The Office of Management and Budget is asking federal chief information officers to become more involved in recruiting, hiring and managing IT program management talent.
In a memo issued Monday, OMB Director Jacob Lew ordered agency CIOs to improve the overall management of federal IT projects by identifying, recruiting and hiring top IT program management talent.
"CIOs will also train and provide annual performance reviews for those leading major IT programs," he wrote. "CIOs will also conduct formal performance evaluations of component CIOs. CIOs will be held accountable for the performance of IT program managers based on their governance process and the IT dashboard."
The memo also outlined four other areas where CIOs should have an expanded role: governance of agency IT portfolios, commodity IT purchases and information security programs.
In December, the Obama administration unveiled a 25-point implementation plan for reforming federal IT, part of which called on the Office of Personnel Management to take steps to significantly enhance the supply of IT program managers. Thus far, OPM has created an official career path for IT program management and has identified the skills necessary to be a successful program manager at each federal grade level.
"As the federal government implements the reform agenda, it is changing the role of agency chief information officers away from just policymaking and infrastructure maintenance, to encompass true portfolio management for all IT," Lew wrote. "This will enable CIOs to focus on delivering IT solutions that support the mission and business effectiveness of their agencies and overcome bureaucratic impediments to deliver enterprise-wide solutions."
Brittany Ballenstedt
Brittany Ballenstedt writes Nextgov's Wired Workplace blog, which delves into the issues facing employees who work in the federal information technology sector. Before joining Nextgov, Brittany covered federal pay and benefits issues as a staff correspondent for Government Executive and served as an associate editor for National Journal's Technology Daily. She holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Mansfield University and originally hails from Pennsylvania. She currently lives near Travis Air Force Base, Calif., where her husband is stationed.
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