomplish, and then the problems begin. And the CIO, in my mind, is

the regulator, the person at the agency that can assure that does

not happen. Additionally, the CIO ensures that the program managers cannot spend IT funds unless the disciplines are in place,

and it is really clear what we are supposed to be accomplishing, at

what cost, for whom, and by when. And that is the primary role,

in my opinion, from a 20,000 foot view, for a CIO. There are other

responsibilities as well, but I think our discussion here should be

what does the CIO need to have to make sure he or she can perform that role most effectively.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Johnson follows:]

10

11

12

Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you, Mr. Johnson.

Our next witness, our most frequent witness, is Ms. Karen

Evans. Ms. Evans was appointed by President Bush to be the Administrator of the Office of Electronic Government and Information

Technology at the Office of Management and Budget. Ms. Evans is

a 20-year veteran of the Federal Government. Before joining OMB,

she was Chief Information Officer at the Department of Energy

and served as vice chairman of the CIO Council. Previously, she

served at the Department of Justice as Assistant and Division Director for Information System Management.

Welcome again. You are recognized.

Ms. EVANS. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member

Clay. Thank you for inviting me to speak about the critical role

that chief information officers play in driving increased agency performance, achieving results, and serving our citizens.

In fiscal year 2005, the Federal Government will spend $60 billion on information technology. This afternoon I will outline the vision, strategy, and tools the Office of Management and Budget and

the Federal CIO Council have developed to enable CIOs to be more

successful.

Eight years ago Congress passed the Clinger-Cohen Act, creating

the position of CIO and elevating them to senior management

rank. Throughout the last 8 years, but especially under the focused

attention of the President’s management agenda and as a result of

the E-Government Act of 2002, CIOs have taken on new and expansive responsibilities.

To be most effective, the CIO should work most with and be responsible to the department’s top management person, which in

most cases, as previously stated, is the deputy secretary. Without

a high performing and capable CIO, an agency will not be able to

fully achieve the goals of the President, Congress, and the American people.

As for my role, the OMB’s Office of E-Government and Information Technology is statutorily responsible for managing Federal

Government information technology and policy.

Throughout the past few years, we have implemented a series of

tools to support Federal CIOs.

First, we are empowering CIOs to drive business and technology

change through the President’s management agenda scorecard.

Supported by their secretary and deputy secretary, agency CIOs

use the scorecard to manage agency performance.

Second, we are driving accountability and responsibility to agency bureaus and program offices by requiring agencies to score and

remediate their exhibit 300 IT business cases before submission to

OMB. Also, we are requiring a closer alignment between the 300’s

and the Program Assessment Rating Tool, or the PART, to assist

the CIO in ensuring that IT investments enhance and compliment

the overall objective of a particular program.

Third, we are positioning CIOs to play a key part in the longterm success of their agency through our investment in enterprise

architecture. Developing their enterprise architecture, CIOs identify IT investments and develop a blueprint for the future, including detailed transition plans. Enterprise architecture, supported by

13

budget and related data, is bringing greater rigor and stronger decisionmaking to information resource management.

Fourth, we are enabling CIOs to provide leadership for IT investment performance by setting cost, schedule and performance requirements. Agencies are required to use the same standard used

in industry. This will result in tighter management and increased

investment responsibility by the immediate IT project manager and

CIO.

Fifth, we are providing CIOs with the ability to realize considerable cost savings for their agencies through acquisition activities

such as the SmartBuy program. This allows dollars to be invested

in providing better services and stronger results for core mission

responsibilities.

In addition to OMB, the Federal CIO Council plays a critical role

in supporting CIOs in fulfilling their obligation to serve their fellow

Americans, identify new governmentwide solutions, and ensure

their agency strategic goals are achieved. The Council is successful

because it exemplifies a critical e-government principle: encouraging cooperation and sharing of ideas and resources.

The Council is led by OMB Deputy Director for Management, directed by myself, and vice-chaired by Dan Matthews, the CIO at

the Department of Transportation. The Council membership consists of agency CIOs who chair committees focused on critical

issues before the Federal IT community. In consultation with OMB,

these committees are developing the tools to assist their fellow

CIOs and agency IT employees, including the CIO strategic plan

and the most recent recommendations on IT work force project

management qualifications.

While the necessary tools are in place, the road ahead for Federal CIOs is not without its challenges. To realize the vision of the

President’s management agenda and the E-Government Act of

2002, CIOs must provide leadership to achieve their e-government

migration milestones. In this, cross-agency collaboration is critical,

both within an agency and across agencies. We need to continue to

work in partnership with Congress, industry, and State and local

governments.

In conclusion, the administration will continue to work with

agency heads, CIOs, and the CIO Council to empower CIOs to

achieve results and transform our Federal Government into a more

citizen service organization.

We look forward to continued work with the committee on this

matter, and I would be pleased to take questions at the appropriate

time.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Evans follows:]

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you, Ms. Evans.

Our third witness for this panel is David Powner. Dave Powner

is responsible for a large segment of GAO’s information technology

work, including systems development and IT investment management reviews. He has over 15 years of public and private information technology-related experience. In the private sector, he had

several positions with Quest Communications, including director of

internal audits, responsible for information technology and financial audits, and director of information technology, responsible for

Quest digital subscriber lines software development efforts.

He has an undergraduate degree from the University of Denver

and a graduate’s degree from Harvard.

Welcome to the subcommittee. You are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. POWNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Clay.

We appreciate the opportunity to testify on the report we are releasing today on Federal CIOs. We have long been proponents of

having strong agency CIOs to lead technology solutions that improve program performance.

Eight years ago the Clinger-Cohen Act first required agency

heads to designate CIOs. Effective CIOs can make significant differences in building the capabilities needed to implement improvements in the management of the billions spent annually on IT.

This afternoon I will discuss CIO responsibilities and reporting

relationships, tenure, and major challenges. I will also discuss actions to address our findings.

First, CIO responsibilities and reporting relationships. As this

chart to your left, Mr. Chairman, illustrates, the 27 major departments and agency CIOs are generally responsible for most of the

13 key areas required by statute on critical to effective information

and technology management. Not surprising, all 27 CIOs reported

that they are responsible for areas such as capital planning and investment management, enterprise architecture, and information security.

However, not all CIOs are responsible for each of the areas called

for in law, and views were mixed as to whether it is important for

CIOs to have responsibilities for each of these areas. A significant

number of CIOs who do not hold these responsibilities believe that

it did not present a problem because other organizational units

were appropriately assigned these duties. A few former CIOs told

us that some of these areas were distractions from CIOs’ primary

responsibilities.

Regarding reporting relationships, 19 of the 27 CIOs told us that

they report to the agency head as required by law. Consistent with

Mr. Johnson’s comments, views were mixed as to whether it is important for the CIO to report to the agency head. Some stated that

a direct reporting relationship was crucial, especially when influencing budgets and policy decisions. Others stated that organizational placement was not as important as credibility and relationships with other key executives.

Next, regarding CIO tenure since Clinger-Cohen was enacted.

The median tenure of agencies’ permanent CIOs is just less than

2 years, or 23 months. Career CIOs, on average, stayed longer than

political appointees. Nevertheless, in either case CIOs are staying

less than the 3 to 5 years that was most commonly cited by both

23

current and former CIOs as the time needed for a CIO to be effective.

Since 1996, only about a third of the permanent CIOs who had

completed their time in office stayed 3 years or more. Among reasons cited for high turnover were the political environment, pay differentials with the private sector, and the significant challenges

CIOs face. Too short a tenure can reduce the CIO’s effectiveness

and ability to address the major challenges cited. These challenges

included implementing effective IT governance practices, obtaining

sufficient and relevant resources, and communicating and collaborating within the agency and with external partners.

Congress and agencies can take actions to address these findings.

With respect to Congress, hearings such as this, Mr. Chairman,

help to raise the issues and suggest solutions. To further assist you

in your oversight role, as requested, we are beginning work on private sector CIO responsibilities and best practices to complement

the report we are releasing today.

Agencies too can take actions to address the high turnover rate

and challenges cited. Specifically, human capital flexibilities such

as recruiting bonuses, retention allowances, and critical position

pay authority may help to attract and retain qualified candidates.

Regarding the major challenge of implementing effective governance practices, GAO and others have issued guides to assist agencies in institutionalizing sound governance such as our IT investment management framework.

In summary, not all CIOs are responsible for the areas called for

in law, nor do they all report to the agency head. In addition, most

CIOs do not stay in office for the 3 to 5 years recommended. Given

the many challenges facing CIOs, having laws that focus on the

most effective assignment of responsibilities, flexibilities to lessen

turnover, and governance practices to effectively manage critical

areas will be essential.

This concludes my statement, Mr. Chairman. I would be pleased

to respond to any questions that you have at this time.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Powner follows:]

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you very much.

I want to thank all of you for your opening remarks, and at this

time I will yield for the first round of questions to the ranking

member, the gentleman from Missouri.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank all the panelists

for being here today.

Mr. Johnson, GAO found that agency CIOs were unanimously responsible for IT areas such as information security and IT investment management, but were much less likely to be responsible for

areas such as information disclosure or statistical policy, all of

which they are statutorily responsible for. Should the CIOs be responsible for each of these 13 areas, and are OMB or the CIO

Council planning to respond to these findings?

Mr. JOHNSON. Ask Karen Evans after me, and you should pay

more attention to what she says than what I do. To answer your

question, if that is the law, then that is what they are supposed

to be doing, is one. I do think that 80+ percent of the value of a

CIO is in those top four, five, or six categories. And when we have

major problems in the IT arena, it is because we have a $100 million project that is producing nothing, or a $500 million project that

is 2 years past due. And that is where the bigger numbers are and

bigger opportunities to perform or fall behind.

But in terms of the CIO Council addressing those particular

things, I really don’t know. If it was agreed to that is what they

are supposed to be doing, then that is what they are supposed to

be doing.

Mr. CLAY. Let me ask you, then, a followup. Whose responsibility

does it become to fulfill the CIO’s role when the position is vacant?

And are there circumstances where the bureaucracy is demonstrating better results in agencies where the CIO position is vacant?

Mr. JOHNSON. When the position is vacant, the chief operating

officer of an agency, which may be the head of a smaller agency

or under secretary for management at larger departments will fill

the vacancies. If there is a vacancy in a political position or a career position, the work is supposed to be go on. Big IT development

projects are supposed to continue on budget and on schedule. We

are supposed to be running these agencies, and they are responsible for designating somebody to serve in an acting capacity in the

absence of a CIO; and it might be the deputy CIO, it might be

somebody from the outside, it might be any number of different

people. But we are not supposed to stop spending $60 billion wisely

just because the CIO is missing. We hold the operating head of the

agency responsible for everything that goes on in that agency,

whether all his or her senior positions are filled or not. The absence of people in those positions is not an excuse.

Mr. CLAY. OK, thank you for that response.

And I will ask you, too, Ms. Evans. Welcome today. What about

GAO’s findings that the agency CIOs were responsible for IT areas

such as information security and investment management, but

much less likely to be responsible for areas such as information disclosure?

Ms. EVANS. In looking at those responsibilities—and I have had

the opportunity to be an operational CIO, as well as being in component organizations, and I have had the opportunity to work with

44

statistical agencies. Statistical agency and policy coordination is

usually jointly developed in those agencies where statistical agencies are present, because by law statistical agencies have information requirements that are levied on them, as well, as to how they

need to protect that information before it is released out to the

public. And so usually what will happen is those responsibilities

will be jointly done. The two that you specifically mentioned are

usually jointly done with the general counsel’s office and the CIO’s

office, because there is an information dissemination piece where

the CIO’s policies and rules and procedures would come in place,

but there is also a programmatic piece associated with the management of that information.

So I think those two areas really highlight the partnership that

is required that a CIO must have into multiple program areas, because we don’t necessarily have the expertise in all the program

areas, so we have to partner with the appropriate expertise that we

need. So there is a programmatic aspect to the two pieces that you

have brought up that we would generally rely on general counsel

advice as well as the statistical heads of the agencies as designated

by law.

Mr. CLAY. OK, let me ask one last question. Do you believe the

requirement to have agency CIOs report directly to the agency

heads still make sense in today’s environment?

Ms. EVANS. I would like to think that the focus of this is that

IT is a strategic asset, and so the agency head, or the chief operating officer in this particular case, views IT as a strategic asset;

therefore, the CIO would be involved in those. Do I think it is necessary that they directly report to the secretary? I don’t think that

is the case. I think that what is important is the way that IT is

managed within that agency, and that it is viewed as a strategic

asset and that the CIO manages it that way with the appropriate

staff.

Mr. CLAY. Thank you for your response.

My time has expired.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Johnson, thank you again for being with us. If

you would just step back and in your time you have had an opportunity to evaluate this, see what is working, what is not working.

If we were to make modifications to the law governing CIOs, what

changes to the statute make the most sense for the operational

day-to-day activities of making the Government work, holding it accountable, and running it efficiently?

Mr. JOHNSON. Well, I have a better sense of what we need to

make sure that all of this happens. If you are asking what of the

Clinger-Cohen currently allows or doesn’t allow, I don’t know. But

what I think the CIO needs to be able to do, and needs to be

charged to do is to define really clearly what any dollars spent on

IT is supposed to produce which is their most important role as I

mentioned earlier. And oftentimes program managers say we need

a new intelligence system or a new financial management system,

and people start spending large sums of money before it is really

clearly defined what it is that we are trying to accomplish. The

CIO is the person that the head of the agency, Karen, all of you,

and I should look to when we have IT projects that run amok, that

are not producing defined goals with defined benefits at an acceptVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:27 Feb 11, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98209.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
45

able cost, on schedule. That is their primary responsibility, in my

mind, and they are the ones that we should hold accountable for

that.

If they need extra authorities or extra tools to be able to do that,

then we should allow that. I don’t know what Clinger-Cohen allows

now or not, but I do know that all too often we are not a very good

client; we don’t develop most of these systems ourselves, we hire

other people to come in, we act as their client, and we work with

them. The fact that we allow large, large sums of money to be

spent on these projects that are years behind or have not achieved

the functionality we expect, says that we are not as good a client

and as good a spender of these resources as we should be. To me,

we have to be a disciplined client and a disciplined spender. This

means we have to be rigorously inclined to define what it is we consider success and what it is we are trying to accomplish: by when,

for whom, and at what cost. And that is the discipline. That is the

rigor that is missing, I think, between a really good spender of $60

billion and a not-so-wonderful spender of $60 billion.

Mr. PUTNAM. What is the best management tool to impose that

discipline, that rigor, to have that accountability when programs do

go south? And, frankly, it happens more frequently than any of us

would like, and it involves an awful lot of commas and zeros.

Mr. JOHNSON. I think it is a combination of things. I think one

of the things the President’s management agenda points out is the

value of clearly defining what you expect to achieve in human capital, in IT or budget integration, or competitive sourcing. Then you

can hold someone accountable for achieving it, and you give quarterly updates on how good a job they are doing. So, for instance,

one of the things that the President’s management agenda does is

require the IT operations in the agencies to use Form 300’s, which

develop really well thought-out business cases. Are the business

cases acceptable or not; do they define the adequacy of the management of the project, the security provisions being made, the desired

functionality, and so forth? How good are our business cases, and

does the value of the system far exceed the cost? And we could talk

about what percent of the business cases are acceptable or not.

That is information, particularly with the bigger projects, that we

probably ought to be more interested in and pay more attention to

than we are.

But I think one of the things we have done is start to publicize

what percent of the case are acceptable or not and, what percent

of the systems are secure. That information is public, and some

agencies are great and some agencies are not so great. We ought

to be kind of hard on the agencies that are not so great. We required CIOs to utilize earned value management for all projects to

determine whether projects are on budget and on schedule. And we

keep track of what percent of the projects are within 30 percent of

the planned budget and schedule, as an intermediate goal, and the

ultimate goal is to get within 10 percent of the budget and schedule. That information ought to be made public; people ought to be

held accountable for getting it to an acceptable level and holding

it there.

So it is a clear definition of success, and I think information

about how good each CIO is or how good each agency is at achievVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:27 Feb 11, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00049 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98209.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
46

ing those standards should be made public. And we ought to be relentless about it. I think that we do a good job with the President’s

management agenda, but it can be even more visible than what it

is today, which is a charge to us. In the past, what I heard a lot

of people say about management issues in general in the Federal

Government was: we have always had goals, we have always said

we want to accomplish this with GPRA, and we want to accomplish

this with IT. What seems to be new in the last couple of years is

that we are actually expecting people to achieve those goals, and

we are actually defining more clearly what success means. We are

publishing report cards, and we are publishing performance information and letting the American people and Congress know who is

achieving those goals, who is not, and making it real clear that we

expect people to produce results.

There are things that we are employing now: earned value management, Form 300’s, President’s management agenda. There have

been other things as well that will allow us to do that even better.

I don’t know that we necessarily mandate those by statute, but

that discipline, I think is, in general, what is called for.

Mr. PUTNAM. So the oversight, the scrutiny, and the publicity

that arises from failing to meet those goals then is the accountability you speak of.

Mr. JOHNSON. Yes. Karen and I have talked about understanding

that the more money involved, the greater the risk. Maybe there

is a second and a third level of quality control that should exist for

large IT projects. How do we ensure that it happens? Do we require

it? Do we suggest it? I don’t know yet. But whenever we are trying

to write something new or develop a system, we are trying to do

something that has never been done before, so there is risk involved. We must find out how to manage that risk. We just need

to be more conscious of our track record, ensuring that it is not

going to go awry. We need to try to do more things to make sure

it doesn’t. So, to do so, we can identify where we do have problems,

identify where we do have success, make sure that we spread our

best practices and avoid our worst practices, and have lots of clarity and accountability.

Mr. PUTNAM. Ms. Evans, having been on both sides of this, is

there enough accountability in the system currently on individuals,

on CIOs?

Ms. EVANS. I would say that right now, based on the statutes

that we have in place, the authorities that are out there and the

responsibilities that we have, it is very clear what we are supposed

to do. I would echo the same comments that Mr. Johnson has just

made. And I was obviously in the Federal Government when

Clinger-Cohen was first passed, and have seen how it continues to

progress and evolve the roles, but the difference now is the accountability. We always knew what we were supposed to do; we

have always had an A–130. We have always had A–11s. We have

always had the guidance going forward of what we were supposed

to do, but now OMB has stepped up and the President, himself,

with the scorecard is really in a very public way publishing what

are the expectations, what do we expect agencies to do, how do we

expect them to perform, and holding them accountable, meeting

with them quarterly and asking them about the progress of how

47

they are going, giving us results that we can see, tangible results,

not just telling us that they are doing it, but us actually can see

it, because then, as the taxpayer, you will be able to see it as well,

has really made a difference.

And I have seen great, great changes that have occurred with the

introduction of the scorecard, holding the agencies accountable, and

it really has truly energized people within the agencies because

they know at the highest ranks of the Federal Government their

work is being looked at, and it is important and it is making a difference.

Mr. PUTNAM. So Clinger-Cohen, has it had its intended impact?

Ms. EVANS. I would say yes. And I would say that you are going

to continue to see more things happen. I think that Congress, 8

years ago, had the foresight to realize what information technology

was going to do, the impact that it was going to have on the Federal Government. But as we continue to evolve and as you see technology continues to just morph and morph and morph, that it has

had the impact; it has heightened the awareness, it has made

agencies’ officials be held accountable, and we are introducing more

and more tools so there is more clarity to what the intent of

Clinger-Cohen really was meant to be.

Mr. PUTNAM. The A–130 was last revised in late 2000. Is it outdated, it is in need of revision, or is it OK the way that it is?

Ms. EVANS. You are right, it has not been updated since 2000;

however, as each piece of legislation comes out, we have implemented policy guidance to deal with the implementation of that

legislation. We are in a review process for it right now to see if we

really do need to update it, but there are no policy gaps as far as

guidance to the agencies are concerned, because we have issued

those. We are reviewing it. If we were to update it, it wouldn’t happen until the next fiscal year, going into the next fiscal year.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Powner, you pointed out the turnover in the

CIOs in your report.

Mr. Johnson, we have had hearings about this at all levels of the

Federal Government, the human capital problems.

How big a deal is it? Is it typical of what we are seeing across

the Federal Government, a little bit better, a little bit worse, is it

a crisis, is it one of many problems? How would you characterize

it?

Mr. JOHNSON. I know in the political appointees in general, their

adage is—which is what I was involved in with the President when

he first came to office—the average time supposedly that somebody

stays in a political position is 21⁄2 years or so, and the general reasons given for that is this is hard work, the volume of work, the

public scrutiny, it is hard. You have been here long than I have.

And it doesn’t mean necessarily someone leaves, but they stay in

one job on point 11, 12 hour days, and 21⁄2 years plus or minus,

then they tend to move to something else or the good ones are

asked to do something else, whatever, but 21⁄2 years. So the fact

that the turnover for CIOs is 2 years doesn’t strike me as being

dramatically different.

I know of CIOs who, in general, can come in and have a huge

impact on an organization within months, and I know other CIOs

that can come into an organization and be there for 3 or 4 years

48

and have little impact. So I wish CIOs in general would be there

3 or 4 years, versus one or two, but I am not sure there is a direct

correlation between time on the job and their effectiveness.

This is a very hot market, and I don’t know what impact the IT

and the Internet growth of the industry in the late 1990’s had on

turnover. I would think it would be hard for us to compete with

people that are hiring our CIOs and paying them lots of money and

lots of stock options and so forth. It would be easier when the market is not heated up like that.

I don’t know that there is any immediate, direct problem with

CIO turnover, because I think a good CIO can come in and have

an impact in a very short period of time. I think the primary thing

is being able to hire them initially and get them on board in a

hurry, more so than once they are here, keeping them and letting

them grow into the job. We spend so much money in almost every

agency; we don’t need to be hiring CIOs that can take 18 months

to get up to speed. Invariably, when they walk in on the job, they

have tens of millions of dollars of projects that need to be managed

and huge issues bigger than anything they have ever faced, and

they need to be effective pretty much within the first couple of

weeks.

Mr. PUTNAM. Ms. Evans, you chair the CIO Council. How would

you characterize the turnover issue?

Ms. EVANS. I think it is indicative of the marketplace of where

we are competing. Is it a problem that their turnover is every 18

months? Again, I would re-echo the same comments that Mr. Johnson did. When you come into the job, you have to be able to hit the

ground running. You could be there 3, 4, 5 years and not be a very

effective person, and not just as CIO, but in any position. So do I

see a change on the Council? They come in, we come in, we bring

them up to speed, we make sure that the best practices are there

so that they have everything that they need to hit the ground running. But for the most part, do I think that it impacts our overall

performance on the Council? I would say no, because we have our

processes and our procedures and our best practices; we continue

to evolve those. We have those in place so that we can ensure that

the turnover doesn’t impact the functioning of the Council.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Powner, do you agree with that?

Mr. POWNER. In terms of the tenure and the turnover with the

CIOs, a couple things that we heard that actually could help to

mitigate some of the transition periods is the deputy CIO position.

Many CIOs mentioned to us the importance of that position. The

other thing that is very important, and this is in line with what

Ms. Evans is saying here, is when we have performance-oriented

goals, such as the E-Gov section of the PMA, which really covers

a number of those top seven areas there, that keeps the focus on

several key IT management areas, whether we have turnover or

not. That is very important. Your grades, that is another area.

Folks are very focused on those grades, whether we have turnover

at the CIO position or not, because the heads of those agencies are

clearly focused on those grades and those scores.

Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you all very much. We have three panels

today, so we are going to move right along. I really appreciate all

of you coming down and spending some time with the subcommitVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:27 Feb 11, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00052 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98209.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
49

tee. These are important issues and you have all been very supportive of this subcommittee’s agenda in working together with you

to improve our IT efficiency.

So the subcommittee will stand in recess and we will arrange for

the second panel.

[Recess.]

Mr. PUTNAM. If the witnesses and anyone accompanying them

will please rise and raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. PUTNAM. Note for the record that all of the witnesses responded in the affirmative. We will move immediately into testimony.

I would like to welcome our witnesses for this panel and introduce Paul Brubaker. Mr. Brubaker served as executive vice president and chief marketing officer for IS International. He has responsibility over marketing and helps guide IS toward future opportunities. He joined IS with over 16 years of experience in government services and the public sector. As the former deputy CIO

for the Department of Defense, Mr. Brubaker was the Department

of Defense’s second highest ranking technology official.

Welcome to the subcommittee. You are recognized for 5 minutes.

STATEMENTS OF PAUL BRUBAKER, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER, IS INTERNATIONAL;

JAMES FLYZIK, PARTNER, GUERRA, KIVIAT, FLYZIK & ASSOCIATES; AND DEBRA STOUFFER, VICE PRESIDENT OF STRATEGIC CONSULTING SERVICES, DIGITALNET

Mr. BRUBAKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Clay, and members of the subcommittee. I am here today speaking as a citizen.

These are my own views and do not reflect those of my firm, per

my general counsel.

I was originally involved in developing the Clinger-Cohen provisions, including the CIOs and the deputy CIO provisions that were

in the report language, as well as served at DOD, so I think I have

a fairly unique perspective on both the formulation of the legislation and how it is applied at the largest Federal agency.

I would like to commend you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Clay, as

well as the General Accounting Office, for convening this hearing

today and undertaking this review. I would like to point out that—

you see these outlined over here in the chart that GAO put forward—work before programs run amok, not after they run amok.

Management is another area responsibility in developing and enhancing architectures, including operational architectures, and

standards is absolutely key, encouraging and ensuring process

change throughout the organization, and the intent was for visionaries and strategic thinkers as it relates to applying information

technology in the enterprise. What is the most useful reporting

structure? Simply reporting to the agency head. GAO made reference to a chief operations officer in their report today, which I

believe to be an excellent idea and merits further study. Now,

should a COO be established, then I would highly recommend that

both the CIO and the CFO report directly to that person.

The bottom here is that a seat at the management table is absolutely critical for a CIO to be effective; they should be tantamount

50

to the financial officer in terms of the organizational structure.

Wherever that CFO reports, the CIO should report as well.

You asked about the specific duration of time in which a CIO

must remain in their position to be most effective. Honestly, it has

to be longer than 19 to 32 months, as was outlined in the report,

especially given the fact that the general consensus out there in

the management circles is that you need 3 to 5 years to be effective. I would highly recommend term appointments on the part of

CIOs, certainly greater than 6 years, no more than 12; can be reappointed; perhaps some perks related to retirement that would attract some of the best and brightest of that position.

You asked about characteristics and qualifications that a CIO

should possess. Simply put, knowledge of applied technology and a

nose for transformation, a desire and a passion to reform, and business acumen. It is absolutely critical that if they are operating the

capital planning and investment control process, that they understand concepts like risk management, risk mitigation, return on investment, and so forth.

Major challenges? In a word I can sum it up: culture. The culture

of the organization, when we introduced the concept of CIO, was

not all-embracing, and basically what you have is an informationaged position that we are putting into an industrial-aged bureaucracy, and, frankly, it has been difficult and a long road to get it

to work.

And I would be pleased to answer any questions that you may

have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Brubaker follows:]

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you very much.

Our second witness is James Flyzik. Mr. Flyzik is a partner in

a consulting company he co-founded. Before this, he served as Senior Advisor to Governor Ridge in the Office of Homeland Security.

He provided advice on the national strategy and information management. Prior to that, he was the Chief Information Officer for the

Department of the Treasury.

Welcome to the subcommittee. You are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. FLYZIK. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Clay, distinguished members of

the subcommittee, it is my pleasure to testify today on issues of

critical importance to achieving world-class performance within

Government agencies. I have been involved in information technology issues during my entire 27-year government career, and I

now work in the private sector to find ways to help make government IT programs succeed. I applaud the subcommittee for making

these issues a priority.

I had the honor and privilege to work for the public for over 27

years as a career civil servant. I held senior information technology

positions at Secret Service, Department of Treasury, CIO, served as

Vice Chair of the Federal CIO Council from 1998 until 2002. I also

had the privilege to head up the IT team during the reinventing

government program and served on the administration’s team during the crafting of the Information Technology Reform Act, the

Clinger-Cohen legislation. I finished my career as an IT advisor to

then Governor Ridge, following the terrorist attacks of September

11. In all these roles, the empowerment of Federal CIOs was the

key issue that impacted program success.

My message today is simple: If the Government is to take full advantage of the power of IT, it must make achieving world-class IT

implementation a priority on the agenda of the heads of our Government agencies. I believe progress to date has been good, but far

short in what is needed and far short of what Clinger-Cohen originally envisioned. Many CIOs today find themselves being held responsible and accountable for results, but lack the authority to impact the programs they are expected to implement.

I participated in the GAO study of these issues. With that, I will

address the five questions posed by the subcommittee.

What are the responsibilities of a Federal CIO most critical to

success? The CIO must be responsible to bring best-in-class IT

practices to Government agencies. This implies responsibility for

gaining detailed understanding of the key critical mission objectives and defining how IT can realize these objectives. If we are to

hold CIOs accountable for program performance, then we need to

empower them to make strategic decisions about resources. This

means responsibilities for IT capital planning, investment decisions, budget execution, program and portfolio management. I

would also suggest that an important responsibility for a CIO is to

become credible in an agency and part of that senior team making

strategic business decisions. This means becoming credible to senior political executives, career executives, middle management, and

subordinates. Only when a CIO is seen as a key player can he or

she be influential in getting results. A CIO will gain this credibility

by understanding the business objectives of the agency and how IT

can add value to meeting those objectives.

60

On the question of reporting structure, a CIO that reports to the

agency head immediately gains the empowerment of being on the

senior leadership team if that CIO has a seat at the table. A seat

at the table means being part of the strategic decisionmaking, not

merely a line on an organization chart. Can other organizational

models work? Yes, but only when the CIO gains the empowerment

to effectuate change and is seen as part of that senior leadership.

For example, during my tenure as CIO at Treasury, I reported on

a dotted line to the secretary for all IT matters, but administrative

reporting was through an assistant secretary. Yet I believe this

worked. Why? Because the assistant secretary made it clear to all

subordinate bureaus that all IT budget and program decisions

needed to be approved by the CIO. In this case, it wasn’t structure

that empowered, it was process. But I must also point out that empowerment doesn’t guarantee results. Empowerment provides the

opportunity for results. A competent CIO will get the results.

In reference to the question of time duration, I believe a CIO

cannot achieve any meaningful results if they are in that role less

than 2 years, based on budget and procurement cycles. On the

other hand, I also believe it is in the best interest of Government

agencies to bring in fresh ideas over time. I believe it a good practice to rotate CIOs and into key CIO Council executive committee

positions to encourage the development of alternative viewpoints. I

believe CIOs should be rewarded for innovative and creative enterprise approaches such as heading up governmentwide initiatives.

In addressing the question of characteristics and qualifications,

I would like to point out that the Federal CIO Council invested a

great deal of time identifying many of the technical and business

skill sets required to be a successful CIO. Universities now teach

these. But rather than reiterate these well documented qualifications, I would like to point out that a good CIO needs to understand technology, but, more importantly, how to apply that technology to solve business problems. A good CIO has technical skills,

finds ways to stay current on technology, understand business

practices and business skills such as financial management, and

know how to build relationships, relationships with Congress, top

managers in the agency, the private sector, and their peers.

Challenges they face are numerous and dynamic. The delicate

balance of privacy versus national security, interoperability, information sharing. But in my opinion, the most challenging issue is

the need to use technology to challenge and change agency cultures, traditional institutionalized processes. We have seen major

programs continually plagued with cost overruns and time delays.

We see now new powerful approaches such as performance-based

acquisitions to address these. The concept is simple, yet implementing these concepts requires not just the CIO.

Mr. Chairman, to sum up, if UPS and the Federal Express can

tell you where and when your package is located at any point in

time during shipment with a click of a mouse, why can’t Government tell you when your tax return will arrive, how to change your

mailing address without going agency by agency, when your street

will be cleared from snow? Citizens demand and expect fundamental government information in realtime.

61

I thank the subcommittee for giving me this opportunity to make

my points, and I look forward to working with you in any way I

can to help move these important issues forward. I would be happy

to answer questions when appropriate.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Flyzik follows:]

62

63

64

65

Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you very much.

Our third witness on this panel is Debra Stouffer. In February

2003, Ms. Stouffer became vice president of strategic consulting

services at DigitalNet Government Solutions, where she is responsible for developing and managing a comprehensive suite of analytical and technical services designed to enable government and commercial business leaders to achieve improved mission performance.

She previously served in the Federal Government as the EPA Chief

Technology Officer, as the Federal Enterprise Architecture Program Manager at OMB, and as the Department of Housing and

Urban Development’s Deputy Chief Information Office for Information Technology Reform.

Welcome to the subcommittee. You are recognized.

Ms. STOUFFER. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and

members of the subcommittee. Thank you for inviting me here to

discuss the evolving role of the Federal CIO. My experience in the

public sector has shaped my perspectives on the topics that I will

share with you today.

In terms of the CIO’s responsibilities and criticality, the role of

the Federal CIO today is broader and more complex than it ever

has been. Further, the statutory and regulatory framework is complex as well. CIO responsibilities are derived from numerous IT-related statutes and regulations. For example, there are over nine ITrelated statutes that lay out the CIO’s responsibilities, and just

since 1994 at least 12 separate memoranda and circulars issued by

OMB related to Federal IT policy and budget procedures.

New Federal CIOs often find it difficult to understand the Federal requirements to which they must comply and the competencies

they must exhibit to perform effectively. Further, CIO duties vary

across the Federal Government, depending upon the agency’s size,

complexity, and organizational structure. As size and complexity

increase and structure is disaggregated, the influence the CIO has

over business and budget decisions is likely to diminish.

Until the past few years, Federal CIOs have been responsible for

the more traditional information resource management concerns.

Recently, however, as a result of the administration’s efforts to ensure Federal agencies are citizen-focused and results-oriented, the

CIO is increasingly viewed as a change agent for business modernization and transformation. Further, they must ensure that IT

investments are delivering intended results in terms of mission

performance, not just finishing on time and within budget.

In terms of reporting structure, many Federal CIOs report to the

executive heads of the agencies. I believe, however, similar to many

comments you have heard today, that based on their evolving role,

that CIO effectiveness would improve with organizational reporting

to their agency’s COO, that is, those executives responsible for the

agency’s day-to-day business operations This would provide the

CIO with equal footing among agency business leaders in all key

decisions regarding agency business operations. In addition, Federal CIOs informally report to the Administrator for Electronic

Government at OMB; however, this reporting structure is not clearly defined in the E-Gov Act of 2002.

In regards to their optimal time duration, it should be longer.

Available evidence suggests that the median tenure of a Federal

66

CIO is about 2 years. Often, 3 to 5 years is needed to lead business

transformation. Equally important to tenure is the ability to participate in executive decisions, an activity often limited to politically appointed business leaders. Some CIOs are politically appointed; others are not. All need to have a seat at the table on their

senior management teams. Perhaps term appointments are an option.

In regards to personal traits and qualifications needed, CIOs

must certainly have the correct technical and business and management skills to meet their agency’s needs. Further, to lead transformation, they must be strong leaders, strong communicators, and

have a strong business acumen.

Challenges include the following: understanding the existing and

complex Federal statutory and regulatory framework for information resources management; recruiting and retaining skilled IT professionals, to include project managers; fostering business and cultural change to achieve e-government transformation; maturing

governance processes and integrating those governance processes;

and ensuring adequate resources for cross-agency collaboration are

identified and made available to the people that are charged with

implementing e-gov initiatives.

In conclusion, Federal CIOs can and should play a significant

role in improving the management and performance of the Federal

Government, and ensuring that our Government is more responsive

to the needs of citizens. IT has transformed the way that we all do

business, and none of us can predict what the future may hold. As

the CIO role broadens and expectations increase, so do the challenges. I am confident, however, that with the proper support from

Congress and the administration, CIOs can be successful and effective in their role.

I thank the committee for the opportunity to speak this afternoon.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Stouffer follows:]

67

68

69

70

71

72

Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you very much. And I have been notified

that we are expecting a series of votes around 4, so I would ask

for your indulgence. We are going to cut the questions short for

this panel in hopes of being able to get through the third panel before the voting bells go off.

This is a unique opportunity, I would assume, for former CIOs

to be able to come back and do essentially an exit interview with

Congress and have the opportunity to reflect on what you wish

someone would have told you or prepared you for as you went into

the job, so that is my first question: What would you advise someone who is considering taking this job, in its current role and its

current form, with its current responsibilities? What is it that you

would share with them that you wished someone had shared with

you?

And we will begin with Mr. Brubaker.

Mr. BRUBAKER. Well, I came at this with a little different background; I wasn’t in the Federal Government, I had actually come

off the Hill and gone into industry for a few years. So having been

involved in what I thought I knew what the requirements were,

having been involved in drafting legislation and the position description, if you will. My advice would be don’t expect the agency

to have an understanding of the roles and responsibility of the CIO

when you walk in. Part of the job is actually to educate your management and the people that you work with and your colleagues in

the agency as to what your role is. The first time you start snooping around IT investments—at least this was true when I was at

the Defense Department—people tend to get pretty excited; they

feel somewhat threatened. So you have to concentrate on your governance processes, and the culture and how you are going to overcome cultural obstacles, and have a proactive plan for addressing

those issues.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Flyzik.

Mr. FLYZIK. Yes, Mr. Chairman, and you are right, it is kind of

unique to have an opportunity to testify today, for the first time,

where I didn’t need to go through a clearance process with the legislative affairs, the legal counsel, OMB, and all the other various

chains, but be able to write and say what I have been thinking.

But with that in mind, I would suggest to you, sir, that building

relationships and partnerships has to be a first step. As I mentioned in my testimony, I believe a CIO can only be effective if they

are credible, and credible means building relationships within their

own agency, the career officials, the political officials, members of

the Hill like yourself and your staff, and OMB and those others,

and the private sector. I think there is a very fine, delicate balance,

too. A CIO needs to reach out, get out in the community and build

these partnerships, but at the same time remember their responsibilities within their own agency. And I think it is a very delicate

challenge that CIOs face to do that, but I think it is critical to gain

that credibility, because once one gains credibility, then one has

the power to effectuate change.

Mr. PUTNAM. Ms. Stouffer.

Ms. STOUFFER. Several things are critical, in my opinion. One is

to know the business. The CIO has to understand the business of

the organization, understand where the performance gaps are, and

73

be able to apply technology to close those performance gaps or enable business performance. Second, obviously, know information

technology. You can’t offer up a solution of enabling technology if

you don’t understand it and know how to apply it. Third, in building relationships, you need to communicate, communicate, communicate value, and you have to do that differently with different

stakeholders. So it is important not to have one story, but to be

able to communicate the value of enabling technology to different

people in different ways so they understand it from their own

unique perspectives.

Mr. PUTNAM. I would ask all of you also if is it critical that the

CIO report directly to the head of the agency? And I would ask you

to be brief. Something more than yes or no.

Mr. BRUBAKER. At this moment, yes. I think I covered it in my

statement.

Mr. FLYZIK. As mentioned in my statement, I think it certainly

helps gain that credibility I am talking about. I also suggested that

the key issue is can the CIO be in the strategic management team

and be empowered. If we are going to hold the CIO accountable for

results, then they need the responsibility and the authority to control resources, both financial and human resources, to get the job

done.

Ms. STOUFFER. In my opinion, it could be more effective for them

to report to the COO, and that is a different person in different organizations. I say that because the head of an organization or the

secretary or administrator is typically outward facing, they do a lot

of externally-oriented work. The deputy or whoever is effectively

the COO of the organization really runs the day-to-day business of

that organization. Informally, if not formally, the assistant secretaries and administrators report to them anyway.

Mr. PUTNAM. Is turnover a big deal? And if so, how do we fix it?

Ms. Stouffer.

Ms. STOUFFER. I think that it is. And, I believe that term appointments, and perhaps politically appointed term appointments,

might be one action to consider. It might help to have term appointments that extend more than 18 months or 2 years. Often a

CIO has even a shorter period than that to be effective when they

are politically appointed, because the time it takes to bring them

into the agency. Yet, because political appointees start out with a

great deal of credibility, they have an easier time coming to the

table with the other senior business leaders. For this reason, perhaps a politically appointed term would make the most sense.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Flyzik.

Mr. FLYZIK. Mr. Chairman, I believe the answer to that question

is it depends how effective the deputy and the staff below the CIO

are, and how well that succession planning has been built. If you

build a very strong team and effective staff, then a program should

be able to sustain its momentum through a turnover process. If you

can sell your program to the ultimate customer of government, that

is, the citizen of government, then the program will live beyond an

individual. And the question is developing key players that can run

those programs coming up right behind that CIO.

Mr. BRUBAKER. Mr. Chairman, I strongly advocate term appointments. In my written statement I gave a little more detail on it,

74

but I think a term appointment of at least 6 years for a CIO would

be smart, with a Senate confirmation for those who are statutorily

required. You know, from personal experience, people can’t wait

you out. I actually, during my lame duck period, if you will, while

the administration changed and people knew I was going out, I actually had somebody tell me that they were going to wait for the

next guy, because I was challenging a program and something that

they wanted to do. So I am a strong advocate of term appointments, political, with Senate confirmation for the statutorily appointed ones.

Mr. PUTNAM. Why is it so important that a CIO have Senate confirmation?

Mr. BRUBAKER. Why is it important?

Mr. PUTNAM. I know you would never get that question in the

Senate.

Mr. BRUBAKER. It is important for oversight purposes, to make

sure that you take a look at—it provides an opportunity to talk

about what that agenda is going to be. It provides an opportunity

for the appointee and the agency to commit to certain types of oversight and to ensure that appointee is going to be given the support

on the part of the agency. It gives you an opportunity to have a

hearing, it gives you an opportunity to talk to some of the agency

officials to make sure that they understand what the roles and responsibilities are, and I think it is good to vet those people through

that process.

Mr. PUTNAM. How do we hold CIOs accountable?

Mr. BRUBAKER. Mr. Chairman, can I add something to that as

well?

Mr. PUTNAM. Sure.

Mr. BRUBAKER. If you are conducting oversight over other PASes,

Presidential appointment, Senate confirmed, there is a hierarchy

that is important as well, and I don’t want to underestimate that.

If you are giving advice on technology programs in an oversight capacity to somebody who is a Presidential appointment that has

been Senate confirmed, you rank up there with them, and, frankly,

that is another real reason to have a Senate confirmation; it is a

hierarchical, it is a pecking order issue.

Mr. PUTNAM. It is an ego issue for the Senate.

But the accountability issue I think is important. How do we really get down to holding CIOs responsible for $100 million

projects that go south, that fall 3 years behind, that are abandoned

midstream? What is the appropriate level of accountability, what

form does it take, and is it adequate?

Mr. BRUBAKER. There is an accountability issue, but there is also

a responsibility issue, and the issue that Clinger-Cohen was a

three-legged stool: you have responsibility that is delineated on the

part of OMB, you have responsibility that is delineated to the agency head, and you have responsibility that is delineated to the CIO;

and they all have to work in concert. And there is a lot of authority

there, but there isn’t the commensurate responsibility because the

law, frankly, hasn’t been implemented as it was originally envisioned. You know, can you take somebody to the woodshed, if you

will, on a program that went south? Yes, you can do it, you can

beat them up, but if they didn’t have absolute responsibility, auVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:27 Feb 11, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00078 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98209.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
75

thority, and budget control over that program, then it is pretty difficult to make a fair case that they were responsible for the program going south. There is too much diffused responsibility and not

enough—you know, we used to refer to it as who is the single belly

button. Who is the single person that I can point to who has absolute accountability, authority, responsibility for a program? And,

frankly, it is almost by design in the bureaucracy that responsibility is diffused among a lot of different people, because a lot of different people want to play in that role.

And what Clinger-Cohen tried to do was delineate those responsibilities and be clear about who was responsible for what, and,

frankly, we are not to that point yet; you have too many people

with their hands in that cookie jar, and then when the cookie is

gone, you can’t figure out who took it.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Flyzik.

Mr. FLYZIK. Yes, sir. The accountability issue, as I mentioned before, I am a big advocate of performance-based approaches, and I

think one can define performance metrics, as well as with contractors. However, if we are going to hold the CIOs responsible and accountable, they need to have the authority to control those resources. I would suggest that when a project is approved, particularly in a performance-based environment, that CIO be given the

authority and the budget to put that program in place, and be held

accountable, and have the authority to control the resources necessary to get that job done. And if more resources are needed, the

authority to work with the CFO and agency head to come back up

to the appropriations process and be completely in charge of the

program. I feel in a lot of cases were are holding CIOs accountable

because you have to hang someone when things don’t work. But,

yet, if you look behind the scenes, did that CIO really have the

ability to control the financial resources and the human resources

in that agency?

I will give you an example. We talked today about the Ds received in information system security. I believe a lot of CIOs in

Government know what it takes to address those deficiencies in information system security, yet they lack the dollars and the resources and the staff to do it, and the authority to get that resources and staff. So I think we need a model that, as when

projects are approved, dollars are set aside, but those dollars are

controlled by the CIO, and then we can hold them accountable.

Mr. PUTNAM. Ms. Stouffer.

Ms. STOUFFER. I think there would be value in reworking the entire statutory framework and providing more clarity regarding

roles and responsibilities and accountability. Clearly, the CIO

needs to have influence on the budget process, particularly as it relates to information technology investments. So clearly understanding that they have a place at the table in that process is important.

It would be helpful if OMB worked to develop strategy that is consistent across the board on how we pull funds when we do crossagency initiatives. This strategy would address consistent criteria

for how agencies are assessed for their share of an initiative making it easier for the CIOs when they are actually trying to implement e-gov initiatives and scramble for dollars at the same time.

76

So I think, again, one value would be to rework the entire statutory framework and the guidance that is coming out of OMB, provide some clarity, perhaps consolidate some of it in such a way that

it is easier to understand and point to; and I think that would be

useful.

Mr. PUTNAM. You have also served as a CTO.

Ms. STOUFFER. Yes.

Mr. PUTNAM. Some agencies have them, some agencies do not.

Please, if you will, share our impressions of the value of having a

CTO as well as a CIO, and whether that is something that should

be adopted by every agency.

Ms. STOUFFER. I believe that having a position entitled CTO is

valuable. I think that even where you have organizations that don’t

have a position entitled CTO, you often have people fulfilling that

role entitled something else. Typically they are more focused on the

technology issues and less focused on the information issues and

the business issues associated with performance gaps and

leveraging technology to fill those gaps. So they are very focused

on technology. I think CTOs are everywhere, they just have different titles at different agencies.

Mr. PUTNAM. And finally, because we are going to need to seat

the third panel—I hate to cut this short, but we will be submitting

questions and answers for the record—as we have all of these hearings, typically agency culture, personnel and training are greater

issues than technology itself in terms of being an impediment to

progress and to change. Has the role of the CIO been fully accepted

and worked into the management structure of the agencies as you

have seen it? Ms. Stouffer.

Ms. STOUFFER. I believe that CIOs are becoming more and more

effective. Obviously, as technology advances and as CIOs mature

and their role in the organization is better understood, they are

having more and more of an impact. Technology has now actually

become disruptive in some cases because it is driving certain business decisions in areas where it can actually accomplish business

needs. Having the knowledge of emerging technologies, and how

they can further desired business outcomes is important. The CIO’s

contribution in making major business and technology decisions is

increasingly recognized. So they are making progress.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Flyzik.

Mr. FLYZIK. Mr. Chairman, I believe the results are mixed all

over the Government. I believe in some Government agencies you

see CIOs making strategic decisions in part of every strategic process that takes place; I think in others we have a long way to go.

I think in some agencies under secretaries, assistant secretaries

view the CIO as someone that gets in the way and I need to find

my way around that particular individual in order to get my programs done. All in all, though, I think we are moving in the right

direction and I think hearings like these are a good way to keep

the momentum on the move in that direction. I think culture

change, sir, takes a long time. I know my life at Treasury, I believe

it took, in my opinion, probably 10 years before we actually got into

a true enterprise environment from the days it was first talked

about to where everybody actually bought into a concept of an enterprise approach to very large programs. I think culture is going

77

to take time, but I think we are moving in the right direction and

I think we have to keep the pressure on and keep momentum moving in the right direction, and I applaud this subcommittee for

being a catalyst in doing that.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Brubaker.

Mr. BRUBAKER. Yes, I think the prior two speakers are right. It

depends on the agency. Yes, in some cases; no in many others. But

from my view, my experience in government, things seem to just

be moving too slowly, and that is why I was particularly pleased

to see the advocacy of the chief operating officer position in the

GAO report. Maybe advocacy is too strong of a word, but they mentioned it, and I have seen it in the press and in some pronouncements out of GAO, where they seem to be advocating for a chief

operating officer position that would be a term appointment with

a contract that would lead that management team of the CIO and

the CFO to really transform agencies. I think that is critical. I

think you are still dealing with that industrial age bureaucracy, if

you will, and we are expecting information age results out of it,

and it just doesn’t work.

Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you all very much. I again apologize for cutting this short, but we are interested in hearing from all three panels before the meeting is broken up by votes.

So at this time the subcommittee will recess to set up the third

panel. Thank you all very much.

[Recess.]

Mr. PUTNAM. The third panel, I appreciate your patience and

your willingness to come before the subcommittee. Please rise and

raise your right hands for the administration of the oath.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. PUTNAM. Note for the record that all the witnesses responded in the affirmative.

Our first witness for this panel is Kim Nelson. Ms. Nelson is the

Assistant Administrator for Environmental Information and Chief

Information Officer at the EPA. Before joining EPA, Ms. Nelson

served the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for 22 years. Notably,

she was the first executive to hold the position of chief information

officer in Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection.

Thank you for joining the subcommittee again. Your testimony is

always very helpful. You are recognized for 5 minutes.

STATEMENTS OF KIMBERLY NELSON, ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR OF ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION AND CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION

AGENCY; STEVEN COOPER, CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER,

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY; VANCE HITCH,

DEPUTY ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL, INFORMATION

RESOURCES MANAGEMENT AND CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE; AND IRA HOBBS, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR INFORMATION SYSTEMS

AND CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, DEPARTMENT OF THE

TREASURY

Ms. NELSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to return today and talk about some of the issues that are

on your agenda today, particularly the role of the CIO. You have

78

asked some important questions, and while I have answered those

in my written testimony, I will just briefly touch on some of those

as part of the oral testimony here today.

First and foremost, I want to emphasize the fact that the chief

information officer title has the word information in it, and that is

important. What is also important is that the word technology is

not there. And what I want to emphasize is the fact that it is the

information component which I think is most important to the role

that we play in our organizations. And while technology is important and we tend to talk a lot about IT and technology, the fact

is that technology is only an enabler, and what you are looking for

in a CIO is somebody who can really work with people and organizations to achieve results; and that takes a lot of work to work in

concert with people and processes to make a difference in your organization.

You have asked some questions about the responsibilities that

are most critical for a Federal CIO. I was looking at this chart before the hearing began, and looked at all the responsibilities that

were listed there. In my own testimony, I focused on those that are

listed at the top as some of the most important ones, and I think

that is supported by the chart. I would say, however, that the position I hold at EPA in fact includes all of those responsibilities in

whole or in part, including the one at the bottom, statistical work.

For instance, this last year my office, in conjunction with our Office

of Research and Development, issued the first ever Report on the

Environment. And again that is significant because it is the first

time we were ever able to report to the American public what we

know about the condition of the environment, and that is a way to

use information to be able to demonstrate real results. Again, the

focus being on how we use information.

Reporting structure has been a topic today. I do think it is an

important topic. I believe I am fortunate to have, frankly, one of

the best positions in the entire Federal Government when it comes

to the roles and responsibilities of a CIO. At EPA I report to the

administrator through the deputy administrator. I have a position

that is equal to the peers in my organization that manage the business units, the air office, the water office, the emergency response

and waste office. So I sit at the table at the same level and with

the same political appointment and confirmation by the Senate as

the other people who are setting policy within the organization. I

think that is important because if you look, frankly, at some of the

most recent Gartner research, what it shows is that it is important

to have that ability to sit at the table and have access to an understanding of the business of the organization. And, frankly, if I

weren’t at that same level, I would not be able to interact with

those that are making business and policy decisions within the organization.

When we talk about the duration, I, of course, am new to the

Federal Government. I guess when you had your previous panel

here, I am the first one speaking who actually came in as someone

new to the Federal Government to have taken the CIO position. I

had 22 years in State government; I actually held a very similar

position in my agency shortly before I left there. I came into this

position fully expecting to stay at least 3 years, and in September

79

will mark 3 years from the date I arrived and November will be

3 years from the date I was confirmed. And I expect it will take

at least that amount of time to achieve some of the things I wanted

to do when I came on board; and I cited a number of reasons why

I think 3 years is important in my testimony that I submitted.

Finally, some of the characteristics that are important to the

CIO; you have already heard about vision, leadership, communication. They are all important. The bottom line is you have to be able

to deliver results.

And, last, the one point I want to make about the biggest challenge. The single biggest challenge, in my mind today, is the CIO’s

responsibility to manage enterprise-wide projects. We talked about

some of those at a hearing earlier. The governance issues surrounding managing projects across agency are considerable, and we are

treading new water here. We are breaking new ground, and it is

critical we establish those processes for managing these governmentwide projects.

So I will stop there and I will take questions later when you are

ready. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Nelson follows:]

80

81

82

83

84

85

86

87

88

Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you.

Our next witness is Steven Cooper. Mr. Cooper was appointed by

President Bush to be the first CIO of the Department of Homeland

Security. He and his team have responsibility for the information

technology assets supporting 190 Federal employees of the 22 agencies now comprising the new department. Before joining Federal

Government service, Mr. Cooper spent more than 20 years in the

private sector as an information technology professional.

Welcome to the subcommittee. You are recognized, sir, for 5 minutes.

Mr. COOPER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is indeed my pleasure

to appear before you today and share a few views based upon nearly 30 years as an information technology professional, including the

past 21⁄2 in the Federal sector. I have served as the CIO of the Department of Homeland Security since its inception, and it has been

a fairly significant learning curve for me coming into the Federal

environment. There is, as you have heard from previous panelists,

a significant amount of legislation and statutory requirements

which, in a very short period of time, is fairly substantial to absorb.

Therefore, I would argue that one of the primary responsibilities of

any CIO is to ensure the optimal and appropriate use of information and to understand the legislative and statutory requirements

that enable an agency to succeed and a CIO to be successful.

A CIO must also act as an agent of change by guiding organizational and transformational and business process re-engineering to

most effectively meet the strategic and operational objectives of the

agency. I would argue that the CIO is one of the very few individuals whose view of the agency is always horizontal. Every day we

see not a vertical view of any particular business unit or organizational segment, but we are the people who are held accountable for

understanding how all those moving parts and pieces that use information technology fit together. It is in that context that I do

think that the placement of the CIO in the organization does become important.

What is most important has been stated by my colleagues here

on this panel and the previous panelists, and that is the seat at

the business table is what is critical. The placement in the organization, simply put, the higher the level, the more that the placement kind of ensures the seat at the table. It doesn’t automatically

imply that a CIO cannot succeed if they do not report directly to

the secretary. It makes it significantly more difficult the more levels that the individual is kind of down from the head of the agency,

and you have to offset that by the time it takes to then build the

credibility and gain the seat at the business table.

With regard to roles and responsibilities, primarily the CIO is responsible for leading the use and application of all IT assets deployed across the department, and that includes both the human

resources and the financial resources. That is what actually ensures the ability to use information effectively within the department. This is achieved, in my opinion, by guiding the department’s

development and use of enterprise architecture best practices, and

they include obtaining senior management employee buy-in and involvement, demonstrating how IT can enable mission effectiveness

and efficiency; guiding the proper choice of technology to meet misVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:27 Feb 11, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00092 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98209.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
89

sion goals; documenting and using portfolio management techniques that allow rapid decisionmaking regarding IT investment

choices in very difficult times and also in a resource-constrained

environment.

As far as characteristics and qualifications that CIOs should possess, good business skills, business mission operation sense of what

is going on in the agency, that is the credibility; good management

skills, ability to lead change, working knowledge of IT gained from

hands-on or practical experience, great communication skills, and

most importantly, in my opinion, a sense of humor and a pretty

tough skin. Guts are in there somewhere. We have to be able to

place mission first and career second. We are held accountable for

basically everything in the IT environment. And I will leave to my

colleagues and previous panelists, and perhaps the question and

answer period, how best to actually accomplish accountability, responsibility, and the blend thereof. I happen to think that a whole

lot of it has to do with metrics and performance measures.

In closing, I would simply like to say that the opportunity is

unique at the moment inside the Department of Homeland Security

simply because we are still in a startup mode, and a lot of what

I face as a CIO in the Department of Homeland Security, I am envious of other CIOs who have a bit more stability and maturity to

their organizations. So some of what my experience has been may

not be reflective or may not be typical of what some of the other

more mature departments and other Federal CIOs may face.

I look forward to your questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Cooper follows:]

90

91

92

93

94

Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you very much.

Our next witness is Mr. Vance Hitch. Mr. Hitch serves as the

Chief Information Office of the Department of Justice. He manages

the Department’s $1.7 billion IT program, overseeing management

acquisition and integration of the Department’s information resources. His oversight includes strategic planning, policy, capital

planning, systems development, telecommunications, information

security, data management, enterprise architecture, e-government,

and user computing. Before coming to the Department of Justice,

Mr. Hitch was a senior partner with Accensure. He has 28 years

of experience in leading government organizations successfully

through major change initiatives.

Welcome to the subcommittee, sir. You are recognized.

Mr. HITCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to be here

to talk about my job and how it fits at the Department of Justice

and the Federal community.

As you have stated, I come from the outside, 27 years of outside

experience managing large IT projects and major change programs,

both in a variety of industries as well as government. I have been

the CIO of the Department of Justice for 2 years this past April,

so I already am senior to the average CIO, which is hard to believe.

You asked a number of questions, responsibilities critical to my

success. I believe my principal responsibility as a CIO is to create

and lead an organization that will enable our mission accomplishment through technology. That is first and foremost my responsibility. And there is a lot of management responsibilities that go along

with, but I view my job as mission accomplishment.

At the Department of Justice I came upon a very decentralized

organization, and, therefore, my job in accomplishing that mission

was to more strongly coordinate from a central perspective the IT

organization, and that has required major change. That was particularly important in the Department of Justice, since I came on

board after September 11 and a new mission had been created at

the Department of Justice, and that was counterterrorism. So we

really had to do things differently than we had done before, which

was a burning platform for me; and I used that in terms of creating

the organization that I needed to carry out what I view as my mission.

Some of the key responsibilities that I have are those that are

listed there on the chart by the GAO: obviously, enterprise architecture, IT investment management, security, IT human capital

planning, and program oversight. And I think all of those are important, but I do think having a major impact on the IT budget is

absolutely critical. Having the ability to start and stop projects, if

necessary, is important. So I think those things are echoing what

I have heard some of the other panelists say.

One of the things that I did that is unique at the Department

of Justice that I used as a platform to help create some of the

change in carrying out my responsibilities was a program that we

are now pursuing called the Law Enforcement Information Sharing

Program. And initiated this program about a year ago as a way of

bringing together our various law enforcement components who, as

I said, grew up with strong cultures of their own and as a decentralized organization, to get them to better share information effecVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:27 Feb 11, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00098 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98209.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
95

tively. And that is particularly important in our counterterrorism

as well as our law enforcement missions.

The way I did that was by creating subgroups to deal with any

policy changes we needed, any changes in our concept of operations, as well as technology; and out of that technology subgroup

came what I call our strategic IT architecture for information sharing at the Department of Justice. We now have that as kind of the

bible of what we are trying to do to achieve information sharing,

and what I am doing is mapping all of the forty-some odd programs

that we have and IT initiatives that we have that many of them

came before I became CIO at the Department of Justice; they had

their origins as stovepipe systems. I am sure you have heard that

term. So it was my job to somehow fit them together.

This IT information sharing architecture is what lets me do that,

and I map into that architecture and then it basically allows me

to identify the changes necessary in each IT program to achieve our

overall information sharing goals. So that is one of the ways I have

used enterprise architecture as a tool to help me achieve my mission.

You wanted some comments, and you got lots of them from everybody, about the most important aspect of the reporting structure, and what is the most effective way that we can report. I will

comment on what we have at the Department of Justice, which I

think works very well. I will say that it was new with me coming

on board, it did not exist prior to my coming on board as the CIO

in April of 2 years ago.

The reporting relationships that I have are I do report directly

to the Attorney General on matters of IT policy and IT strategy,

and I report to the Assistant Attorney General for administration

on operational matters. I think reporting to the top of the organization is extremely important because I must be viewed at the same

table and I must be viewed as a peer of the component heads, and

those are the heads of the FBI, the heads of the Drug Enforcement

Agency, the U.S. Marshals, all those major agencies within the Department of Justice. I must be viewed as somebody who can be

their helper in making things happen at their agency and across

the department in IT. And that is the only way that I will be able

to achieve my mission of making IT a strategic enabler of our mission accomplishment, which is law enforcement and

counterterrorism across the whole department.

As part of my reporting responsibilities, I sit on the Strategic Advisory Council, which is chaired by the deputy attorney general,

and that includes all the members of the largest components of the

organization and deal with all strategic matters. Obviously, I sit on

it as a representative of the IT interest of the whole department.

I also sit on a council called the National Security Coordinating

Council within the Department of Justice. It is composed of the

component heads, once again, of the law enforcement agencies, and

that enables me to get close to their business to make sure that

I have my finger on the pulse of what is our mission and what we

are trying to achieve from a law enforcement standpoint. So I think

those are critical reporting relationships.

Commenting on the duration, the term that is necessary. Basically, I believe 3 to 4 years is what is necessary to have a lasting

96

impact. Actually, I do believe that I was effective almost immediately, and that is through having an impact on individual programs that were already underway. But given the fact that it takes

at least 2 years to have an impact on the budget itself, because of

the budgeting cycle in the Federal Government, to get those programs initiated and to make them real, it is going to take at least

3 to 4 years to have them implemented.

Concerning the characteristics, I think you have heard a lot.

Mr. PUTNAM. We will get to this in questions, but I do want to

get to the testimony before we have votes, and your time has expired. So if you could just summarize for us, please, and then I will

go to Mr. Hobbs.

Mr. HITCH. OK.

I don’t think I have anything new to add in terms of characteristics of a CIO, except I do want to add one, which is persistence.

You know, basically working in the Federal Government is a big

bureaucracy; it takes a long time to accomplish things. I think you

have to keep at it, go the extra mile, do whatever it takes to earn

respect and confidence of the colleagues.

Major challenges, I think my biggest one is culture change, because I said initially that we are going from a decentralized organization to one which is much more strongly centrally coordinated.

The concept of a CIO was not there when I arrived, so making that

culture change to become an effective CIO in that kind of organization is the biggest challenge that I face.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hitch follows:]

97

98

99

100

101

102

Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you very much.

Our next witness is Mr. Hobbs. Mr. Ira Hobbs is the Treasury

Department’s Chief Information Officer. Mr. Hobbs came to Treasury from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where he has served

as the Deputy Chief Information Officer for the past 7 years. He

has an extensive background in Federal policy development and information technology and program management, including a 22-

year career at USDA.

Welcome to the subcommittee, sir. You are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. HOBBS. Thank you. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me here today to discuss the

roles and responsibilities of Federal chief information officers. With

the current Clinger-Cohen Act as our guide, I have been one of

many Federal executives working to improve our Government’s

management of our information and IT resources. While we still

have many miles to go, I am proud of what, as a community, we

have achieved, and I hope my perspective will add some value to

our discussion this afternoon. Having already heard from so many

experienced executives, I will keep my opening comments brief.

I am honored to be here today representing the U.S. Department

of the Treasury as its chief information officer. Prior to joining

Treasury, I did serve as the Deputy Chief Information Officer of

the Department of Agriculture, where I worked for 7 years under

three different political CIOs.

To be a successful Federal chief information officer, one must

practice executive leadership, and have strong management and

communication skills. Fundamentally, I believe these qualities are

more important than having a strong technical background. The

major challenges we face are not technical challenges; addressing

and overcoming them requires seasoned and skilled leadership.

Meeting these challenges also require support from the secretary’s

office, time to learn organizational business and culture, and to establish the relationships necessary to effectively implement change;

prioritizing amongst the many competing responsibilities of a CIO;

and, most importantly, directing and motivating employees and

contractors who are the people every CIO relies on to get the job

done and results achieved.

In my experiences, some of the issues raised, such as the time

required for CIOs to achieve transformation, are mitigated by having a strong deputy CIO. In addition to providing for continuity

and complimenting the skills of a CIO, a good deputy CIO can

shorten the learning curve of a new CIO and free the CIO to focus

on high-priority outward-facing initiatives while the deputy CIO

serves as the chief operating official internally, making sure that

all of the trains are kept running and that they are kept running

on time. This was the model during my tenure as deputy CIO at

the Department of Agriculture, and I like to believe that it was a

successful one.

A large part of the progress we have made in recent years is due

to the statutory framework laid out by Congress in the ClingerCohen Act and related legislation, the aggressive implementation of

these laws by the Office of Management and Budget, and the continuing, maturing role of the Federal CIO.

103

Thank you for the opportunity to be present today to present my

thoughts, and I look forward to any questions that I might be able

to answer.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hobbs follows:]

104

105

106

107

Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you very much. We appreciate all of your

testimony and I am particularly pleased that we are were able to

get through it without the votes interrupting us.

For all of you, how do your offices interact with the other highranking officers in the agency, like the CFO, when making capital

planning decisions? And we will begin with Ms. Nelson.

Ms. NELSON. The partnership we have with the CFO is probably

the most important partnership in the agency. We have set up a

process since I have been at EPA as part of our investment and

planning process where the deputy CIO and the deputy CFO oversee a committee made up of others throughout the agency that review our portfolio, and it is through that committee that is chaired

by the two offices that the portfolio is approved and then ultimately

comes to me for final approval. I work with the CFO to ensure that

everything that is in that portfolio is accounted for in our budget.

So no longer are we doing what we used to do, which is put business cases forward when funding didn’t exist in the budget for

those business cases.

Mr. COOPER. In the Department of Homeland Security, under the

under secretary for management, all of the CXOs, the chief administrative officer, the chief human capital officer, the chief procurement officer, the chief financial officer, chief information, we meet

twice a week and basically are in lockstep on almost everything related to management, particularly the financial budget process,

capital planning and investment. I would argue that within the department we have a very strong and every effective relationship

with the other chiefs, and we will continue to mature those processes. It is also reflected in our investment review process, which

we have introduced into the department.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Hitch.

Mr. HITCH. At the Department of Justice , I report from an operational standpoint to the assistant attorney general for administration, to whom the controller reports. So I interact on a regular

basis with the controller and the CFO. From a more form standpoint, I chair the IT investment management process and I invite

as members both the controller and the assistant attorney general

for administration to review all our IT projects in some level of detail as they are coming along. Also, in the budget process, which

we go through, it seems like, all the time, but we are going through

right now for the 2006 budget year, I am involved in all of the

budget deliberations about all of the IT budget items, both in the

initial cuts as well as the final cut.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Hobbs.

Mr. HOBBS. Being new to the Department of the Treasury, our

relationship is evolving; however, to start out, we have both a chief

financial officer and a budget officer. I have been involved in all of

the 2006 budget preparations in terms of hearings by the deputy

secretary with all of the major bureaus and asked to comment and

provide feedback on proposals in that regard. The CFO and I have

a relationship that we are starting to evolve as we look at our capital investments and our ongoing investments, and so I believe that

we are on a firm footing to establish a very strategic and tactical

relationship in terms of our reviewing the information technology

budgets and performance of IT investments for the department.

108

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Hobbs, you are relatively new to the Treasury,

you said your relationship is still evolving, but tell us, if you would,

were there major differences in process, procedures, and approach,

the fusion of the CIO into management between the two Federal

departments that you have now worked for?

Mr. HOBBS. I think it is fair to say that they are different. At

the Department of Agriculture the process was a lot more mature.

The Department of Treasury has gone through a fairly large reorganization that has pulled a lot of that maturity out of its organizations. It is now being reformulated, but I think they are on a very

positive path. We have some growing to do, we have some maturing to do, but the deputy secretary has established a process where

we all have an equal seat at the table from a management perspective, and he expects us to work together for a common good in

terms of how we deliver goods and services back to the citizens.

That involves a very active engagement and role by the CIO in the

budget and funding process of IT investments across the department.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Cooper, Mr. Hitch, let me ask you a twist on

the same question. Both of you have extensive private sector experience, senior partner at Accensure. How dramatic a difference did

you find between your work at the private sector for years and your

career in the Federal world? Mr. Hitch first.

Mr. HITCH. Well, it was pretty dramatic. I did have a taste of

what it might be like because during my career I worked with the

Federal Government on many major projects, as well as State and

local governments, so I knew kind of what I was getting into, but

you never really know for sure until you are there. And then going

through the budget process is where you really learn how to operate in the Federal Government, I think, effectively. So it was a

very big change, but I do think my background prepared me very

well for the challenges that I face, because we are dealing with

very large projects, we are dealing with culture change and major

change programs, and as I said in my statement, having a business

perspective is extremely important, because we are really managing a portfolio. And then I think also the process orientation that

I bring, understanding the business processes, where you start.

You don’t start with the technology. I think really having that as

a strong background really helps me be effective in my organization, because that is why I said my main job, I believe, is enabling

the mission of the organization through technology.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Cooper.

Mr. COOPER. Yes. Having served as a CIO in the private sector,

it is, in my opinion, dramatically different. In the private sector the

CIO was a member of the executive committee; there were basically about five or six people across the company, and those people

effectively sat at the same table, heard all the same business decisions, participated in strategy vision development for the corporation. That is a little different than what I have experienced thus

far in the Department of Homeland Security. Not a value judgment, just different.

One of the things that was able to be done in the private sector,

if business drivers or external events drove a change in the business plan of the corporation, the ability of basically the CIO to imVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:27 Feb 11, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00112 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98209.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
109

mediately reprioritize or reprogram or change the investment of assets or the direction of programs or something was in fact instantaneous. That is, again, a little bit different in the Federal sector;

there are more people involved, it is a little bit lengthier process,

honestly a little bit more convoluted for me in the learning curve

type of situation.

The other thing that plays out is that there was a more effective

process to prioritize in the private sector across different business

units. The way I would exemplify that, in the Department of Homeland Security I can tell you the top 10 of each of our under secretaries and/or their major programs. Where I have a little bit

more difficulty is determining which of all of those top 10 are in

fact the department’s top 10. Now, part of that is maturity, so this

is not criticism. We are learning, we are shaping, we are putting

processes and we are becoming more effective with each month

that goes by. But that is a significant difference. Those three examples that I give you are significantly different than what I had experienced in the private sector.

Mr. PUTNAM. Ms. Nelson, difference between State and Federal?

Ms. NELSON. You know, I had the good fortune of having an almost identical position in an environmental agency in State government, so the transition here probably wasn’t nearly as startling as

it was for somebody simply coming in from the private sector. The

roles, responsibilities, and reporting relationship were almost identical. What is different, and I tell everybody, are things like this.

We didn’t have anybody in the general assembly who really cared

and held hearings. We didn’t have anybody in our legislative and

budget and finance committee, which is comparable to GAO, who

cared and audited or wrote reports. We didn’t have an inspector

general who provided the kind of oversight that we often get here.

And, in fact, we didn’t have anything like a Clinger-Cohen Act.

What we did, while it is almost identical to the roles and responsibilities I have now, we simply did because it was good government, and, consequently, we often did it without a lot of oversight

like this.

Mr. PUTNAM. You have heard the second panel of former CIOs,

and like all good former Federal employees, they have an awful lot

of bolder statements to make than perhaps they would have made

had they still been on the payroll. What do you glean from what

they have shared with this subcommittee, what lessons learned can

you apply, particularly with respect to the questions that we have

asked both panels, the turnover, the reporting to the top administrator? Most of you have touched on this, but if you would address

it more fully, just if you would reflect on what they have said with

regard to those and other matters that they raised.

Mr. Hobbs, we will begin with you.

Mr. HOBBS. And here I was waiting for you to come the other

way.

Mr. PUTNAM. Well, I like to keep people off guard.

Mr. HOBBS. First with respect to the issue on turnover. I think

that succession planning is an integral part of any manager’s responsibility, for one never knows the moment, the hour, the day

when a person will leave. I believe very strongly in the dual role

of the CIO and the deputy CIO. My own experiences have demVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:27 Feb 11, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00113 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98209.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
110

onstrated over 7 years I served under three different CIOs, yet our

organization continued, I thought, to move forward and to function.

I am not sure that going to term appointments means any more

than going to politically appointed positions means any more than

going to career appointed positions. I think it is inherently the responsibility of each manager to prepare for the organization in

terms of when you are not there, not so much for while you are

there. So I think succession planning is the key and I think that

it is one of the missing elements that we have in the Federal Government in terms of how we prepared our organizations for transitions and transformations.

I believe it is also very critical, when we talk about transformation, I hear people talking 3, 4, and 5 years. I believe the

transformations come in succession. And what I mean by that is,

as one of my colleagues here said today, it takes 21⁄2 years to effect

a budget process. That is one form if transformation. It takes 2 or

3 years to impact people and culture. That is another form of transformation. The important thing is to establish an approach and a

plan about how you are going to do it and then build in the succession planning models that allow your organization to function in

your absence. I believe that is key and critical for us who are in

government leading large organizations.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Hitch.

Mr. HITCH. I do think turnover is an issue. I do think that turnover is an issue for CIOs everywhere, not just in the Federal Government. But I do think it is even more of an issue in the Federal

Government. I think that it does take a while to have a lasting impact. I think you need to be effective early on and you can be effective on a lot of issues early on, but to have a lasting impact, to

really change the culture, to really change the programs, to really

bring in the people that are needed, at least in an organization

that needs a lot of help when you first get there, is going to take

a while to do. So I think turnover is an issue. I think the 3 to 4

year timeframe is realistic and perhaps even optimistic and aggressive, in terms of really getting something done, but I feel that is

a good benchmark. It somewhat depends on the maturity and the

depth of the organization you came in to run, if you are taking

over. I came into an organization that didn’t have a real CIO and

didn’t perform many of the Clinger-Cohen functions, so I had to

create an organization, fill those positions. So I think that turnover

is an issue depending on the stability and maturity of the CIO organization within the agency you are talking about.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Cooper.

Mr. COOPER. I too would agree that I think turnover is an issue

and it is important to be addressed. I would actually concur with

what Mr. Hobbs said. I think the key points that he raised, deputy

succession planning, are fundamental and critical success factors in

addressing that.

But I would offer one additional observation that I actually

haven’t heard mentioned in any of our three panels today. One of

the things that I have observed in a relatively short period of time,

so I have no data beyond about 2, 21⁄2 years, the lure of the private

sector for skilled and seasoned chief information officers out of the

Federal Government is very, very significant. One of the things

111

that obviously plays a role in that is kind of the overall ability of

the Federal environment to compensate and incent and reward not

just chief information officers, but key career individuals across the

Federal Government. I would suggest that perhaps over time that

might be something that could be explored through surveys or appropriate bodies to explore how much does compensation and incentives play a role in decisions to leave the Federal Government

from a CIO position.

Ms. NELSON. In preparation for today’s hearing, I actually

brushed up on some long overdue reading and research, and while

most of it confirmed my own suspicions, there was one thing that

I found very surprising, and it was a Gartner survey of CEOs

across the country. In response to a question about transformation,

they cited two things that most often get in the way of transformation. The first was culture, and we have talked about that on

several occasions. The second, interestingly enough, was IT, both

technology and their technology organizations, their IT organizations. They cited them as often being slow, cumbersome, risk adverse, and getting in the way of the changes they want to make.

That being the case, and in combination with another survey

that was done of what are the characteristics most exhibited by

successful government CIOs, one of those characteristics was the

fact that the CEO of the organization selected the CIO. And I think

those two go hand in hand to paint the picture that I agree with.

I believe a CIO can best serve the organization if they are political,

because that means they are sitting with the most senior leadership in the organization. In most agencies, the senior leadership is

political; the cabinet head, the deputy secretary. So in order to be

able to sit at the table to truly understand the business, the strategy, and the policies of the organization, I do think you need a political CIO.

I agree with Ira that you are going to have turnover. I don’t

think the turnover of political CIOs is all that much different than

the turnover of political appointees in general. So we just need to

accept the fact that you are going to have turnover, just like the

Army accepts the fact that you can bring people in for a couple of

years and train them and put them back out when there is a draft.

Accept the fact and have a strong deputy CIO, have a strong transition planning process, and I think those two things combined can

oftentimes achieve the greatest results, because the CIO is close to

the CEO, or in government case, a deputy secretary or agency

head, understands the demands, understands they have a short

time period, and they will push for change.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Cooper, you raised the issue of compensation,

which is a fair one to raise. I had been raising the issue of accountability on the negative side. Compensation is certainly an appropriate thing to bring up on the positive side, on the encouragement,

incentivizing side. It does raise a number of interesting questions.

For example, in Department of Homeland Security, your department’s budget is what?

Mr. COOPER. For IT or overall? Overall it is about $40 billion.

Mr. PUTNAM. And for IT?

Mr. COOPER. About 10 percent, about 4.2 of that.

112

Mr. PUTNAM. So slightly larger than most of the private sector

companies——

Mr. COOPER. That is correct.

Mr. PUTNAM [continuing]. That are attracting a lot of our talent

and paying them substantially more. I hate to ask you to solve the

question that you raised, but recognizing that it is a legitimate

issue, how do we arrange a schedule that is commensurate with

running the Department of Defense, running the Department of

Homeland Security or running the Department of Justice or Treasury? Of course, I think Mr. Hobbs just goes out to the printer in

the back room and pulls a few sheets of or something like that to

take care of the Christmas bonus. But if you don’t work in that department, how do we compensate people and compete with the private sector, knowing what people would be worth in the private

sector for far less responsibility than what you carry?

Mr. COOPER. Mr. Chairman, would you allow me to think on this

for a week and get back to you?

Mr. PUTNAM. I would.

Mr. COOPER. I don’t have a good answer. I am not trying to duck

the question at all; it is one that we really have talked about a fair

amount in the department. We simply just don’t have a real effective answer yet. There is perhaps a model that might serve. I

know, for example, that in the Department of Veterans Affairs physicians actually are on slightly different pay scales; they are able

to pay higher than just what I think of as the GS pay scale. I also

know that in our own department there are some incentives around

our scientists for, specifically, the reason that we have to compete

with the universities and the research institutes across the United

States. Those might serve as models for key technical personnel in

the Federal Government. But if you allow me to give it a little bit

more thought, I would like to comment.

Mr. PUTNAM. Sure. And there is an entire commission working

on it. I think this is what somebody gave Paul Volcker the job of

going and solving this problem. It is a legitimate issue, but there

are no easy answers considering the system of government that we

have.

Mr. Hitch, what brought you into public service? What brought

you into the public sector, coming from where you were?

Mr. HITCH. Yes, I kind of went in the reverse direction from what

we find in many of the CIOs who spend a long time career in the

Government and then went outside. Frankly, I came to the Department of Justice to make something happen that I would hope

would help the national security of the country. And I think that

goal is something that is real, the desire to do public service, just

like people in Congress or anything else; you are here to do public

service. It is especially hard on CIOs because there is such a huge

disparate pay scale, and the draw of the counterparts in the private sector funds that work for us who make multiples. So I think

a different pay schedule, something like Steve was talking about,

may be helpful.

I do think we do need to solve better, I think, the problem of just

accountability and responsibilities, because I hear it in a lot of private discussions among CIOs, and I also have experience in some

of the components within Justice who brought people in from the

113

outside, very, very accomplished CIOs who were on the outside,

who came in basically because of changes in culture and not able

to adapt quickly enough to the culture, an inability to make something happen in a realtime basis, which is different in the Federal

Government from the private sector. You can make things happen

faster in the private sector, that is why I made the comment about

persistence.

So I think the reporting relationships are important, because

that is what enables you to make something happen in more of a

reasonable time. It is going to take longer in the government than

it does in the private sector, but if you aren’t positioned properly

in the organization and don’t have enough credibility and are

viewed as a peer by the people that you need to influence strongly

in order to be effective, it is a disincentive, so that is a reason a

lot of people leave.

Mr. PUTNAM. I would like to give our panelists an opportunity for

closing comments as we wind this down. Give us the answer to the

question you wish you had been asked or final thoughts, whatever

you choose, beginning with Ms. Nelson. And, Mr. Hobbs, you are

going to get the last word for us. So, Ms. Nelson, you are recognized.

Ms. NELSON. The day is late, everybody is tired, I am sure, so

I have said everything I needed to say or someone else has said it.

So thank you for the opportunity.

Mr. PUTNAM. Beautifully spoken.

Mr. Cooper.

Mr. COOPER. That is tough to follow, but I would echo the same

thing. Thank you.

Mr. PUTNAM. Mr. Hitch.

Mr. HITCH. I am not going to delay this any more.

Mr. PUTNAM. You all act like it is excruciating.

Mr. HOBBS. I guess, Congressman, the last word does come to

me. I think it important, from my perspective, that the role of the

Federal CIO continues to be examined, and certainly applaud you

for the work that you have done within our community in the last

couple of years and continue to ask us to raise the bar in terms

of performance and in terms of accountability and in terms of results. But I also point out sometimes that when we are called, it

seems as if we are islands unto ourselves, that we somehow are responsible for everything. And so I simply point out what an old

friend has always said to me: it is more about the team than it is

about the individual. And that team is both the management group

across the department, as well as the organization that CIOs build.

So sometimes I think it important to examine team performance

just as closely as we look at the CIO’s role. We hope sometimes to

have more authority and more responsibility than we actually

have. So I applaud you for your effort, but I also point out the team

is smarter than any one individual is ever going to be in terms of

improving the economy and the efficiency of government, and that

is where I believe the proof of the pudding truly lies, with the

team.

Mr. PUTNAM. Thank you very much. I appreciate the testimony

of all of our witnesses, and in the event that there may be addiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:27 Feb 11, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00117 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98209.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
114

tional questions we did not have time for today, the record will remain open for 2 weeks for submitted questions and answers.

This meeting is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 5 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned, to reconvene at the call of the Chair.]

[Additional information submitted for the hearing record follows:]

115

Æ