Taking Responsibility for IT Duplication

Contractors bear some responsibility for the proliferation of disparate and duplicative information technology systems governmentwide, but ultimately the "silo-ing" of federal IT is a government failure, Homeland Security technology chief Richard Spires said during a conference for government and industry IT workers Tuesday.

"I've been in your industry; I worked as a consultant in the federal marketplace. There's a self-interest motivation and I get that, but believe me, it can hurt us," he said.

Spires was speaking at the American Council for Technology-Industry Advisory Council Executive Leadership Conference in Williamsburg, Va.

"If you peel away at [opposition to change] you often find there are vendors behind it that are arguing as to why this system has to be unique or it can't be combined with this other system or we can't consolidate because of these special requirements and a lot of it is just not true," he said.

"I'm not expecting for-profit companies to be altruistic and put themselves out of business," Spires continued. "I do say, however, that if you're going to work in the Department of Homeland Security, I expect you to live by our rules behind enterprise architecture...When you're bidding to come in and work for us you're going to ride on our infrastructure that exists. No more of this setting up your own custom government environments . . . That's the leadership we need to show in government to drive this forward."