White House hires a CIO

White House Office of Administration

For the first time, the White House has a chief information officer to coordinate all of the technology and e-government work in the Executive Office of the President.

As CIO, Tim Campen said he is responsible for supporting network, desktop, mobile and Internet needs across the White House's multiple offices and councils. These include the Office of Management and Budget, the National Security Council, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Campen has been director of House Information Resources since 1998. Before that, he was deputy director for technology at the National Drug Intelligence Center at the Justice Department.

Agencies created the position of CIO in the federal government in 1996 under the Clinger-Cohen Act. But the act only required the 14 cabinet departments and nine independent agencies to have a CIO.

Recently, a report by the House Appropriations Committee's Treasury, Postal and General Government Subcommittee, which oversees the White House's budget, criticized the IT modernization efforts at the Executive Office of the President. The subcommittee's report recommended withholding almost $4.5 million from the White House's IT request pending submission of a report on the office's IT plans.