Interview with Karen Evans, Outgoing CIO of OMB

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Ms. Karen Evans the CIO of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). For those a little rusty on your Civics, OMB supports execution of the President’s management agenda and oversees the departments and agencies in the Executive branch of the Federal Government. Big job. Ms. Evans has been responsible for implementing a management framework to manage IT as a portfolio and strategic investment. She was quick to point out that although IT is a strategic asset, it is also just an enabler of the mission. Her comments were very candid and caveated by the fact that she’s got 30 days left in her job. She was unwilling to comment on any forward looking projections regarding the next Administration but offered that the Transition Team seemed to respect the basic management framework OMB has used to review IT strategic plans, progress toward those plans, and portfolio investments.

Parting shots she had to offer:

• The Government needs to continue to work on structuring contracts to ensure vendors are incented to behave in ways that benefit the customer.
• Industry should look for niches where there’s a need and the Government’s struggling on developing a solution, develop a solution, and relieve the Government of the burden of development.
• Industry must demonstrate the ability to deliver solutions and services while meeting Government requirements for transparency (FOIA), data quality, security, and privacy.
• The most significant challenge going forward is managing risk while delivering on mission and ensuring the above requirements are satisfied.

I have to admit, going in; I was expecting to hear a little more talk about IT from U.S. Government’s senior CIO. But, in retrospect, it makes sense the person responsible for overseeing the planning and execution of over $60B of Federal spending on IT would be more focused on wise management of those resources rather than the sizzle.