My First Attempt at Political Technology Commentary

President Obama will soon be appointing a Chief Technology Officer for the country. This has been known and discussed as one of the major features of the Obama ’08 Technology Plan (still available for review at the campaign web site).

This is an interesting “new” position. Our Federal Government already has a top-of-the-house Chief Information Officer role (the Administrator of the Office of Electronic Government and Information Technology at the Office of Management and Budget) that seems to have accountability for most, if not all, of the responsibilities articulated in the CTO role. Per the plan, CTO will specifically:

•    Ensure that our government and all its agencies have the right infrastructure, policies and services for the 21st century
•    Ensure the safety of our networks and will lead an interagency effort, working with chief technology and chief information officers of each of the federal agencies, to ensure that they use best-in-class technologies and share best practices
•    Focus on transparency, by ensuring that each arm of the federal government makes its records open and accessible as the E-Government Act requires
•    Focus on using new technologies to solicit and receive information back from citizens to improve the functioning of democratic government
•    Ensure technological interoperability of key government functions

Both CIO and Deputy CIO roles also exist at other levels in the vast Federal Executive Agency structure and many of these people are members of the Federal CIO Council.

Also, the nation will be getting a new head of the National Cyber Security Center in the Department of Homeland Security (a.k.a. “Cyber-Security Czar”) as part of the new administration as well. That position should not be confused with that of the CIO of the Department of Homeland Security.

If you’re beginning to become confused as to the structure of IT in the Federal Government, you are exactly where I am on that subject (although that really isn’t the point of this post).

Outside of the articulation of the new CTO role and its responsibilities, the rest of the plan is a statement of how technology (not just information technology) will be used to accomplish some important transformational goals. All of them to some extent rely on a critical enabler – the existence of a digital high-speed communications infrastructure – that is listed as a specific goal in the plan as well.

So the new administration appears to be tasking the new CTO with critical interagency work, the creation of a digital infrastructure and is planning to “Employ Technology and Innovation to Solve Our Nation’s Most Pressing Problems” (another technology-enabled set of goals) in the plan.

Sounds like a challenging job! Unfortunately, given my own experience with the way IT is structured in the Federal Government, I don’t believe that it is positioned for success as it is currently envisioned.

As noted earlier, CIO leadership is at multiple levels in the Federal Agency structure. A federated-style CIO Council exists, along with designated leaders for important activities, like Information Security. The initiatives that the new CTO is responsible for cut across Agencies/Departments and no authority (or budget) currently exists to accomplish them. Add to this the overlap with the Federal CIO (OMB) job and/or its limited success with inter-agency technology governance, and I just don’t see how the new role can be successful without substantial reengineering of IT decision-making authority.

In the private sector, this would take the form of a negotiation between the various IT groups about governance (architecture), funding (budget authority) and investment for IT for each IT service domain. A simplified decision-making authority matrix to be drafted might look something like this.

Translated to the task at hand, the IT groups participating would be from the Agencies (representing LOB IT), Departments (representing business-domain specific IT, like Treasury), the CIO Council (representing central IT to-date), the OMB CIO (ditto) and the CTO (ditto).

Their mission would be to agree on who gets to makes the decision on architectural direction, investment, and spending for each domain. The groups would need to normalize a bit, perhaps with a future state diagram showing one combined central IT organization under the CTO (?) consisting of the various architectural domains (Enterprise Architecture), an interagency Program Management Office, perhaps some sort of Managed Services Organization and Security function. The key would be to have strong support and sponsorship for this as the single central (?) Federal IT Organization.

Therein lies the major problem as I see it. As loathe as I usually am to come up with organizational solutions to technology problems, I believe that this case may be an exception. The new CTO role, if it is to be successful, should be a direct report to the President – a Cabinet-level position. Otherwise, it will lack direct political linkage to its sponsor and be at risk of becoming another great idea that languishes (like in the private sector) because the legacy structure will not allow it to move forward.

I’m sure that many of you have experiences where a position or program of work was less than successful because of its positioning within the organization. Given this is my first foray into this subject area; I’d love to hear your thoughts one way or another on my thinking here.

Also, because I’m quite confident in the ability of our Federal Government to “find” information on the Internet, I very respectfully offer the following:

Dear Mr. President,

Congratulations on the new job! Hope the move is going well and that you and your family are getting settled in the new place.

The information that you’ve seen on my site regarding the new CTO role is intended only as a suggestion. I’m sure that there are many things that you are working on to ensure the success of this new role.

That having been said, if you happen to wish to discuss this further, or perhaps need a special consultant on the matter, please give me a call on my mobile (224-234-8682) or email me at www.itstraighttalk.com and I’ll be happy to assist at my special new inaugural rate.

Thank you for your time.

Best Regards,

Eric Davis