Change has been a message we have all heard allot about in the recent months and years heading into the election. Some change is good and some not so good. This post will explore the really good change with the Obama administrations approach to Federal IT and the appointment of a new Federal cabinet level CTO.
First of all this is not a post about politics or old ways of thinking, it is about what makes sense to take our country into a new millennium with new ideas for sustainable prosperity. While working for Northrop Grumman and consulting to the various civilian agencies across the federal government it become very clear the redundancy in IT initiatives. Each agency although unique in their mission does share common elements of their IT portfolios. HR, Finance, CRM (more constituent management and outreach), Logistics, Supply chain are all good examples of common business functions supported by technology. It just makes sense to consolidate these under one roof and address the common requirements with a standard platform and look at the unique ones separately.
Having a federal level CTO is a great step in the right direction of potentially one day having a cabinet level agency that was the IT Organization across the federal government. In order to really make this a really we need to address some of the following top level issues:
Budget: Majority of the IT budgets should roll up under the federal CTO and the agencies should subscribe to the IT services required. The individual agencies should only be given a small IT budget to address unique IT issues and areas requiring high clearance levels.
Mandate: This needs to be mandated not a choice otherwise no one will allow this to happen especially if they still retain budget authority.
Mission: The mission must be clear and concise and begin to abandon legacy thought processes and systems and focus on cost reduction rather than increasing budgets.
