Dan Chenok

Memo To Incoming Leaders: Think Virtual Reorganization And Turbocharged IT

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The federal government is on the brink of a perfect storm of management challenges. For better or worse, that also presents the nation’s leaders with an opportunity to dramatically reshape how it delivers services, in part by embracing digital technology in new and more powerful ways.

Either way, national leaders moving into new positions at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue in the coming few weeks will have to look seriously at real and “virtual” ways of reorganizing federal bureaucracies, say a group of public administration experts. Keep reading →

 /  Published October 25, 2012 at 7:46 PM

Election Outcomes Unlikely To Alter Government IT Priorities

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The future of federal technology spending may not be as bleak as current government budget cutbacks seem to suggest, a group of former government information technology officials suggested at a Federal IT forum today.

But changes in the type of technology services agencies are acquiring, the way they acquire them, compounded by election year uncertainty, are forcing contractors to reassess their strategies. Keep reading →

 /  Published March 28, 2012 at 1:27 PM

Integrating Privacy And Security: The US Government Steps Forward

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The U.S. government recently took a noteworthy step toward strengthening security and privacy, issuing a roadmap for how to make such improvements real and achievable.

Security and privacy are often viewed as competing values, where more security means more surveillance and intrusion on individual freedoms. But in fact this is a false dichotomy; when security and privacy are designed into systems up front, they can serve both to protect people against unwarranted intrusions and also guard against other risks. Keep reading →

 /  Published November 23, 2011 at 10:59 AM

OMB’s CIO Memo: Clarifies and Reinforces Primary CIO Responsibilities

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COMMENTARY:
Earlier last month, OMB Director Jacob Lew released a memorandum for the heads of all federal departments and agencies, which focused on four areas for which all federal chief information officers (CIOs) have authority and “a lead role”: Governance, Commodity IT, Program Management, and Information Security. The memorandum further reinforced responsibilities of the Federal CIO Council to manage the federal IT portfolio across agency boundaries.

The OMB action provides impetus for CIOs to leverage Obama Administration initiatives in driving change in their agencies, and represents and important signal of support for the position from the Administration – especially notable in light of its issuance just as the new Federal CIO, Steve VanRoekel, was taking the reigns from Vivek Kundra. Keep reading →

 /  Published September 2, 2011 at 10:01 AM