There has been a lot of discussion recently in both the private and public sectors about the role of the CIO and whether it should be primarily a technical role, a management role or a strategic role.

Dan Mintz, the new CIO at the Department of Transportation (DOT), is a techie to the core. He worked in the University of Maryland computer department to pay his way to a degree in Information Systems Management. He also earned a Masters degree in International Management. He ran a computer store for a number of years and provided systems analysis, systems design, program analysis, program management and technical advice for a number of companies, both large and small. In 11 years at Sun Microsystems, he was an implementer.

At Transportation, however, his job is not technical. "My job is to be a communicator, to be a translator between the strategic goals and the tactical goals, between the stakeholders and the organization," he said.

This is much harder to do in government, with its multiple conflicting stakeholders at the White House, in the public and on the Hill. "The private sector is a much simpler existence. It has a shortcut to success--you merely have to make a profit."

Mintz was asked to join the government after a "very casual conversation" with a long-time friend in the administration. As a political appointee, he understands it's a job that has a definite end--when a new administration takes over in January 2009. He had never been a political appointee before, and he knew it was not the most secure position for a man with two daughters in private colleges. Nevertheless, he decided to come to government because "I wanted to give something back. I've had a good life. I've had a wonderful time. It's a wonderful country. So when the offer came, I couldn't turn it down. It was the chance to give something back, however small."

He has no regrets. "It's the only job I ever had where I love to come to work every day," he says. "But it's the only place I ever worked where I understand why people retire."

The role of the political CIO is "really interesting," he said. "It has the advantage of being able to look upward to the political leadership of the organization, but you have difficulty reaching down, and you have to work especially hard to get people to buy into your goals."

Recognizing he has only 20 months in which to make an impact on the Department, Dan Mintz has laid out a course for himself and his 200 or so employees and contractors to make the CIO function a more strategic asset. In 2007, he is concentrating on growing the governance process at DOT and making it more collegial; in 2008 he will concentrate on the processes used to follow that governance. He acknowledges this may leave DOT with a yellow score on OMB's E-Government scorecard--not the preferred, fully compliant green--but he intends to tackle that challenge next year.

"You have to have these two things in place," he said, "a governance mechanism that has credibility so the career staff can resonate with it and a process in place that you can implement across the organization and that makes it clear to people when a decision has been made."

He describes management as a series of "1-step and 2-step issues," the tactical and the strategic. A 1-step issue is one where "if you do something you get a positive result, e.g., if you sell something you will get money." In dealing with a 2-step issue, "if you do something, then you can do a second thing, e.g., if you design a new warehouse you can deliver products better, which in turn makes your customers happier."

"Generally 1-step wins over 2 all the time, because it's easier to measure. It's very hard to assign metrics to a 2-step process. How do you create metrics to measure how investing in designing a Department-wide grants management system relates to how users feel about grants processing? That's hard for management to deal with. Therefore, organizations concentrate on 1-step processes."

The CIO's job is "fundamentally to make the 1-step process sufficiently complete to allow the management of the organization to focus on 2-step processes," he said. "You do your job looking downward; you explain it looking up."

Mintz shows his techie roots in communicating with his organization. On his second day at DOT, he introduced himself and talked about his background. "I told them, if you want to distract me, talk about my daughters, the Washington Capitals (I've been a fan for 30 years) or the movie Serenity."

It was when he mentioned the sci-fi flick Serenity that he knew he was among kindred spirits. "One guy shouted out Firefly," he said, going into an extensive discussion of Serenity, a kind of a Western set 500 years in the future that involves a band of beleaguered rebels who wrestle with doing the right thing. The film was made into a single-season TV show called Firefly that became a cult classic, he explained. Its 14 episodes have been captured on a DVD that is still on Amazon.com's top 100 DVDs.

At the Federal Aviation Administration, a part of DOT, he got applause when he mentioned Firefly. "Somebody came up afterwards and said he was impressed that someone in a position as important as mine would mention Firefly."

Then, at one of the brown bag lunches Mintz holds each month with his employees, a young staffer put it on the line. "I don't want to be accused of ageism," she said to the boss, "but how can somebody as old as you like this show?"

Although he may have passed 50, Dan Mintz still retains a youthful sense of humor. Asked to give a talk at a conference in Stockholm on "The Holy Grail of Shared Services," he peppered his presentation with quotations from another cult classic, Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Four agencies dropped into the red, or unsatisfactory, category on OMB's E-Government scorecard for the second quarter 2007, which ended March 31.

The Office of Personnel Management, the Small Business Administration, the Smithsonian Institution, and OMB itself received red marks--indicating they have serious problems--largely because of deficiencies in how they use their enterprise architectures. The Smithsonian dropped two levels from a green score in the previous quarter; the others had yellow scores on the last scorecard.

The same scorecard showed NASA and the Social Security Administration remained in the red, while the Departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services raised their scores from red to yellow.

Agencies were assessed on their use of the enterprise architectures to maximize efficiency of cross-agency initiatives, implement IPv6, realize efficiencies and improve program performance, according to a memo from Clay Johnson, OMB Deputy Director for Management. He said the four agencies whose grades dropped were not using their enterprise architectures properly.

OMB's Federal Enterprise Architecture Program Management Office has been reviewing agency enterprise architecture plans. Its assessments will be shared with the agencies this month to inform agency IT investment decisions for the fiscal year 2009 budget cycle.

The Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) will require federal program and project managers assigned to major acquisitions to complete a structured development program and obtain a Federal Acquisition Certification.

In an April 25 memo, OFPP Administrator Paul A. Denett announced the new program, to be administered by each civilian agency and reviewed by the Federal Acquisition Institute.

"A strong partnership between program and project managers and contracting professionals requires a common understanding of how to meet the government's needs through acquisitions that deliver quality goods and services in an effective and efficient manner," the memo says. "This memorandum establishes a structured development program for program and project managers that will improve this partnership and our collective stewardship of taxpayer dollars."

The 20-page memo provides details on which managers are covered, transition time, waivers and responsibilities of agency Chief Acquisition Officers in implementing its provisions.

The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA) requires agencies to report data about federal spending that can be compiled and made available to the public on a single website.

As noted in a March 30 memo from OMB Deputy Director for Management Clay Johnson, agencies must gather this data and have a reliable plan in place to produce this data on a monthly basis. If agencies have gaps in their data collection, plans to address the gaps should be sent to Robert Shea, OMB Associate Director for Management, by the June 1 deadline.

The President's Identity Theft Task Force issued a strategic plan April 23 for its efforts to combat identity theft by focusing on ways to improve criminal prosecutions, enhance protection of sensitive consumer information, provide guidance for consumers and businesses, and improve recovery and assistance for consumers.

The task force, co-chaired by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras, was created in May 2006 to formulate a comprehensive and fully coordinated plan to attack identity theft. It issued interim recommendations last fall and solicited comments from the public prior to completing the strategic plan.

Final recommendations include:

• Reduce the unnecessary use of Social Security Numbers by federal agencies.
• Establish national standards requiring private entities to safeguard the personal data they compile and maintain and to notify consumers when a breach poses a risk of losing personally identifiable information.
• Implement a sustained federal awareness campaign to educate consumers, businesses and government on methods to deter, detect and defend against identity theft.
• Create a National Identity Theft Law Enforcement Center to investigate and prosecute identity thieves more effectively.

The task force, representing 17 federal agencies and departments, will play a central role in the implementation of the strategic plan. It has established a website, www.idtheft.gov, that will serve as a clearinghouse for ways to prevent and detect identity theft and help victims recover.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) analyzed the May 2006 theft of a government laptop holding 26.5 million veterans' personal information and other federal data breaches over the past year, identified a number of lessons learned, and recommended guidelines for offering credit monitoring for those put at risk of identity theft.

GAO identified the following lessons learned--which have been addressed in OMB guidance:

• Rapid internal notification of key government officials is critical.
• Because incidents vary, a core group of senior officials should be designated to make decisions regarding an agency's response.
• Mechanisms must be in place to obtain contact information for affected individuals.
• Determining when to offer credit monitoring to affected individuals requires risk-based management decisions.
• Interaction with the public requires careful coordination and can be resource-intensive.
• Internal training and awareness are critical to timely breach response, including notification.
• Contractor responsibilities for data breaches should be clearly defined.

In a report issued April 30, Privacy: Lessons Learned about Data Breach Notification, GAO called on OMB to issue guidance to assist agency officials in making consistent risk-based determinations about when to offer credit monitoring or other protection services. Without such guidance, agencies are likely to continue to make inconsistent decisions about what protections to offer affected individuals, potentially leaving some people more vulnerable than others.

Research conducted by the GSA Office of Citizen Services and Communications for the USA Services E-Government Initiative and USA.gov, the U.S. government's official web portal, reveals the information the public wants to get from the government and the channels it most wants to use to get it.

Each month, on a page called What's on Americans' Minds? USA.gov compiles the top 10 most popular pages on USA.gov, the top 10 most clicked links from USA.gov to other government websites, and the top 10 search terms the public enters on USA Search. Among the trends revealed in the April 2007 data:

• The 10 most popular pages dealt with: government benefits, grants and financial assistance; education and jobs; government auctions and vehicles for sale; and click-throughs to federal, state and local government and Spanish-language sites.
• The 10 most-clicked links went to sites for: government jobs, grants, and benefits; forms and passport applications; government sales of homes and forfeited property; cyber-alert system documents; and frequently asked questions.
• The top 10 search items were: passports, grants, immigration, jobs, employment, elected officials, auctions, Social Security, forms, and (no surprise) the Internal Revenue Service.

Last month, USA Services released the results of its second round of focus groups to determine which channels citizens prefer to use to get information and services from the government. In the second phase, this Citizen Expectations Focus Group Research sought input from citizens age 65 and older, lower-income households, and Hispanics about how they interact with the government. It was designed to supplement the first USA Services Citizen Service-level Expectations Report, issued in November 2005.

The first round of focus groups was conducted with adults aged 18-65 in 12 cities nationwide. It revealed that citizens expect use of the Internet to interact with government will continue to grow, but they still want to have a combination of channels available to them. For example, many said they would perform research online but then want to contact the government by telephone or in person.

The second round of research led to a similar set of findings. It confirmed that the public expects to use the Internet to interact with government in the future and reiterated the public's desire for continued availability of contact through all channels. There were no significant differences of opinion between the mainstream adults (aged 18 to 65) and this group of older, low-income and Hispanic citizens.

The United States high-tech industry added nearly 147,000 jobs in 2006, increasing by 2.6% to top 5.8 million throughout the country, according to a report by the American Electronics Association, the trade association that represents all segments of the industry.

Cyberstates 2007: A Complete State-by-State Overview of the High-Technology Industry, provides a national and a state-by-state picture of high-tech employment, wages, payroll and establishments for the year.

The states with the highest high-tech employment in 2005--the latest data available--were: California (919,300), Texas (445,800), New York (299,900), Florida (276,400) and Virginia (261,000). Florida showed the fastest 2004-2005 growth rate at 4.1%, followed by Virginia with 3.0%. Virginia now has the highest concentration of high-tech workers, surpassing Colorado, which had held this distinction since 1997.

Software services companies had the highest job growth, increasing over the year by 6.2% to 1,521,800. Engineering and Tech Services grew 4.4% to 1,566,600, and Electronics Manufacturing grew 0.4% to 1,326,600. Communications Services, the only major industry segment to lose jobs, declined by 1% to 1,359,000.

Researchers at Rutgers University and the University of Pennsylvania Law School studied 89 websites of federal regulatory agencies and found a wide variation in the quality of the agency websites "with many websites still failing to provide relatively basic features."

The study, released in April, found that "while there has been a lot of attention given to second and third generation 'e-rulemaking' efforts, agency websites, a first generation innovation, still have considerable room for improvement."

The authors ranked agency websites on two scales: 1) the general agency website characteristics and the ease of finding the website, and 2) the regulatory content on the agency's website.

The Food and Drug Administration was ranked highest overall, with a total 23 out of 31 possible points, and the highest regulatory content score. It was followed closely by the website for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which scored 21 points. The Social Security Administration, despite ranking highest in the general website category, still totaled only 16 points because of a low score on its regulatory content.

Among the shortcomings the authors found on the agency websites were the lack of a "comment" button or easy link showing citizens how to comment on proposed rules and the "crude functionality of the search engines" built into agency websites. "[S]teps such as these have so far been missed opportunities for making it easier for citizens to participate in rulemaking, steps overlooked by both government managers and scholars," they concluded.

CIO Council Leadership Awards. At the IRMCO conference April 30, a multi-agency team and three individuals were presented with CIO Council Leadership Awards for their "dedication and commitment to advancing and substantially improving the way government does business." They were:

• The Maritime Domain Awareness Community of Interest received the fourth annual team award.
• Michael Todd, Associate Director for Information Management, Department of Defense, received an individual award for his leadership in creating the DoD network-centric data strategy.
• Mike Butler, Director, Smart Cards Program and Operations, Department of Defense, was recognized for his work on the HSPD-12 identity management project.
• Ira Grossman, Chief Architect, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., was honored for his leadership in developing the Chief Architects Forum.

GCN IT Leadership Awards. Government Computer News announced the 10 winners of its 2007 annual IT Leadership Awards May 7. The winners, who "offer 10 lessons in how to combine vision and initiative with determination and collaboration to bring projects to life," are:

• Lieutenant Commander Chris Kluckhuhn, Coast Guard
• Captain Sam Sumwalt, Navy Reserve
• Lily Kamikihara, Pacific Command
• Lewis Shepherd, Defense Intelligence Agency
• Peter Tseronis, Director of Network Services, Department of Education
• Apollo Teng, Geographic Information Systems Dept., Montgomery County, MD
• Larry Padgett, Palm Beach County (FL) School District
• Ginger Price, Director, MyHealtheVet, Department of Veterans Affairs
• Donald Reid, Department of State
• George White, CIO, Office of Attorney General, State of Pennsylvania.

CIO Magazine's Ones to Watch Awards. Two of the 25 winners of CIO Magazine's 2007 Ones to Watch Awards are deputy CIOs in the federal government, and both were among the five "standout winners." Vince Mancuso, deputy CIO of the Air Force Reserve Command, was praised for turning around the ReserveNet initiative, a Web-based system for managing scheduling and readiness training of Air Force Reserve personnel. Perryn Ashmore, deputy CIO of the GSA Federal Acquisition Service was named for his success in delivering high-profile high-risk projects such as the HSPD-12 managed service.

Webby Awards. MBTA.com, the Official Website of Greater Boston's Public Transportation System, was named the 2007 government-category winner of the Webby Award for excellence on the Web. The awards are given in about 100 categories by the International Academy of the Digital Arts and Sciences. Selected from five nominees in each category, the winners were named May 1. The "People's Voice" winner in the government category, selected through an online voting process, was FactCheck.org, a website of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. FactCheck.org also was the People's Voice winner in the politics category.

Also available in pdf 372 kb

ACT/IAC Management of Change Conference
Richmond, VA
June 3-5

USA Services E-Gov Initiative - Meeting of Partners and Advocates
Washington, D.C.
June 7

3rd Annual Government Health IT Conference & Exhibition
Washington, DC
June 14-15

Collaborative Expedition Workshop: Advancing Virtual Organizing: Potentials and Realities from Scientific Grid to Citizen-Service Communities
Arlington, VA
June 20

National Association of Counties 2007 Annual Conference and Exposition
Richmond, VA
July 13-17

WITC Western CIO Forum
Denver, CO
August 5-7

2007 Executive Leadership Conference
Williamsburg, VA
October 21-23

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The DotGov Buzz is produced by the following individuals in the GSA Office of Citizen Services and Communications:

Darlene Meskell
Anne Hartzell
Ted Cogdell
Bryant Jones
Ernestine Ramsay.