Culture Change in Federal IT Starts at the Top

Amid the government’s biggest push to modernize its IT systems since the advent of computers – or at least since Y2K – it’s important for agencies to realize the importance culture plays in creating successful technology transformations.

Speaking Tuesday in Washington at the CA Technologies Government Summit, which was produced by Custom Strategies, a division of Government Executive Media Group, John Skudlarek, deputy chief information officer for the Federal Communications Commission, said the mix of people within an organization is far more important to a modernization effort than any specific technology or tool.

FCC had employed nine different CIOs over the previous eight years before current CIO David Bray took the helm in 2013. On average, FCC employees were staying an average of nine years with the agency, Skudlarek said.

The status quo, Skudlarek said, was not going to move the needle for the agency, which was spending some 80 percent of its IT budget on legacy technologies and outdated systems.

Bray focused on people – hiring established IT leaders like Skudlarek and other less-seasoned but idealistic personnel from the West Coast – and the technology followed.

» Get the best federal technology news and ideas delivered right to your inbox. Sign up here.

Two years later, the agency is on its way to moving the vast majority of its data and applications to the cloud. Skudlarek said the formula isn’t complex: A leader plus top cover plus the right people equal great technology, he said.

Established or entrenched leadership tends to be iffy about new initiatives early on, but Skudlarek said “success breeds success.” Early wins are often all it takes to convince management to bust through the bureaucratic bull.

“In our starting point, we showed the old guard the art of what was possible with the new technology,” he said.

A similar change effort is underway at the Environmental Protection Agency under the leadership of CIO Ann Dunkin.

Speaking on the same panel Tuesday, Dunkin said EPA is implementing an “agile culture,” which emphasizes approaching tech problems from agile development practices as opposed to standard “waterfall” (or all at once) efforts.

That meant developers were collaborating in regular, frequent “scrums” to measure iterative progress, and also meeting more often with technology leadership.

What began as fretful meetings for management – Dunkin said she heard many rumblings from managers that the chief technology officer “was being mean to my people” – quickly became hugely positive, with clear benefits to developers and project managers alike. Increased engagement across business lines led to faster, better results, Dunkin said.

“They were loving the engagement they had, and as they began seeing results, their concerns turned to ‘wow,’” Dunkin said.

The top-down buy-in is important in the nation’s military branches, too.

Speaking Wednesday at an AFCEA panel, Brig. Gen. Dennis Crall, CIO of the U.S. Marine Corps, explained how the new commandant, Gen. Robert Neller, could have inherited a slew of policy exceptions for things like streaming video or public key infrastructure.

Instead, Crall said Neller did away with those exceptions. Nobody is above the system.

“Our greatest vulnerabilities, our greatest exceptions to policies, don’t happen at the lower level, they happen with leadership,” Crall said. “One prop I can throw our commandant is that he demands the same standards at the top and the bottom. If we want cultural change, it starts at the top.”