HHS’s Havekost to co-chair CIO Council best practices committee

The federal CIO Council has tapped Charles Havekost, Health and Human Services Department CIO, to serve as co-chairman of the council’s best practices committee. Havekost’s own work, as director for Grants Management and Policy at HHS and as program manager for the Grants.gov e-government initiative, is often cited as an example of how technology applications can be more widely adopted to improve government services.Havekost joins David Wennergren, Department of the Navy CIO, in chairing efforts by the council to share and promote best information management/technology practices within the federal government. He replaces John Marshall, former USAID CIO, who left government last year to work for CGI-AMS Inc. The committee has been focusing in particular on two communities of interest: knowledge management and performance management. The council recently expanded the committee’s purview by asking it to look at security best practices. This addition comes after the CIO Council pulled its support for a proposed public-private partnership called the Chief Information Security Exchange .Havekost said one of his initial goals for the committee is to increase the number of best practice cases the council can share with federal CIOs and their deputies. The committee is attempting to leverage best practice solutions through a series of seminars and an effort called launched last November. Developed in cooperation with the General Services Administration, the exchange is attempting to broker connections between those looking for help and those who may have a ready-made or easily tailored solution. The exchange’s Web-based index of government-owned solutions, however, remains very limited. Havekost, who was promoted to HHS CIO in April 2004, has more than 26 years of experience in the federal government in the areas of grants, information systems and technology management.