September 2010

The spotlight is on public-sector CIOs to demonstrate bold leadership to effect changes in organizational culture.

By Jim Nash

Respect and admiration have traditionally eluded government CIOs. They and their work are typically invisible to the public and can be undervalued within government ranks. But even in the most steadfast bureaucracies, that’s changing, as high-ranking government CIOs deploy social media, cloud computing, mobile apps and automation to achieve more transparency and efficiency. In addition, these tools are throwing a spotlight on CIOs, who need to demonstrate bold leadership to effect changes in organizational culture.

Among their specific agenda items, the new government CIOs need to:

• Increase access to pertinent information internally and externally.
• Experiment with new collaboration tools modeled on Facebook, Wikipedia and other consumer services.
• Find new and better uses for information as a way of improving service.
• Help change the culture from command-and-control and information-hoarding to one that values greater worker independence and information-sharing.

To achieve these goals, CIOs must persuade stakeholders well outside of their own IT department that these changes are worth the effort. That might mean advocating for IT with taxpayers, politicians and government peers in unprecedented ways.

Vivek Kundra is a prime example of how public sector CIO leadership is unfolding. President Barak Obama appointed him the first official U.S. Federal CIO in March 2009. Previously, as Chief Technology Officer for the District of Columbia, Kundra pushed hard to share information with the public via RSS feeds, Twitter and YouTube, and challenged taxpayers and government workers alike to find uses for data that benefited the distribution of services. Doing this established his leadership credibility. As federal CIO, his vision — and his challenge — are much greater.

Shifting the Power to IT

"We're looking for a fundamental shift in power," he told Smart Enterprise Exchange. It is a shift from top-down management of bureaucracy to broader collaboration. He believes that collaboration, through virtual teaming and social media, is the foundation of more-efficient, transparent and agile government. As one might expect, Kundra is setting the tone for his fellow CIOs to follow.

In June, for example, he directed the National Institute of Standards and Technology to quickly create consensus-based guidelines for the effective and safe use of cloud computing among agencies — an effort that’s having impact throughout the government.

In fact, Kundra's inspirational style of leadership is as much a product of practicality as it is his personality. While he's part of the executive branch's Office of Management and Budget and reviews all federal IT budgets, his ability to directly manage the CIOs themselves is limited.

His real focus is pushing viable projects and ideas while halting flawed propositions until they are fixed. An example he often mentions is a $250 million Department of Veterans Affairs project that has been stopped, restarted and stopped again since its inception in 1998. With record federal deficits as a backdrop, Kundra says bad projects — ineffective, oversold or wrongheaded — will be refocused or culled from the herd.

When you "look at the challenges the government faces,” Kundra says, “it's not a lack of ideas or laws or memos that is the problem. It's making sure that (projects) are backed with serious execution." Only efforts with a likelihood of success — and those that would demonstrably improve government — will be funded.

A New Generation of Leaders

Kundra is part of a new generation of government CIOs, says Mark Forman, a Partner and the Federal Performance & Technology Services Practice Leader at KPMG. Forman was the first U.S. Administrator for E-government and IT, an initiative created under President George W. Bush. As a former insider, Forman sees many agencies, such as the Department of Defense and NASA, practicing collaboration and implementing Web 2.0 technologies, he says. And it is filtering down to agencies throughout the government.

Bill Kirkendale, CIO of the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency (CSOSA) takes a very broad view of his role. As much as anyone in CSOSA, the five-year agency veteran feels that he is delivering services in the community.

On any given day, CSOSA manages 16,000 people on parole, probation or supervised release with fewer than 1,000 employees and a budget of $140 million. Kirkendale clearly understands the agency’s mission when he talks about finding ways to connect — not only with those it is charged with monitoring — but with the community itself. "CSOSA doesn’t succeed if we don’t do all we can to be accepted in the community," he says.

Three years ago, CSOSA’s IT supported an innovative program to get people with outstanding warrants to turn themselves in. Kirkendale's team provided a dedicated site and an e-mail campaign. And while IT's effort may not seem groundbreaking, the results of the agency's combined efforts with IT were eye-opening.

From Ideas to Actions

During the three-day operation, 530 people — including some violent offenders — turned themselves in at a local church. The stories of some of those people were posted on the dedicated site in real time to persuade others to surrender as well.

Today, the agency boasts robust online radio, TV and blog capabilities. CSOSA staff also use the tools to cover topics that range from local to national in scope. Kirkendale intends to continue using the multimedia outreach to foment knowledge-sharing and communication changes that are still new to large law-enforcement agencies.

Though it's still a germ of an idea, Kirkendale wants his case workers to come in every day to a Facebook-like interface populated with updates and reminders about the people they are managing. Moreover, the case managers would be able to see relationships and commonalities between each other's files that could point out troubling coincidences or success factors.

KPMG’s Forman says that Kirkendale's mind-set is becoming more typical of government CIOs who are initiating creative ways to use IT and seeing them to fruition. To make sure the innovations take hold, many IT departments are leveraging open source approaches and available tools rather than waiting for project approvals from slow-moving bureaucracies, he says — and that’s leadership in action.

The problems frustrating the delivery of services have been decades, if not generations, in the making, says Kundra. Everyone's going to have to work differently than in the past to solve those problems. As for IT staffs, "We're very focused on working collaboratively" to deliver innovative and useful solutions, he says.

Jim Nash is a business and technology journalist based in New York.

ASK THE EXPERTS

Mark Forman, Partner and Leader, Federal Performance & Technology Services Practice, KPMG

With more than 27 years of experience, Mark now leads KPMG’s Federal Performance & Technology Advisory Services Practice, focusing on strategy, business transformation, governance and technology initiatives across the U.S. government. Mark was recognized for leading the Industry Advisory Council’s Transition Study Group, which developed technology-enabled government-reform concepts for the Obama administration. He is a Senior Fellow of the John C. Stennis Institute for Public Service and a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.

Bill Kirkendale, CIO, Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency

CSOSA is an independent federal agency performing probation and parole functions with the mission of promoting public safety and reducing offender recidivism. Prior to CSOSA, Bill consulted as an IT security expert to federal government agencies while with Unisys and BearingPoint. He was a team member recipient of Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year Award, served in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve and holds a degree in history from Arizona State University.

Vivek Kundra, Federal CIO

Vivek formerly served as the Chief Technology Officer for the District of Columbia, responsible for technology operations and strategy for 86 agencies. He has been recognized among the top 25 CTOs in the country and as the 2008 IT Executive of the Year for his pioneering work to drive transparency, engage citizens and lower the cost of government operations. Vivek is also recognized for his leadership in public safety communications, cyber security and IT portfolio management.

He is a graduate of the University of Virginia's Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership and holds a master’s degree in information technology from the University of Maryland.