CIO Council preps for transition team

CIO Council

On the heels of releasing its strategic plan, the federal CIO Council is

gearing up to present ideas to the incoming presidential administration

on the benefits of and barriers to information technology in government.

The council's strategic plan focuses on goals the group would like government

to achieve. And while the transition documents will incorporate these ideas,

they will deal more with the constraints that keep agencies from moving

forward with technology initiatives.

This review includes looking at which laws help and which hamper the

use of new technology, said Jim Flyzik, vice chairman of the council and

CIO at the Treasury Department. It also will look at problems that may arise

with funding cross-government initiatives with a central IT innovation fund,

Flyzik said.

The Clinger-Cohen Act makes a provision for interagency funding of projects,

but the provision has not been used by Congress and the Office of Management

and Budget, said Paul Brubaker, deputy CIO for the Defense Department and

co-chairman of the CIO Council's outreach committee. "My hope is that we

dust that off and use it," he said.

The council also plans to weigh in on the federal CIO debate, adding

its voice to the opinions on whether a single person or office should be

in charge of federal IT policy.

"We're not going to take a political position," Flyzik said. "We're

going to lay out the pros and cons and how the IT community sees those issues."

But a big part of developing the transition documents will be involving

all of the agencies and industry so that they become true "IT community"

documents, Flyzik said. "It will sell a lot better if it comes from the

community," he said.