Editorial: A familiar refrain

In Shakespeare's "Hamlet," Marcellus warns that something is rotten in the state of Denmark. After reading the results of FCW Media Group's survey of federal, state and local chief information officers, you might declare that something is rotten in government, particularly among CIOs.

The survey's most obvious finding is that public CIOs do not stay in their jobs for very long, usually less than two years. If experience holds true, most of those people take their talents to the private sector. That is not an inherent problem. In fact, you could argue that having people go back and forth between the public and private sectors is good for both. In general, many go forth but few come back.

The real question is why CIOs look for the first opportunity to jump ship. Or to be more blunt, why do they stay as long as they do?

Many information technology executives tacitly acknowledge that CIOs might have some of the worst jobs in government. They are burdened with responsibility yet have little, if any, real authority. The idea behind the Clinger-Cohen Act, the seminal law that created the CIO post, was that IT executives would be an integral part of the agency's management team. By extension, that was supposed to represent the larger role -- the integral role -- that IT plays in allowing agencies to accomplish their missions.

Yet in most agencies today, the CIO is still seen as "an IT guy." The Homeland Security Department has been a poster child for this systemic IT mismanagement. Even today, the agency's organizational chart does not list the CIO. Unfortunately, many other agencies do largely the same thing. They just don't do it in quite such a visceral way.

CIOs are responsible for an expansive range of issues. Beyond the daily responsibility of maintaining operational systems, they have a critical role in issues ranging from information sharing to security, financial systems to records management, interoperability to privacy, and even accessibility. Remember Section 508?

We have said it before, but we say it again: The role of the CIO should matter. CIOs need the power, the authority and the visibility to do their jobs. In short, they need a seat at the table.

In the end, that may affect the tenure of most CIOs, but it is an important step in developing systems that work governmentwide.

-- Christopher J. Dorobek