Most federal CIOs have direct line to agency leaders

Almost all federal chief information officers now report to the top or second-ranking official at their agencies, according to results of a survey of federal CIOs. But these officials still face challenges in being effective members of executive teams.

Nearly 90 percent of 54 CIOs from civilian and defense agencies said they answered to top executives during 2008. Of those, 38 percent reported to the secretary or bureau chief, and 50 percent to the deputy secretary, according to results of a CIO survey from TechAmerica, the IT industry association that was formed with the merger of the Information Technology Association of America and AeA.

The results reflect a significant change from 2007, when 42 percent of CIOs said they reported to the bureau head, 23 percent to the deputy secretary, and 23 percent to the chief financial officer. Those results, in turn, represented a big change from 2005 and 2006, when only 4 percent of CIOs said they reported to CFOs.

"This year, none of respondents [said they] are reporting to CFOs," said Paul Wohlleben, a partner at Grant Thornton LLP, the consulting firm that partnered with TechAmerica to conduct the survey, during a keynote speech at the CIO Survey Event in Washington on Tuesday.

The survey also showed that 87 percent of CIOs reported being part of the agency's executive team, the same percentage as in 2007. In 2005, 100 percent of CIOs surveyed reported being part of the executive team, and in 2006, 88 percent did.

Half of CIOs surveyed said an executive council governed IT investment decisions at their agencies, while 33 percent reported that IT steering committees did.

Survey results indicated that CIOs have made a great deal of progress in leading capital planning and to a lesser degree, the rollout of enterprise architecture efforts. But the federal government still has some distance to go to provide CIOs with an appropriate level of input into the strategic direction of agencies, Wohlleben said.

"When you look at broader [leadership needs] that include a seat at the table and ability to get the agency to move [on IT initiatives], there are a lot more challenges," he said.

The federal government has been criticized for not providing CIOs with enough authority, despite provisions of the 1996 Clinger-Cohen Act, which required agencies to appoint CIOs to lead the process of planning, acquiring and managing technology, and mandated that IT purchases be handled as capital investments.

In connection with the survey, TechAmerica developed a score card rating the government's effectiveness in addressing IT challenges. In the area of CIO leadership and governance challenges, agencies earned satisfactory scores in awareness of the issue and development of a strategy for improvement, but only fair marks for executing those strategies and demonstrating results, Wohlleben said.

The greatest barrier to effectiveness for CIOs is conflicting priorities among program units in agencies, the survey found. Other barriers they listed included a shortage of time for strategic planning, inadequate budgets, the overwhelming pace of technology change and a disconnect with executive peers.

According to the survey, 83 percent of CIOs' IT organizations regularly measure customer satisfaction internally, externally, or both.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology established a planning board, with representatives from major operating units, to prioritize IT initiatives according to customer needs.

"Using that mechanism helped us understand the impact of what we were considering and prioritize plans for [budget] allocation," said Simon Szykman, chief information officer at NIST, during a panel discussion at the TechAmerica event. "Customer input [influences] internal plans on what we do. This has been a useful thing for our organization, in terms of making sure we're making best use of our resources."