Another Call for Getting Serious With Clinger-Cohen

Harry Raduege Jr., the three-star general who was head of the Defense Information Systems Agency for five years ending in 2005, has penned an article calling for the federal government to give chief information officers more clout, pay and stature needed to improve the state of information technology in agencies.

In his mildly critical article, “Government Oversight and the CIO,” which was published today on newsfactor.com, Raduege argues that the government has been “muddling along” in its implementation of the 1996 Clinger-Cohen Act. That law loosened up procurement rules for the way the government purchased IT in hopes of improving the performance of IT systems, and it established the CIO position in hopes IT would become part of an agency’s planning on how it meets its mission. (The article first appeared in the September issue of Signal Magazine, published by the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association.)

But Raduege, now chairman of Deloitte’s Center for Network Innovation, says agencies haven’t lived up to the Clinger-Cohen Act’s goals. His call: “After 12 years, it is time to recruit and train better CIOs, eliminate the gap between the [Clinger Cohen Act] and actual practices, and give CIOs the authority needed to succeed.”

Raduege may very well be right that government hasn’t fulfilled the spirit of the Clinger-Cohen Act. (In an article I wrote for CIO magazine, I found most government executives who had worked on implementing the law and many former federal CIOs were deeply disappointed in how agencies have complied with Clinger-Cohen.) But the problem, which Raduege doesn’t discuss, is that the way government views CIOs and their contributions is an ingrained, deep seated view in agency culture. Agencies view IT as a utility, much like electricity. CIOs are there to support the agency’s work, but they really are not seriously considered part of the management team that implements policy and forms high-level business strategies. Until that changes, government’s ability to “recruit and train better CIOs” and to give them “the authority to succeed,” which Raduege calls for, will be an uphill battle at best.