CIO Council, GITEC to take on IT issues together

ORLANDO, Fla. -- The CIO Council and the Government Information Technology Executive Council (GITEC) have struck an agreement to address critical information technology issues, such as cybersecurity and storage.GITEC, which is holding its IPIC conference here this week, will bring chief technology officers from the public and private sectors together to determine their priorities, begin to address them and provide the council with recommendations.Scott Cragg, vice president of GITEC and chief architect at the Department of Veterans Affairs, said the goal of this agreement is to create a stronger connection between the association and the CIO Council.“We have to frame the breadth of what is going,” Cragg said. “We want to drive the energy to the highest priority in the right way.”Karen Evans, the Office of Management and Budget’s administrator for e-government and IT and vice chairwoman of the CIO Council, said the relationship with GITEC will help the government reach its goal of certifying and accrediting 90 percent of all IT systems.Under the most recent OMB report to Congress concerning how agencies are meeting the requirements of the Federal Information Security Management Act, agencies secured 88 percent of the 10,959 systems.“GITEC will address solutions to meet our challenges,” Evans said. “They will look at what policies need to be addressed as well.”Forwarding its relationship with GITEC was one of the council’s goals this year, she said.