U.S. CIO Pitches Service-Driven Federal IT

Facing ongoing budget pressure, federal CIOs are being prodded to do more with less as they seek to improve services, consolidate data centers and eliminate overlapping or outdated programs. In a keynote address at the FOSE government IT conference, U.S. CIO Steven VanRoekel said that federal CIOs must reassess their approach to new innovation deployments.

In a keynote address here at the annual FOSE government IT conference, U.S. CIO Steven VanRoekel explained that afterwards a decade of in broad outline 7 percent growth, the federal IT budget leveled off in 2009, forcing CIOs to reassess their approach to new research deployments.

"We're at this amazing inflection point," said VanRoekel, a Microsoft veteran who joined the federal government in 2009, holding positions at U.S. Agency for International Development and the Federal Communications Commission previously being tapped to serve as the country's second CIO last August.

CIOs in both the public and private sectors have a common responsibility for operations and maintenance and delivering new products and features, VanRoekel noted, however in business, the usual pattern is to wind down old projects to make room for new ones, a budget-sensitive model that reapportions scarce resources without necessarily increasing overall expenditures.

Now, VanRoekel is presiding over a government-wide overhaul of federal IT in other words being driven by a confluence of factors, ranging from the consumerization of the enterprise and increased consumer expectations to the rise of cloud computing and cybersecurity concerns, all with the understanding that budgets will remain tight as lawmakers pursue measures to reduce the deficit.

The board expect more

"Citizens across the board expect more," he said. "We're at an inflection point where the consumerization of research and technology usually is just going to roll over us from the standpoint of government."

Clearly, VanRoekel is looking to harness innovation to achieve a more service-driven government operation, however he is doing so during also pressing agencies to eliminate duplicative systems and consolidate data centers.

Amid those endeavors, VanRoekel is as well seeking to enhance the profile of the federal CIO. Such as he is encouraging federal IT workers to break down silos between disparate legacy systems within various government organizations, he is urging CIOs to align their work with the broader aims of their agencies, echoing the movement underway in the private sector that seeks to achieve closer coordination between IT and business groups.

The mission

"Our mission needs to be the mission. We tend to spend a lot of time talking about innovation." VanRoekel said "At the end of the day, our mission is actually about service delivery -- how is the function of the CIO kind of bridging the gap between the technical capabilities and the business requirements of the organization to in point of fact provide better service to Americans, more efficient employees, cybersecurity and other things?"