Federal CIO Council Restructures

Published: August 07, 2013

Cloud ComputingCybersecurityData CenterDEFENSEDigital GovernmentDOEGovernment PerformanceDHSInnovationDOIIT WorkforceDOJMobilityShared ServicesVirtualization

The federal Chief Information Officer (CIO) council is reorganizing to support Federal IT priorities: Innovate, Deliver, and Protect. Specific projects will be managed by committees aligned to technology focus areas like program governance, technology adoption, and security.

The five council committees will consolidate into three main ones, which will work with two task forces and support information exchange activities for several self-organizing communities of practice.

 

Each of the three committees targets a priority area for federal information technology.

·            The Information Security and Identity Management Committee (ISIMC) provides a collaborative forum for agency CIOs and Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) to identify and develop policy recommendations for high-priority security and identity management initiatives.  This committee will be led by Rob Carey, the deputy CIO for the Defense Department, and Luke McCormack, the Justice Department CIO.
 
·            The Innovation Committee will work to enable a 21st century government through the use of new technologies for delivering digital services, deploying mobile technology, exploring modular IT development strategies, and leveraging federal data as a strategic resource. Reportedly, this group will support open data initiatives. This committee will be led by Casey Coleman, the General Services Administration's CIO, and Margie Graves, the Homeland Security Department's acting CIO.
 
·            The Portfolio Management Committee will focus on agency-wide best practices for governance and management processes, optimization of commodity IT resources, adoption of shared services platforms, and enterprise architecture. This committee will be led by Interior Department CIO Bernie Mazer and Bob Brese, the Energy Department's CIO.
 
Along with these committees, the council will work with task forces for data center consolidation and shared services. These task forces will support the sharing and disseminating of best practices and lessons learned across agencies from the two government-wide initiatives. Comprised of data center program managers, facilities managers, and sustainability officers, the Data Center Consolidation Task Force will work to progress towards the government’s consolidation goals. To support these goals, the task force will be working on data center metrics to incorporate into PortfolioStat conversations. The Shared Services Task Force will bring together agency shared service representatives to promote the use of inter-agency shared services for commodity IT, support and mission services.
 
The council's reorganization is the first of this extent in several years, and it comes at a time as the council is positioning itself to be more engaged with other CXO councils and across the federal community.