Survey: CIOs gain acceptance across the board
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What ITAA survey of CIOs suggests The government's chief information officers say they are becoming more visible within their organizations and are gaining clout with management, a new survey reports. CIOs increasingly find themselves with a place at the table of senior agency executives, according to the survey by the Information Technology Association of America. ITAA, an Arlington, Va., industry group,
What ITAA survey of CIOs suggests The governments chief information officers say they are becoming more CIOs increasingly find themselves with a place at the table of senior agency A prevailing observation that came out of this survey is that many federal CIOs In the survey report, Beyond 2000: Reality or Mirage?, ITAA said senior IT executives That is a change from last years survey, which showed that CIOs felt they were The shift, in part, results from the implementation of the IT Management and Reform Also, many agencies are making their senior IT positions political appointments, which CIO posts also are becoming less technical and more business-oriented, the survey Survey participants reported that the role of the CIO remains somewhat complex and The year 2000 problem has had a magnetic effect, pulling CIOs into the inner circle The responsibility is a double-edged sword, he said. Although 2000 responsibility has The survey found that the year 2000 problem was the top concern among the 25 IT They generally believe they are in better shape than the grading that has been Resourcesneither money nor peoplehave ended up hindering efforts to get Year 2000 work has resulted in other projects being postponed, CIOs said. That leads The ITAA survey showed that CIOs see security and the protection of critical Security has the potential to dominate the way Y2K dominates today, Another major issue facing CIOs is attracting and retaining IT workers. CIOs said that Technical graduates receive multiple job offers, Grkavac said, so in addition to CIOs also told ITAA that outsourcing will continue to grow. There is, however, a CIOs include the process of contracting out small projects as a function of CIOs described as ineffective the OMB Circular A-76 on outsourcing, which agencies use In a bit of an about-face, ITAA said, the survey found that agencies are rethinking In recent years, IT chiefs had told ITAA they were pushing systems and systems But this year, CIOs said they think centralized systems and approaches are sometimes Wohlleben said agencies increasingly are centralizing IT management in particular. As CIOs must strike a careful balance, retaining the best features of the ITAA has posted the survey on its Web site at www.itaa.org.
visible within their organizations and are gaining clout with management, a new survey
reports.
executives, according to the survey by the Information Technology Association of America.
ITAA, an Arlington, Va., industry group, conducted and released the survey last month.
are poised and eager to lead their agencies into the future. How well they will be able to
deliver enhanced leadership in the future, however, may well be determined largely by how
well they manage the Y2K problem, ITAA concluded in its ninth annual survey of
government IT managers.
were virtually unanimous in their view that they have made significant strides toward
becoming accepted members of their agencies executive management teams.
not part of the executive team, said Olga Grkavac, executive vice president for
ITAAs enterprise solutions division.
Act, Grkavac said.
tends to set the jobs at a higher level in the organization than civil-service jobs, said
Paul Wohlleben, director of IT consulting for Grant Thorton LLP of Vienna, Va., and a
project manager for the ITAA study.
found. The driving factor, ITAA said, is that oversight organizations are pushing agencies
to show results through the use of IT, not just acquire and deploy it.
contradictory, Wohlleben said. IT executives are seen as change agents within
organizations and, at the same time, enforcers of standards, policies and
investment-planning procedures, he said.
because agency executives have needed someone to spearhead those efforts, said Wohlleben,
a former government deputy CIO.
given IT executives added visibility and stature, it comes at a risk because CIOs must
succeed to gain lasting clout, he said.
executives at 19 agencies that ITAA interviewed. CIOs reported they are confident that
mission-critical systems will be ready.
out there indicates, Wohlleben said, referring to the quarterly status reports
issued by Rep. Steve Horn (R-Calif.) and the Office of Management and Budget.
year 2000 fixes done, the survey found. Its the calendar, not money,
Wohlleben said.
CIOs to believe there is pent-up demand for other projects, which agencies will take up
after the 2000 problem passes, he said.
infrastructures as big post-2000 issues.
Wohlleben said. Although a perennial topic of discussion among IT chiefs, security has
gained renewed importance because it is critical to electronic commerce and electronic
government initiatives, he said.
pay is still the main factor. They reported, however, that agencies also must emphasize
training opportunities and the challenge government projects present.
salaries, they ask about the systems they would work on, dress codes and opportunities to
telecommute. Pay is a factor, but its not the only factor, she said.
significant divergence between CIOs and vendors about the definition of outsourcing.
outsourcing; vendors tend to define outsourcing as the wholesale privatization of entire
programs, ITAA said.
to justify contracting out work rather than keeping it in-house.
their approach to systems infrastructures.
management out to users.
necessary.
CIOs face the costly task of fixing date code, making security a priority and meeting
users demands for standardization, the decision-making power has come back to the IT
chiefs, he said.
distributed computing environment while centralizing where it makes sense, the
report said.